30 Candidate Screening Questions That Actually Predict Performance

Candidate screening questions do one job: separate people who could genuinely do the role from applicants who never could - before anyone books an interview. The best screening sets mix four types: knock-out questions that disqualify, skills questions that test, situational questions that reveal judgement, and motivation questions that predict whether a hire stays. Here are 30 examples organised by type, with guidance on grading each one.

The four types of candidate screening questions

• Knock-out: binary requirements - legal, logistical, non-negotiable. A wrong answer ends the application. Never graded, only passed or failed.
• Skills: can they actually do the work? Answers are scored, and the score drives ranking.
• Situational: "what would you do if..." - tests judgement and composure. Scored on the quality of the response.
• Motivation: why this role, why now, what keeps them. The best predictor of 90-day retention, which makes it the most underrated of the four.

Knock-out questions: 8 examples

1. Right to work: "Are you legally entitled to work in [country] without sponsorship?"
2. Availability: "This role includes weekend and evening shifts. Can you work them?" - the single highest-value knock-out for frontline roles.
3. Start date: "Can you start within two weeks?"
4. Commute: "The site is at [location]. How long would your journey be?" - over 45 minutes predicts early turnover; decide your cut-off in advance.
5. Licence (logistics): "Do you hold a valid category C driving licence?"
6. Certification (healthcare): "Do you hold a current nursing registration or care certificate? Please give the number and expiry."
7. Physical requirement: "This role involves lifting up to 20 kg repeatedly through a shift. Is that something you can do?"
8. Age-regulated work: "This role requires serving alcohol. Are you over the legal minimum age to do so?" - phrase as a legal requirement of the work, never as a preference.

Skills questions: 9 examples by industry

• Hospitality: "A table of six has three courses at different times. How do you keep the order straight?" and "A guest says their food is cold and they want it free. What do you do?"
• Logistics: "You are picking an order and the location shows empty but the system says 12 units. What are your next steps?" and "Rank these by loading priority: fragile, heavy, refrigerated, oversized - and say why."
• Healthcare: "A resident refuses their medication. Walk through what you do and who you inform." and "What would you record after finding a patient on the floor, and in what order?"
• Office roles: "You receive 40 emails overnight and your manager needs a report by 10am. How do you order your first hour?" and "Spot the error in this short invoice extract" - a two-line attention test outperforms any self-rating.
• Any role: "Describe the busiest shift or deadline you have handled. What made it work?" - scored for specificity, not drama.

Situational questions: 7 examples

1. Conflict: "A colleague is rude to you in front of a customer. What do you do in the moment, and after?"
2. Pressure: "Two urgent things land at once and you can only do one. How do you choose?"
3. Honesty: "You make a mistake nobody noticed. What do you do?" - the answer you want is boring and immediate.
4. Safety: "You spot a colleague skipping a safety step to save time. What happens next?"
5. Service recovery: "A customer is angry about something that is not your fault. Talk me through your response."
6. Ambiguity: "Your manager is unreachable and a situation is not covered by any rule you know. What do you do?"
7. Teamwork: "A teammate is clearly struggling mid-shift. You are also busy. What do you do?"

Motivation questions: 6 examples

1. The why: "What made you apply for this role specifically?" - "I need a job" is honest but scores below an answer that mentions the shift pattern, the location or the work itself.
2. Stability: "What would make you stay in a role for two years or more?"
3. Leaving: "What is making you leave your current role?" - listen for whether the same problem exists in yours.
4. Fit check: "Which part of this job do you expect to like least?" - candidates who can answer have read the ad; candidates who can't, haven't.
5. Trajectory: "Where does this role fit in what you want to be doing in three years?"
6. Practical anchor: "Which shifts do you actually want, not just tolerate?"

Grading: what disqualifies vs what ranks

Keep the two mechanisms separate. Knock-outs disqualify - no right to work, cannot do the shifts, missing licence, commute past your cut-off - and a failed knock-out should end the application automatically, politely and immediately. Everything else ranks: score skills answers 0-2 (wrong, partial, strong), situational answers on whether they act, escalate appropriately and stay professional, and motivation on specificity. Weight skills and situational at roughly double motivation, sum, and interview strictly in score order. Never disqualify on a motivation answer alone, and never let a charming motivation answer rescue a failed skills section. For question sets that go deeper at the interview stage, see our guide to interview questions for frontline staff, and for hands-on assessments, skills tests for frontline hiring.

The takeaway

Good screening is four question types, asked before the interview, graded on rules you set in advance: knock-outs disqualify, everything else ranks. This is exactly how Qwiza's quiz builder works - it turns a job description into a screening quiz with knock-outs and scored questions, delivered inside the ad, so only ranked, qualified candidates reach your shortlist. See how it builds one for your role at the quiz builder page or try it live at demo.qwiza.ai.