What are good interview questions to ask a ceo

Crush your interview with our guide

A CEO is the highest-ranking executive in an organization. Recruiting CEOs can be challenging as they play a huge role in the company’s success. They make important company decisions, build business strategies, and shape the organizational culture. The ideal candidate for this position usually has many years of experience as a CEO or in another C-suite level role. It’s best to look for candidates who are familiar with your industry, as they’ll better understand your company’s challenges and objectives.

When you identify your top candidates for the CEO position, schedule an onsite introductory interview to talk about their skills and your business needs. Prepare CEO interview questions that assess candidates’ management and problem-solving skills. Use tangible criteria to understand if they’re a good fit for your company, for example, find out how well they know your company and your competitors and ask what changes they plan to implement if hired. Consider including board members and other executives in the hiring process to select candidates who are a good fit for your executive team.

Interview questions for CEOs can also reveal which candidates have the characteristics that make a good leader, such as resilience, patience, and an influential flair. A CEO makes important financial decisions and regularly communicates with shareholders and potential investors. So, look for candidates with a data-driven approach, attention to detail, and sharp negotiation skills.

Below, you’ll find the best questions to ask a CEO in a job interview.

Operational and Situational questions

• What do you think our company’s mission and vision are?
• What changes would you implement during your first year in the company? How would you build a 5-year plan?
• What would you do in your first 30 days as CEO of our organization? 
• Who do you believe are our biggest competitors? How do we differ from them?
• What do you think are the biggest challenges our industry will face in the next 5 years?
• What are the most helpful technological platforms and tools you have used? Would you implement them in our organization?
• What is the most innovative product or service you’ve worked on at a previous company?
• Describe your rationale before you make a big financial decision. What criteria do you use to decide which products or services to invest in?
• In 5 minutes, prepare a small pitch to present our company to a potential investor.
• Imagine that a product or service we launched recently failed our expectations. What are your next steps? 

Behavioral questions

• What personality traits make a good leader?
• What is the best and the worst part of being a CEO?
• Name two strengths and two weaknesses you have and how they can impact your responsibilities as a CEO.
• What is the biggest challenge you have faced in your career? How did you overcome it and what did you learn from it?
• How do you prefer to communicate with your team to assign responsibilities to them? 
• What’s your biggest challenge when it comes to people management?
• How would others define your communication style? Do you prefer to be close to your employees or maintain a healthy distance, and why?
• Describe a time when two team leaders or executives had a conflict. How did you handle the situation?
• Describe a time you had to make a tough decision (e.g. budget cuts, organizational restructuring, market withdrawal, etc.). What did you do and what was the result?

Did you find this CEO interview questions template useful? Feel free to download the PDF for future use.

We’ve compiled “125 CEO Interview Questions” (Chief Executive Officer Interview Questions), grouped by subject, to help you prepare for your next CEO-level interview.

These CEO Interview Questions are specific to the CEO role, but you may also be asked general interview questions and Behavioral Interview questions, so we recommend preparing for those questions as well.

And, many of these questions could be asked on a CFO, COO, CIO, CTO, CSO, CMO, CHRM, CAO, CDO interview as well, so if you are interviewing for any of these positions, you can practice answering some of these questions to prepare for your interview.

Practice Answering Your CEO Interview Question Aloud

We suggest you practice using these CEO Interview Questions with a colleague, mentor, an Executive Coach, an Interview Coach, or a Job Search Coach. And that you practice on your own verbally.  Just reading questions silently or thinking through the answers to questions may not fully prepare you for giving your answers aloud.

If possible, you may want to put together a panel to simulate the panel interviewing structure (which is a higher pressure format than a one-on-one interview). And, you may want to practice answering your CEO Interview Questions via teleconference and phone as these are also common modes of interviews. It is also important that you prepare a list of questions to ask during your interview to demonstrate your knowledge, show your interest, and learn what you need to know in order to determine if the position meets your job criteria and will be a win-win business arrangement for everyone. And, here’s a book to help you prepare.

Vision – CEO Interview Questions

1. What would your long-term Strategic Vision be for our company?
2. How would you help our employees connect to that vision?
3. How would you inspire your leaders and staff to fulfill that vision?
4. Share what your top 3 goals for our company would be.
5. What will get in the way of your leading the achievement of those goals?
6. How have you overcome the barriers you’ve encountered in the past to attaining company goals?
7. What is our company doing well?
8. What could our company be doing better?
9. How would you go about improving on the things our company could do better?

Strategy and Vision – Interview Questions for CEOs

1. What are the most important strategic priorities for our company over the next three years?
2. As CEO, how would you ensure success regarding these priorities?
3. Describe how you’ve responded to competitive threats in the past.
4. What were the goals you put in place to respond to these threats?
5. Were you successful in addressing these threats?
6. Describe how you’ve guided the creation of new business models, products, or strategic initiatives in the past?
7. How did your vision for the company evolve based on this new business approach?
8. How did you gain buy-in from key constituents and stakeholders as the organization evolved?
9. In your view, what risks do we face as an organization?
10. How would you mitigate those risks?

Goals – CEO Interview Questions

1. How would you lead the organization in setting goals?
2. How would you ensure that all levels of goals are aligned and integrated, from organizational to the department, to sub-team, to the individual goals?
3. Describe how would you lead the organization in prioritizing the goals?
4. How would you roll out each level of goals and determine what information is needed at every level?

The Competition – Interview Questions for CEOs

1. Describe how you would assess the competition?
2. How do you stay current on what the competition is planning or currently implementing?
3. How would you respond if the competition were having success with a new product that our company didn’t have?
4. What method would you use to create strategies to compete with our competitors?

The First 90 Days – CEO Interview Questions

1. If you were hired, what would be your priorities in your first 90 days?
2. How would you build trust, generate buy-in, and develop a plan during your first 90 days?
3. How would you learn about our business?

Business Growth – Interview Questions for the C-Suite

1. What strategies would you use to increase our market share?
2. How would you develop our core competencies?
3. Describe how you’ve driven a business to accelerate growth, expand EBITDA, and profitability in the past?
4. Describe how you’ve grown a business through a joint venture, merger, or acquisition.
5. What was the long-term impact of this growth?
6. Describe a time you created or launched a new product or service that resulted in a new revenue stream?

As an executive search firm, we help place leaders in CEO roles at nonprofits and social enterprises. The recruiters here at Y Scouts try to understand a number of things about a potential CEO in an interview – their purpose, values, career history, the high-impact success outcomes and achievements a C-Level candidate has had in their career – and a lot more. (Note: if you’re looking to hire a CEO, contact us and we’d be happy to share our process with you)

But what else do leaders ask chief executive officer candidates? We asked the Y Scouts Leadership Community what their favorite CEO interview questions are and why they like to ask each one. Here’s what they told us.

1. How do you see the company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?

We want to hire a leader who thinks about where the company is going. We don’t want a CEO who is comfortable doing things the way they’ve always been done. That’s why we ask what differences they anticipate and how they see themselves shaping change in the future.

2. Pitch our service as you would in a sales meeting.

A chief executive officer needs to be able to represent the business in the public eye as well as in the office. Asking the candidate to pitch the organization like they would in a sales meeting demonstrates whether or not they are capable of holding a leadership role.

3. Give me one word that describes you the best.

I like this question because it is a quick way to evaluate the candidate’s character. Nobody’s personality can be fully summed up in one word, so the word they pick is very important. It shows me what they consider their most positive attribute.

4. What are your goals?

This question shows me what motivates a candidate to succeed and where they want to go. By knowing what motivates someone, its easier for me to relate to them.

5. What Are Your 3 Biggest Accomplishments?

This is a great CEO interview question because the answer speaks volumes. I can see if they are more proud of their accomplishments in their professional or personal life. Plus, I get some insight into what the person considers successful. For them, is success a good project, learning something new, or earning a certain amount of money?

6. What other CEOs do you look up to?

A person’s heroes can tell you a lot about who they are now and who they aspire to be. It also tells me whose leadership and management styles they would like to emulate as the CEO of the company.

7. Tell us 3 things you like and 3 things you dislike about your current position.

If they answer with dislikes first, or if have way more than three dislikes, you learn a lot about their personality in the workplace. I place a lot of importance on company culture when hiring someone new, and this question is a good way to determine whether or not someone will fit in with mine.

8. Explain the rationale behind each of your career moves.

For this question, I ask people to start with their college graduation and tell me about each of their career moves from that point. The answer shows me how they use strategic thinking to reach their goals.

9. What has been the biggest let down in your career so far?

Everyone sees disappointment in their career, but I’m looking to see how the candidate used this disappointment to improve themselves. It’s also interesting for me to see whom they blame their disappointments on. If they think other people are responsible for their own mistakes, it’s a warning sign that they might not be a good fit for the position.

10. In your own words, can you tell me what we do?

The best people we’ve hired have been able to answer this question in a way that demonstrates how they’ve researched our company’s impact and how they could help us accomplish what we want to do. This question shows us who just wants a job and who wants to help our company move forward.

11. How are your communication skills?

Someone joining my company as a CEO needs to be able to communicate with their colleagues, direct reports, and myself. That’s why I like to ask about their communication skills – it’s a must-have quality.

12. How would someone write about your life for a magazine or newspaper?

Everybody has an interesting story, and it’s a newspaper or magazine writer’s job to find it and tell it. This question gives me the chance to see what the candidate thinks are the most interesting details of their life, which tells me a lot about what they value and how they act.

13. Teach me something I don’t already know.

According to a good friend of mine, the hiring department at Google uses this question at some point in the hiring process. It requires the candidate to think of a unique skill on the spot, and gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their creativity and personality.

14. What animal are you the most like?

This question makes candidates think creatively on their feet. It teaches me a lot about who they are as a person, and shows me how good they are at seeing the best qualities in others.

15. Ask questions that determine cultural fit.

My company really focuses on hiring people that fit into the company’s brand.A lot of people have the talent to do the job, but finding the best fitting candidate is the key to making a new hire successful. That’s why my company asks people questions that reflect our company’s culture.

You might be interested in these other posts about hiring a CEO:
– When to Hire a CEO
– What to Look For in a CEO
– How to Hire a CEO
– What to Pay a CEO

What CEO interview questions have you been asked? Let us know in the comments.