A CEO shares the 2 'fun' interview questions she asks every job candidate, and why

Some CEOs ask dry and boring interview questions, while others ask fun ones.

Dottie Mattison, CEO of Gracious Home New York, falls into the latter category.

Adam Bryant of The New York Times recently spoke with Mattison and asked how she hires.

The home furnishings exec says her favorite question is: "What do you do on the weekends or in your spare time?"

She believes this questions tells you what matters most to people and where their passions lie.

Ultimately, she says, when she hires she looks for people who know how to work. "Done is better than perfect," she says. "So when people tell me about their weekend projects in their house, like the treehouse they built and they couldn't go to sleep until it was done, that's a cool thing."

Another go-to is a "fun lottery question" she likes to ask. It is: "If you won the lottery, what business would you open?"

"Sometimes that turns out to be a product category they know a lot about, or a certain kind of customer they understand really well," Mattison explains to Bryant.

The reason she asks these fun, light-hearted (but telling) questions is to help job candidates feel comfortable in the interview, "because obviously you get to better see who they really are when they're comfortable," she says.

Read the full New York Times interview here.