How to Turn a Job Description Into Interview Questions

To turn a job description into interview questions, separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves, turn each must-have into a competency, and write one behavioral and one situational question for each competency, with a follow-up and a note on what a strong answer includes. Five must-haves gives you ten questions: a full structured interview, built from the job rather than from a generic list.

Below, each step is explained, then applied to an example job description for a Customer Success Manager.

Step 1: Separate the must-haves from the nice-to-haves

A job description mixes three kinds of line: what the person will do, what they need on day one, and what would be nice to have. Interview questions come from the second kind, informed by the first.

The hiring manager intake meeting is the place to settle this, before the job is posted. Test each requirement with two questions to the hiring manager:

• Would you hire an otherwise excellent candidate without it? If yes, it's a nice-to-have.
• Could someone learn it in their first three months with normal support? If yes, it's a nice-to-have.

What survives both questions is a must-have. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management's guidance on structured interviews makes the same point in terms of return on investment: high when you need people who have specific, critical competencies on entry, and significantly lower when the competencies the interview measures can be learned on the job.

Watch for proxies, too. "5+ years of experience", "a bachelor's degree" and "experience at a top company" often stand in for something more specific. Ask what the years were meant to buy, and interview for that.

Step 2: Turn each must-have into a competency

A competency is something a person does that you can hear evidence of in an answer. Job descriptions rarely say it plainly, so translate:

Three to five competencies is right for most interviews. If you have more must-haves than that, some are probably nice-to-haves, or two of them are the same competency in different words.

Step 3: Write one behavioral and one situational question per competency

A behavioral question asks what the candidate did: "Tell me about a time you kept a customer who was about to leave." A situational question puts them in a realistic scenario from your job: "A customer renewing in 60 days has stopped logging in. What do you do this week?"

Use both. The behavioral question shows what someone has actually done. The situational question tests their judgment on your problems, and it's fairer to candidates whose past jobs didn't include that exact situation.

Good situational questions come from real events. Ask the hiring manager for the three hardest moments in the job last quarter, take out the names, and keep the constraints: the deadline, the missing information, the unhappy stakeholder. For more behavioral questions to adapt, see the 60 competency-based interview questions.

Step 4: Add a follow-up to each question

The follow-up is where you get past the rehearsed answer. Plan one for each question, and use it whenever the answer stays general or slides into "we". Useful defaults:

• "What did you personally do?"
• "What happened in the end?"
• "What would you do differently next time?"

Keep follow-ups neutral. "Did you escalate it to your manager?" tells the candidate what you want to hear. "What did you do next?" doesn't.

Step 5: Write what a strong answer includes

Before the first interview, write two to four specific things a strong answer contains, and one line on what a weak answer sounds like. These become the 5 and the 1 on your interview scorecard, and they keep two interviewers' scores comparable.

Write them with the hiring manager. If the two of you can't agree on what a strong answer sounds like, you've found a problem with the role, not with the questions.

Worked example: a Customer Success Manager

The job description

This job description is an example written for this guide, not a real posting.

Customer Success Manager, Mid-Market (example)

You'll own the relationship with about 40 mid-market customers of our scheduling software, from the handoff after the sale through renewal.

What you'll do

• Lead onboarding for new customers and get their teams using the product within 60 days
• Own renewals for your book of business, with a gross retention target of 90%
• Run quarterly business reviews with customers' directors and VPs
• Spot expansion opportunities and bring in your account executive
• Bring customer feedback to the product team, with the evidence behind it

What you'll need

• 3+ years in customer success or account management at a B2B software company
• Experience owning renewals
• Confidence presenting to senior stakeholders
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Willingness to travel up to 15% of the time, mostly for on-site business reviews

Nice to have

• Experience with a customer success platform such as Gainsight
• A background in logistics or supply chain
• Basic SQL

Must-haves, nice-to-haves and knockouts

"Excellent written and verbal communication" folds into executive communication here, because presenting to senior customers is the communication this job depends on.

The ten questions

Two questions per competency, each with a planned follow-up, what a strong answer includes, and what a weak one sounds like.

Retention and renewals

1. Tell me about an account you kept that was at real risk of not renewing. How did you know it was at risk, and what did you do?
   • Follow-up: When did you first see the signs, and what would you watch for earlier next time?
   • Strong answer includes: specific warning signs (falling usage, a champion leaving, a run of support tickets), action well before the renewal date, a plan agreed with the customer, and the outcome.
   • Weak answer: the save came down to a discount, or the risk was spotted only when the customer gave notice.
2. A customer renewing in 60 days has stopped logging in, and your main contact has gone quiet. What do you do this week?
   • Follow-up: Your contact finally replies that they're "evaluating options". What's your next move?
   • Strong answer includes: checks the usage data first, reaches other contacts in the account, asks for a meeting to understand what changed, brings a recovery plan, and tells their manager and the account executive early.
   • Weak answer: keeps emailing the same contact, or opens with a discount.

Onboarding and adoption

3. Walk me through an onboarding you led where the customer was slow to get started. What did you change?
   • Follow-up: How did you know whether they were really using the product?
   • Strong answer includes: a success goal agreed with the customer at the start, adoption tracked against it, the real blocker found (people, data or training), a changed plan, and the result.
   • Weak answer: describes the standard onboarding steps, with no problem and no change.
4. Sales closed a deal that promised a feature the product doesn't have. You meet the customer for the kickoff tomorrow. How do you handle it?
   • Follow-up: What do you say to the account executive?
   • Strong answer includes: confirms the facts with the account executive before the meeting, is honest with the customer, offers a workaround or a realistic timeline, and fixes the handoff so it doesn't happen again.
   • Weak answer: avoids the subject in the meeting, or blames sales in front of the customer.

Executive communication

5. Tell me about a business review you ran for a senior customer audience. What was on the agenda, and what came out of it?
   • Follow-up: What question did you not expect, and how did you answer it?
   • Strong answer includes: built around the customer's goals rather than product features, uses their own data, makes a clear recommendation or request, and ends with an agreed next step.
   • Weak answer: a tour of features and usage charts with no request and no outcome.
6. A customer's VP joins a routine meeting and says the product isn't worth what they pay. You have five minutes. What do you say?
   • Follow-up: What do you do after the meeting?
   • Strong answer includes: stays calm, asks what's driving the view, acknowledges what's true, connects the product to results the VP cares about, and proposes a follow-up with evidence, then sends it quickly.
   • Weak answer: argues, over-promises, or hands the problem to someone else.

Commercial judgment

7. Tell me about an expansion or upsell you identified. How did you spot it, and what was your part in closing it?
   • Follow-up: How did you make sure it was right for the customer, not just for the number?
   • Strong answer includes: spots the opportunity in usage or in the customer's goals, confirms the need with the customer, brings in the account executive at the right moment, and can describe the outcome and their share of it.
   • Weak answer: claims the whole deal, or can't say how the opportunity came up.
8. A healthy customer asks for a 20% discount at renewal. What do you do?
   • Follow-up: What would change your answer?
   • Strong answer includes: finds out why they're asking, makes the case for the value with their own usage data, knows what they're allowed to offer, trades any concession for something such as a longer term, and involves the right people.
   • Weak answer: agrees to keep them happy, or refuses without asking why.

Influencing without authority

9. Tell me about a time you got the product team to change something because of customer feedback.
   • Follow-up: What evidence did you bring, and what did they push back on?
   • Strong answer includes: gathers the same request from several customers, sizes the impact in accounts, revenue or support tickets, frames it in the product team's terms, accepts trade-offs, and closes the loop with customers.
   • Weak answer: forwarded requests one at a time, or blames the product team when nothing changed.
10. Three of your customers ask for the same feature, and the product team says it's not on this year's roadmap. What do you do?
    • Follow-up: What do you tell the customers?
    • Strong answer includes: sizes the demand, makes the case once with evidence, accepts the decision, tells customers honestly, offers a workaround, and keeps tracking demand.
    • Weak answer: tells the customers it's coming anyway.

Knockouts from the same job description

Two lines in this job description are yes-or-no requirements rather than competencies:

• "This role travels up to 15% of the time, mostly for on-site business reviews. Can you travel that much?"
• "Have you been responsible for renewals on a book of accounts?"

Ask them early, on the application or at the start of the screen, and treat a "no" as a flag for a recruiter to review rather than an automatic rejection. The guide to knockout questions explains why, with 25 more examples.

Can AI turn a job description into interview questions?

Yes, and it makes a reasonable first draft. Whatever writes the draft, a person should check three things before it's used: every question maps to a must-have, nothing asks about a proxy or about the candidate's personal life, and the strong-answer notes describe answers the hiring manager would actually accept.

DIO, the AI interviewer Dio makes, starts from the job description too. You paste the text, or import the job posting from its URL (Bullhorn jobs can be imported as well), and DIO drafts an interview plan. The recruiter reviews and edits the plan before publishing, and picks the round: a screening round, which asks the questions recruiters cover in a first conversation and rates every candidate on skills and experience, motivation and interest, and communication; a screening round plus role competencies; or a role-competencies round for later stages. Each competency is rated 1–5 against anchors written for the role. Dio also drafts the role's Q&A from the job description for the recruiter to review, and when candidates ask their own questions at the end of the interview, DIO answers only from it.

If you'd rather build the questions yourself, pick the competencies from step 2 in the free interview question generator, and it gives you structured questions for each, with a follow-up and what a strong answer includes.