When you’re interviewing for positions in your human resources department like Trainer, it’s particularly important to be able to assess all candidates using the same data (or scoring). This is where structured interviews come in. In a structured interview, questions are determined in advance and consistent. In unstructured interviews, the questions are not set in advance or may come from a loose set of notes from a hiring manager.

How to Select and Interview a Trainer for Your Human Resources Team 

Based on the qualifications you’re looking for, your HR Trainer interview questions should be open-ended but structured so that candidates may provide specific information that will distinguish them from the other candidates you’re interviewing for the position. Asking the right questions during the interview is crucial to selecting the right candidates to hire.

If HR is also responsible for learning, training, and development, the role of trainer falls under the umbrella of HR. Trainers can be employee orientation leaders or those that facilitate training and development programs as well as provide specialized training and learning for certain employee groups and departments. The role and responsibilities for the trainer are dependent on the size and scope of the organization. If an organization has a separate training and L&D department, this individual may be a peer to an HR manager and report directly to the HR Director or a Training Director or other learning and development leadership role. This role may be an exempt level or non-exempt level role. The role is very broad and who the Trainer position reports too is depends on how the HR team and organization is structured. 

List of HR Trainer Interview Questions 

1) Can you talk about your experience with organizing and developing training and onboarding initiatives? 

2) What size workforce have you been responsible for executing training sessions for new and existing employees? 

3) What were the unique challenges for the training you developed?

4) How do you ensure that you understand the evolving learning and development needs of a talent pool?

5) If you had to identify the training needs of a company, where should you start?

6) Can you walk us through the process of preparing a training or onboarding curriculum?

7) Describe your experience conducting a skills gap analysis for a company in order to develop training opportunities.

8) What are the essential qualities a corporate trainer must have in order to be successful?

9) Describe your experience working with learning and development systems (or LMS). What do you see as the biggest challenge in executing this type of training?

10) After learning about this opportunity, what made you take the next step and apply for the job?

Once the interviews for the job are completed, it’s up to you and your team to decide on which of your top prospects is the one that you are going to offer the job. The key when interviewing and selecting Trainer candidates is to be sure of the job requirements and most important skills and abilities to ensure you are selecting the most qualified and capable person for the human resources assistant job you have an opening for.

Grab our downloadable HR Trainer Interview Guide along with a handful of other helpful human resources interview questions guides to help staff up your HR team.