Performance & Development
Professional Development Interview
A professional development interview is a conversation about the employee's skills, learning and career path. It is deliberately separate from the performance review: instead of judging past results, it looks at where the person wants to grow and what the organisation can do to help. These questions cover current skills, aspirations, training needs and a concrete plan.
17 questions
When to use this template
- At regular intervals, for example once a year or every two years, and separately from the annual performance review so that it is not overshadowed by ratings or pay.
- When an employee has been in the same role for a long time, has taken on new responsibilities, or returns after a long absence.
- Before building a training plan, so that training budgets follow real needs and not guesses.
- Where local rules or company policy call for periodic career interviews, as in France, to meet that requirement in a useful way and not as a formality.
Questions to ask
Current role and experience
- 01How do you feel about your role at the moment?
- 02Which parts of your work make the best use of your skills?
- 03What have you learned since our last conversation about your development?
Skills and strengths
- 04Which skills do you consider your strongest?
- 05Are there skills you have that we are not making use of?
- 06Which skills do you feel you are missing for your current role?
- 07What do colleagues or customers often come to you for?
Aspirations and career path
- 08What would you like your work to look like in two or three years?
- 09Are there roles or areas of the company that interest you?
- 10What matters most to you in your career right now: expertise, responsibility, variety, stability, balance?
Training and learning
- 11What training or learning would help you most in the next year?
- 12How do you learn best: courses, practice, mentoring, shadowing a colleague?
- 13Is there anything that has stopped you from training so far?
Action plan
- 14What are the first two or three steps you would like to take?
- 15What can I or the company do to support you?
- 16How and when should we check on progress?
- 17Is there anything else about your development you would like to discuss?
Tips for a useful conversation
- Make clear at the start that this is not an assessment of performance, so the employee can speak about ambitions without fear of consequences.
- Prepare by looking at the employee's training history, past roles and any previous development plans.
- Be honest about what the organisation can and cannot offer: promising an opportunity that does not exist costs more trust than saying no.
- Write down the agreed actions and share them, with the training requests that can be acted on.
- Check the rules that apply in your country, since some countries require such interviews or define what must be recorded.
Mistakes to avoid
- Merging it with the annual performance review and turning career talk into a discussion about ratings.
- Asking about ambitions and then doing nothing with the answers.
- Assuming that everyone wants to become a manager.
- Treating training as a reward for good performers instead of a development tool for everyone.
Let Passisto People hold these conversations
The AI agent holds structured voice conversations with your employees and gives managers a clear report. People decide what happens next.