Progressive Questions for Interviews, Evaluations, and Development

Talent has multiple dimensions. This article focuses on questions that help you evaluate two key aspects:

1. Technical Breadth – The range of knowledge across one or multiple trades. For example, expertise in a single trade versus familiarity with several. Or, proficiency in using one accounting system like Sage versus experience with multiple systems such as Sage, Vista, and Spectrum. 
2. Level of Understanding – Ranging from specific tasks and tools to a broader system-level perspective. For instnace, knowing how to identify, price, and send a change order using Procore and Accubid or knowing how to set standards and design a workflow that ensures 90% of changes are identified during preconstruction. 

There are additional levels of understanding, including strategy and vision setting, but those are beyond the scope of this article.

You will also want to evaluate and develop agility to move up and down levels easily based on the requirements of the job role. Some roles require deep expertise from the ground up, like an engineering manager of a small team. Others, like an architect, may need only system-level knowledge across various trades to design an effective building.

The examples of questions below are related to production tracking and could be part of a structured interview guide for a Project Manager, Superintendent, or above. They move back and forth between general and specific questions before progressing through higher levels. 

1. Which company had the best production tracking system you’ve worked with? This is an easy question that provides something tangible to discuss. It often reveals valuable insights, such as where to recruit talent (or avoid), and how your own systems compare to industry peers. 
2. Describe the system in detail, including the people involved, timing and frequency, tools used, metrics, and results. This question helps assess their comfort level with the work. As you engage in the discussion, consider reviewing the Time Span (SST) videos and related resources for additional context. Take thorough notes, digging deeper into specific details where appropriate. Keep in mind that you may not progress much further if the person lacks experience or provides vague or incomplete answers. The goal is to evaluate their knowledge—not to undermine their confidence by overwhelming them with unanswerable questions. 
3. How did you break the project down into tasks that could be tracked? As you drill into this question, you can also evaluate their understanding of the work and the nuances that impact productivity. 
4. What were the top 3 tasks where production tracking had the biggest impact and why? Looking for their ability to prioritize. 
5. How did you measure progress against those tasks?
6. How did you adjust for changes?
7. How did you align the system with payroll and actual costs? This may or may not apply, depending on the timeframe being measured. For crews tracking production daily—or even more frequently for rapid feedback—a true-up process is typically required. 
8. How did you create a forecast at completion cost based on task performance? This would tie into their project review process and the projections required for the Work-in-Progress (WIP). This goes toward their level of situational awareness and how they look forward. To what degree is it "gut feel" as compared to process-driven calculation? 
9. How did you account for planning time, learning curves, mobilization, demobilization, and punch list items as part of the production tracking? Getting deeper into the nuances of how they budget, task, and track a project. 
10. How did you use production tracking feedback to improve the project? Depending on their response, dig deeper—were they simply generating data, or were they actively using it to drive decisions and improvements?
11. How frequently was feedback provided to the Foremen, crews, estimators, and upper management? 
12. What was the format of that feedback? 
13. Did you create the system, or was it already in place when you started? Dig into this—if they didn’t develop it, who did? That person could be a potential recruit or a valuable industry peer to connect with. 
14. What improvements did you make to the system? Evaluating their continuous improvement aptitudes and capabilities. 
15. In your estimation, how much money did production tracking save? This question helps assess their ability to quantify impact. Dig deeper into how they arrived at their estimate—did they compare projected vs. actual costs, track efficiency gains, or identify waste reduction?. 
16. What were your biggest lessons learned from production tracking? This helps evaluate their ability to learn and adapt, which is critical for building future capabilities and capacity. Dig deeper to see if their insights led into meaningful improvements or changes in approach. 
17. How well did the production tracking system predict final project performance? How early in the project were you able to make an accurate prediction of outcomes? This ties back to earlier questions, so look for consistency in their response. Did their system allow for early course corrections, or were issues only apparent later in the project? 
18. Did you tie incentive compensation to production tracking?
19. What was the biggest problem you identified through production tracking, and how was it resolved? Dig into the specifics—what did they uncover, and what actions did they take to fix it? If they mention an internally caused issue, work through that first. Then, ask about an externally caused problem to assess how well they quantified and communicated impacts, and worked toward resolution.
20. What role did your manager play in setting up the production tracking system and ensuring everything stayed on track? This ties back to Question #2 and may have been partially answered already. It provides insight into how they were managed (or if they were largely self-directed) and how leadership influenced the system's effectiveness.
21. Have you had production tracking in all companies you worked for? Which ones? Why or why not?

These are just examples along one technical area (production tracking). They can be tailored for all other areas that are important to their job role.

• You will see patterns in the answers. For example, a PM that can go deeply into production tracking and change management will likely have the same depth on schedule of values, billings, and schedule management. The reverse is also true. 
• Many responses may naturally address multiple questions, so you don’t need to go through each one separately. Instead, listen for key details that connect across different areas, allowing the conversation to flow organically while still covering the critical points.
• For the answers that require specific details, dig in. Understanding the generalities is just a prerequisite and extroverted personalities can unintentionally come across as more capable than they are. The reverse is true for introverts. Remember that the devil is in the details—but so is salvation. 

You can use progressive levels of questions like this to stretch thinking of individuals and groups. 

Please contact us to discuss the various ways we have incorporated progressive levels of questions to:

• Design job roles with consistent levels of work to increase the size of the qualified candidate pool.
• Improve selection of internal and external candidates for job roles. 
• Evaluate people who are already at the company to identify individual strengths for improvement teams. 
• Improve systems through collaboration leveraging individual strengths.