Interview questions for communication: what actually works

There's a paradox at the heart of interviewing for communication skills. The very act of an interview rewards people who communicate well in that specific, polished-answer context — which isn't the same as being a good communicator at work. Someone who can deliver a fluent answer about a time they communicated under pressure isn't necessarily the person who'll flag problems early, write a clear email when it matters, or have a difficult conversation without letting it fester for three weeks.

That said, the interview isn't useless here — you can ask questions that go beyond the polished narrative and get at more revealing behaviour. This article covers five questions worth trying, why the format is still limited, and what actually gives you reliable data on communication skills.

5 communication interview questions

These questions are designed to surface real behaviour rather than rehearsed statements. Push for specifics throughout — the texture of the answer tells you more than the headline.

"Tell me about a time you had to adapt how you were communicating because your usual approach wasn't landing. What did you change?"

Good communicators notice when they're not getting through and adjust. This question tests that adaptability — not just whether someone can communicate clearly in ideal conditions, but whether they're paying enough attention to the other person to realise something isn't working and change course. Strong answers are specific about both the original approach and the adjustment. The candidate should be able to explain why they thought the change was needed and what they did differently.

Watch for answers where the "adaptation" is fairly superficial (changing from email to phone, for instance), versus genuine shifts in approach — simplifying technical language, changing the emotional register, slowing down, asking different questions. The latter shows real communication awareness.

Probing questions

"Describe a time you had to deliver bad news or difficult feedback to someone. How did you handle it?"

Delivering difficult messages is one of the places where communication skills really count. The ability to be clear and honest without being harsh, and to do so in a way that the other person can actually hear, is a genuine skill. A strong answer describes a real situation — not a softened version where the news wasn't that difficult — and shows the candidate thinking about the other person's experience, not just their own discomfort. Look for evidence they thought about timing, framing, and how to have the conversation rather than just getting through it.

Be alert to answers where the candidate did most of the talking and very little of the listening. Good communicators in these situations tend to create space for the other person to respond.

Probing questions

"Give me an example of a time when miscommunication caused a problem at work. What happened, and how did you resolve it?"

This question invites candidates to talk about a failure, which is useful in itself — people who are self-aware about their communication tend to have genuine stories here. What you're looking for is an honest account of what went wrong, a clear understanding of what caused the breakdown, and a thoughtful approach to fixing it. Strong answers don't just describe the resolution; they show the candidate learned something about how they communicate and changed something as a result.

Some candidates will instinctively make this story about someone else's communication failure. Gently redirect: ask what their own role in the misunderstanding was, even if it was partial.

Probing questions

"Tell me about a time you had to explain something technically complex to someone who didn't have your level of expertise. How did you approach it?"

This is a good question for roles that involve cross-functional communication or stakeholder management, but it's honestly revealing for most roles. The ability to translate complex ideas into plain language — without being condescending and without losing accuracy — is harder than it looks. Strong answers describe a real process of calibration: the candidate finding out what the other person already knows, building from there, checking understanding as they go. They use concrete examples or analogies rather than just repeating the same information more slowly.

Listen for whether the candidate seems to enjoy this kind of translation challenge, or whether they find it slightly annoying. The ones who enjoy it tend to be better at it in practice.

Probing questions

"Can you describe a time when something went wrong and you proactively communicated about it before anyone asked? What prompted you to do that?"

Proactive communication — flagging problems before they escalate, updating people who need to know without being chased — is one of the most valuable communication behaviours in any workplace, and one of the hardest to hire for. A lot of people are reactive communicators who share information when required and not before. Strong answers to this question describe a genuine judgment call: the candidate decided to communicate something they could theoretically have stayed quiet about, and they explain what led them to that decision.

The best answers show an understanding that communication isn't just about the message — it's about the relationship, the trust, and the other person's ability to plan and act. Weaker answers tend to be about covering oneself rather than genuinely serving the other person.

Probing questions

Why interviews aren't the best tool for this

The most obvious problem is the one I mentioned at the start: the interview rewards strong interview communicators. Someone who has rehearsed answers, presents themselves clearly, and handles pressure well in a one-hour conversation will always tend to come across as a good communicator — even if their day-to-day communication at work is quite different. You're essentially testing communication performance in a very specific, high-stakes context. That's not nothing, but it's a pretty narrow slice of what communication actually means at work.

There's also a preparation effect that's hard to control for. Most candidates prepare answers to communication-themed questions. "Tell me about a time you communicated under pressure" is, frankly, one of the more predictable questions they're going to face. Which means what you're often hearing is a crafted story that's been reviewed and edited, not a spontaneous account of how someone actually communicates when no one is watching or evaluating them.

Written communication is another gap. Interviews tell you almost nothing about how someone writes. For roles where email, reports, or documentation are significant parts of the job, you're making a pretty important judgment without any data. The candidate who speaks fluently may write in dense, confusing paragraphs. The one who seems a bit hesitant in person may write with exceptional clarity. You won't know from an interview.

Interviews are late in the process to be discovering someone isn't who you thought they were. That's true across most traits, but it's particularly frustrating with communication — because you're likely to find out early in someone's tenure that there's a gap, and by then you've already invested substantially in onboarding them.

What actually works for measuring communication

Personality assessments can measure communication-relevant traits early in the process. Extraversion tells you how naturally someone engages, expresses themselves, and initiates conversation — and whether they're likely to be proactive in sharing information or more inclined to wait until asked. Emotional intelligence tells you how well they read others and adapt their communication style to the situation, which is arguably more important than verbal fluency in most roles.

For roles where written communication matters specifically, a verbal reasoning test gives you objective data on how well someone processes and uses language. This is quite different from the stylistic question of "do they write clearly" — it tells you about the underlying cognitive skills that written communication draws on. A candidate who scores well on verbal reasoning but writes cluttered prose can often improve with feedback; a candidate with weak verbal reasoning is fighting a harder battle.

We cover this in much more depth in our article on how to assess soft skills, but the core idea is to use assessments early so that by the time you're interviewing, you already have a picture of the underlying traits. That means the interview can focus on role-specific scenarios, how they've handled particular situations, and whether there's a good fit — rather than trying to establish basic trait-level information that an assessment can give you more reliably.

Conclusion and next steps

Communication is one of the trickiest things to hire for well, partly because the interview is itself a communication performance and makes it hard to see past that. The five questions in this article are worth using, and they're designed to get at behaviour that's harder to rehearse. But be honest with yourself about what you're measuring: how someone communicates in a 45-minute structured conversation, not necessarily how they'll write to a client under pressure or flag a problem before anyone asks.

If you want a more reliable read on how candidates actually communicate at work, our behavioural assessments are designed by business psychologists and validated against job performance data. They measure the extraversion and emotional intelligence that actually predict communication quality — not just the ability to tell a good story in an interview setting.

Primary author

Ben Schwencke

Chief psychologist at Test Partnership. MSc in Organisational Psychology with over ten years experience in psychometric testing.

Contributed to by:

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Joshua Hancock and Ben Hopgood