By Johnny Campbell
Introduction
This is the one executive hire made almost entirely by people who cannot assess the work. A CEO, two or three board members and a handful of executive peers sit down with a shortlist of accomplished HR leaders, and between them they can judge warmth, poise, credibility in a room and whether they would enjoy the person’s company on a difficult Tuesday. What they cannot judge is whether this candidate has ever designed an operating model, held a position against a chief executive, or removed a senior leader who everyone liked. The loop becomes a sequence of impressive conversations, everybody leaves each one saying the same thing — really strong, very impressive — and the appointment gets made on the aggregate of that feeling. The failure arrives eighteen months later, and it is rarely dramatic: nobody can point to what changed, the function is busier, the deck is better, the engagement survey has a new vendor, and the organisational problem that prompted the hire is exactly where it was.
Three mistakes account for most of it. Panels assess executive presence, which is the single attribute every shortlisted candidate already has, so it separates nobody. They over-credit brand-name tenure without ever separating what the candidate inherited from what they built — running people at an admired company and building the thing that made it admired are different jobs, and the CV shows only one of them. And they almost never test the moment the candidate disagreed with a chief executive and had to hold it, which at this level is not an edge case. It is the job.
This page covers 24 behavioural and situational questions across six capability areas: people strategy and business alignment, executive team and board influence, organisation design and transformation, culture stewardship and hard calls, reward, risk and governance, and building and leading the people function. Nothing here relies on statistics, and every question on employment law, reward or governance is written to work in any jurisdiction — the point is what the candidate did, not which rulebook they were working from.
Core Competencies for a Great HR Director Hire
The competency that carries this role is Strategic Thinking, but only when it is welded to Business Acumen — a CHRO who cannot discuss margin, cost base and the commercial consequence of a headcount decision will be treated as a service function no matter what the org chart says. Because almost nothing this person achieves happens through their own reporting line, Influence and Persuasion sits at the centre of the job, and genuine influence stories always contain a named person who said no. Test Decision Making on the calls made with incomplete information and a board meeting in nine days, and People Management on who they built, promoted and exited inside their own function, not on how they describe their leadership style. Two more matter more than most panels expect: Ownership, because this role is measured on outcomes it only partly controls, and Humility, because the CHRO who cannot name a culture problem they failed to fix has either never tried or is not telling you.
People Strategy and Business Alignment
What good looks like
A strong candidate can name something the business actually stopped doing because of a people strategy they wrote, not just what they added. They can describe a people priority they cut to fund something else, with the trade-off made explicit at the time, and a moment the business strategy shifted and left their plan stranded. They talk in terms of budget, headcount and sequencing, not aspiration.
Behavioural questions
- Tell me about the last people strategy you wrote and what the business stopped doing as a result.
- What specifically did the business stop doing, in concrete terms?
- Who had to agree to stop doing it?
- How did you measure whether the trade-off paid off?
- What did you keep that you were tempted to cut?
- Walk me through a people priority you cut in order to fund something else.
- What was cut, and what did it free up?
- Who lost out, and how did you tell them?
- What did the funding actually go towards?
- Did you ever have to revisit that decision?
- Describe a time the business strategy changed and your people plan was left stranded.
- What had the plan assumed that stopped being true?
- How much of the plan did you salvage versus scrap?
- How long did it take you to reset it?
- What did you learn about how you build plans now?
- Tell me about a people decision you made that cost the business money in the short term.
- What was the decision, and what did it cost, roughly?
- Who did you have to convince to approve that cost?
- What was the payback you were expecting, and over what timeframe?
- Did the payback materialise as you expected?
Situational scenario
The board has approved an aggressive growth plan for next year that assumes headcount stays flat while revenue targets rise by forty per cent. You believe the plan is only achievable with a significant investment in management capability that isn’t currently budgeted, and the CEO has already told the board the plan is fully costed and ready to execute.
Walk me through how you handle this before the plan is finalised.
Then introduce a constraint: “The CEO tells you the board will not reopen the headcount conversation and asks you to make the current plan work. What do you do?”
What to listen for
whether they find a way to fund the capability investment within the existing envelope rather than simply complying or simply refusing, whether they put their concern on record rather than quietly absorbing the risk, and whether they can describe what they would do differently if the plan fails for the reason they predicted.
Executive Team and Board Influence
What good looks like
A strong candidate can name a specific disagreement with a chief executive, what they said, and what happened afterwards, not a generic story about healthy debate. They can describe the most uncomfortable thing they have put in front of a board or remuneration committee, a decision the executive team took against their recommendation, and a time they refused an executive peer’s request. The named person and the specific outcome are what separate this from a philosophy.
Behavioural questions
- Tell me about the last time you disagreed with a chief executive and what happened afterwards.
- What exactly did you disagree about?
- What did you actually say to them, in the room?
- Did they change their position, or did you change yours?
- How was the relationship afterwards?
- Describe the most uncomfortable thing you have put in front of a board or a remuneration committee.
- What was on the paper, specifically?
- How did you prepare the room before they saw it?
- What was the reaction when you presented it?
- What decision came out of that meeting?
- Walk me through a decision the executive team took against your recommendation.
- What had you recommended, and why?
- What did they decide instead?
- How did you respond once the decision went against you?
- What happened when your original concern played out, or didn’t?
- Tell me about an executive peer who asked your function to do something you refused to do.
- What were they asking for, specifically?
- Why did you decide it was a refusal rather than a negotiation?
- What did you say to them directly?
- What was the relationship like with that peer afterwards?
Situational scenario
A fellow executive asks you privately to help manage the exit of a direct report before a formal performance process has properly started, because the business need is urgent and they don’t want the delay a full process would add. The employee in question has an otherwise clean record and no documented history of underperformance on file.
Walk me through how you respond to that request.
Then introduce a constraint: “The CEO tells you afterwards that they support the peer’s request and would like you to find a way to make it happen quickly. What do you do?”
What to listen for
whether they hold the line on process even under direct pressure from the CEO, whether they offer the executive a genuinely faster compliant route rather than just saying no, and whether they can describe what they would do if the CEO overruled them entirely.
Organisation Design and Transformation
What good looks like
A strong candidate can describe a reorganisation they designed, including the two shapes they rejected and why the one they chose was better. They can name a restructure that did not deliver what it promised and what they would change, the hardest role-reduction programme they have personally led, and a layer of management they removed, with the reasoning, not just the outcome.
Behavioural questions
- Walk me through a reorganisation you designed rather than one you were handed to deliver.
- What were the two or three shapes you considered?
- Why did you reject the alternatives?
- Who did you have to convince to back your design?
- What would you change about it now, with hindsight?
- Tell me about a restructure that did not deliver what it promised.
- What was it supposed to deliver, specifically?
- At what point did you realise it wasn’t working?
- What was your part in why it fell short?
- What did you do once you realised it?
- Describe the most difficult role-reduction programme you have personally led.
- How many roles, and over what timeframe?
- What was the hardest single conversation in that programme?
- What did you do to protect the people who stayed?
- What would you do differently if you ran it again?
- Tell me about a layer of management you removed.
- How many people were in that layer, and what did they do?
- What told you the layer needed to go?
- Where did their responsibilities land instead?
- What broke in the first few months after it was gone?
Situational scenario
You’ve been asked to redesign the organisation ahead of a planned thirty per cent reduction in management layers, to be announced in six weeks. The current structure has been stable for four years, several long-serving leaders will lose their titles or their teams, and the board expects a design that survives scrutiny, not just a headcount number.
Walk me through how you approach the design.
Then introduce a constraint: “Two weeks before the announcement, the CEO tells you one of the leaders due to lose their team is a personal friend and asks you to find them a way to keep direct reports. What do you do?”
What to listen for
whether they protect the integrity of the design against a request that would compromise it, whether they push back on the CEO directly rather than quietly accommodating the request, and whether they can describe the commercial or fairness cost of the exception if they were forced to make it.
Culture Stewardship and Hard Calls
What good looks like
A strong candidate can name a culture problem they inherited that was still not fully fixed when they left, and a senior leader they left in post longer than they should have, both told honestly, without redirecting blame. They can describe overruling a manager on a decision about one of their own people, and a moment employee sentiment data told them something the executive team did not want to hear, and what they did with it.
Behavioural questions
- Tell me about a culture problem you inherited and what was still broken when you left.
- What was the problem, specifically, when you arrived?
- What did you try that didn’t work?
- What was still unresolved when you moved on?
- What would you do differently with the benefit of hindsight?
- Tell me about a senior leader you left in post longer than you should have.
- What was the concern, and when did you first notice it?
- What made you hold off acting on it?
- What finally made you act?
- What did that delay cost the organisation?
- Walk me through the last time you overruled a manager on a decision about one of their own people.
- What had the manager decided, and why did you disagree?
- How did you raise it with them, specifically?
- How did they react to being overruled?
- What was the outcome for the employee involved?
- Describe a time employee sentiment data told you something the executive team would not accept.
- What did the data actually show?
- How did the executive team respond when you presented it?
- What did you do when they pushed back?
- Did the data change anything in the end?
Situational scenario
Your latest engagement survey shows a sharp decline in trust scores specifically under one executive who is otherwise seen as a strong commercial performer and is well liked by the CEO. Nobody else on the executive team has raised a concern about them, and the executive themselves has already asked you privately what the numbers are showing.
Walk me through how you handle this.
Then introduce a constraint: “When you raise it with the CEO, they tell you the numbers are probably noise from one difficult project and ask you to let it settle before doing anything. What do you do?”
What to listen for
whether they gather further evidence rather than accepting the noise explanation or escalating on the survey alone, whether they keep the issue live rather than letting it drop when told to wait, and whether they can describe the point at which they would act regardless of the CEO’s view.
Reward, Risk and Governance
What good looks like
A strong candidate can walk through a significant change they made to how people are paid, including who won and who lost, and a pay decision they held even when a senior person resigned over it. They can describe a people risk they escalated to the board or the chief executive, and one they found out about later than they should have, with a clear account of what they changed as a result.
Behavioural questions
- Walk me through the last significant change you made to how people are paid.
- What changed, specifically, and who was affected?
- Who were the clear winners and losers of the change?
- How did you handle the people who lost out?
- How did the board or remuneration committee respond to the proposal?
- Tell me about a pay decision you held that a senior person resigned over.
- What was the decision, and why did you hold it?
- What did they say to you when they resigned?
- Did you reconsider at any point, or hold firm throughout?
- What was the impact of losing them?
- Describe a people risk you escalated to your board or your chief executive.
- What was the risk, specifically?
- How did you decide it warranted board-level attention?
- How did you frame it for them?
- What did the board or CEO decide to do about it?
- Tell me about a people risk you found out about later than you should have.
- What was the risk, and how did you eventually find out?
- How much earlier should you have known?
- What did that delay cost the organisation?
- What did you change in how information reaches you now?
Situational scenario
A pay equity review you commissioned finds a systemic gap affecting a specific group of senior leaders, and fixing it properly will cost several million in the current financial year — money that isn’t in the budget and that the CFO will have to find. The review was not commissioned by the board, and nobody outside your function knows the results yet.
Walk me through how you take this to the board.
Then introduce a constraint: “The CFO proposes phasing the fix over three years instead, arguing the immediate cost is unaffordable. Do you accept the phased approach?”
What to listen for
whether they weigh the legal and reputational exposure of a multi-year phase-in rather than accepting the CFO’s framing at face value, whether they propose a defensible interim position rather than simply agreeing or refusing, and whether they can describe how they would explain either outcome to the affected leaders directly.
Building and Leading the People Function
What good looks like
A strong candidate can describe what they dismantled in an inherited HR function, not just what they added. They can name someone they hired into their own leadership team who did not work out and what they did about it, a system or process they removed rather than replaced, and work their function was doing that they concluded added no value, with the decision to stop it, not just the observation.
Behavioural questions
- Tell me about an HR function you inherited and what you dismantled first.
- What state was the function in when you arrived?
- What made that the first thing to go, ahead of other options?
- Who resisted the change, and how did you handle that?
- What replaced it, if anything?
- Describe someone you hired into your own leadership team who did not work out.
- What did you see in them that made you hire them?
- What went wrong, specifically, and who noticed it first?
- How long did it take you to act once you knew?
- What did you do differently on your next senior hire?
- Walk me through an HR system or process you removed rather than replaced.
- What was it meant to do, and who used it?
- Why remove it rather than replace it with something better?
- Who pushed back on losing it?
- What, if anything, filled the gap?
- Tell me about work your function was doing that you concluded added no value.
- What was the work, and who had been doing it?
- What made you conclude it added no value?
- How did you stop it, and what was the reaction?
- What did you redirect that effort towards instead?
Situational scenario
You’ve just joined as CHRO and found a twelve-person HR function spending most of its time on reporting and administration that nobody outside HR seems to actually read or use. You have ninety days before your first board update on the function’s plan, and the previous CHRO left the team demoralised after two rounds of unexplained restructuring.
Walk me through what you do in those ninety days.
Then introduce a constraint: “When you propose cutting two of the recurring reports, the finance director tells you one of them is quietly used to support an audit control they rely on. Does that change your plan?”
What to listen for
whether they verify the audit-control claim rather than either backing off entirely or dismissing it, whether they can redesign the report to serve the control need with less effort rather than treating it as untouchable, and whether they still make real cuts elsewhere rather than losing their nerve on the whole exercise.
Red flags to watch for in HR Director and CHRO interviews
Culture described entirely in values, engagement scores and initiatives. No example of a person removed, a practice stopped, a manager overruled. Culture work that has never cost anybody anything has not happened.
Cannot name a single position they took that put them at odds with the chief executive. Either they were never close enough to the decision to have a view, or they had one and didn’t use it. Ask twice before concluding which.
Inherited and built used interchangeably. Push on any impressive people function on the CV: who designed the operating model, who chose the systems, who wrote the reward architecture? The answer is frequently “that was in place when I joined.”
Every departure of a senior leader is described as mutual. Nobody exits four executives amicably. A candidate who has never made an unpopular removal call has not yet done the hardest part of this job.
Owns the strategy, distributes the failures. Transformation shortfalls attributed to line managers, the market or the previous incumbent, never to their own sequencing or a design they signed off knowing it was fragile.
No commercial vocabulary. Fluent on wellbeing and engagement, silent on cost base, span of control and the price of the function they ran.
How to structure an HR Director or CHRO interview loop
Five stages, and the fifth is the one almost every executive loop skips. Start with the chief executive, on scope and context — what they owned, what they inherited, the size of the population and the shape of the business they ran it in. Follow with the board or nomination committee, focused on governance, reward and the conversations this person will have to lead when something goes wrong. Third, an executive peer panel: the leaders whose organisations this person will redesign and whose people decisions they will overturn. Peer fit breaks this hire more often than capability does, and it cannot be assessed from inside HR.
Fourth, make them do the work. Hand over the actual organisational problem — the real structure, the real attrition, the real capability gap, the real cost line — and ask for their first ninety days. Twenty minutes of that will tell you more than three hours of competency questions, because it is the job, and because the quality of the questions they ask before answering is the clearest signal you will get. Fifth, and non-negotiable, put them in front of people two levels below the executive team — HR business partners, senior managers, functional leads. This population is the only group in your building that knows whether the last people function this candidate built actually worked, and whether senior leaders behave differently when the CHRO is in the room. Most executive loops never run this stage at all.
Five stages also means a dozen interviewers scoring a dozen different things. See how Interview Intelligence standardises this across your team →
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an HR Director and a CHRO?
Scope and altitude, not craft. An HR Director typically owns the function's delivery — partnering, reward, employee relations, HR operations — and reports into a CEO or COO. A CHRO owns the people agenda as a member of the executive team, with board exposure, remuneration committee responsibility and a direct hand in organisation design and succession. Hire against the scope you are actually offering — appointing a CHRO into an HR Director mandate produces a frustrated executive within a year.
How heavily should I weight reference checks at this level?
Heavily, but not the references the candidate offers. Upward and sideways references are where the truth is. Speak to former executive peers whose teams were restructured, and to HR leaders who reported into them. Ask what the candidate changed and what they avoided. Backchannel references at executive level are normal, expected and usually more revealing than any interview stage, provided you agree the approach with the candidate first.
Does a CHRO need to have come up through HR?
Not necessarily, and some of the strongest appointments have come from commercial or operational leadership. What matters is whether they have carried genuine accountability for reward architecture, employment risk and organisation design, because those are the areas where a capable generalist can do real damage quickly. If they have not, insist on a deep functional bench underneath them and test that plan explicitly during the loop.
How do I test strategic capability when every candidate can talk strategy?
Stop asking about it and give them something real — your structure, your attrition, your capability gap, your cost line. Strategic ability shows up in the questions they ask before offering a view, in what they choose not to fix in the first year, and in whether they will tell you your plan is wrong while they are still trying to get the job. Candidates who only validate what you show them are telling you something.
Should the CEO or the board own this appointment?
The chief executive owns the decision, the board should have a genuine veto, and the nomination or remuneration committee should meet the final two. If the board never meets them, you lose the independent check on the one executive whose job includes challenging the CEO. If the CEO is not fully behind the appointment, the person you hire has no mandate to challenge anything at all.