Conduct your Next Interview as if it were the First

Conduct your Next Interview as if it were the FirstConduct your Next Interview as if it were the FirstConduct your Next Interview as if it were the First RossheimYour small geschftliches miteinander has achieved the revenue level where you can and must hire your next employee. Candidates are coming this afternoon for the interview. Are you ready to make one of the most important decisions of the year?Heres whatyou do look around your business, review your interview questionsandmake sure your new hireprovides a worthy return on investment just likeyour first hire did.Devote sufficient time to conduct and prepare for interviews. You know from experience (perhaps both positive and negative) that hiring decisions are among the most significant that you make. So allocate proportionate time to the process, especially for interviewing.Its important to slow down, says Bruce Bachenheimer, professor of management at Pace University. Small business owners are typically dealing with a myriad of critical issues and many are in a rush to hire. Consider using an interview guidefor better hiring.Learn the details of the open position. You cant know all the tasks that your people perform everyday unless you ask. Ask the person currently in the role their daily schedule, says Jason Carney of WorkSmart Systems, a professional employer organization.Know the specific duties and responsibilities of the open position, and be familiar with the job role and how it contributes to the overall business.Know the candidate before you shake hands. Its simple You wont win over the best candidates unless you prove that youre interested in their careers. Thoroughly research the candidate, says Sandra Lewis, of Worldwide 101, a virtual assistant service.Ive been part of many interviews where the interviewer got confused about who the interviewee was they got the background wrong or asked a question obviously geared towards someone else.Ask broad questions to prompt candidates to reveal them selves. Begin by asking the opposite of yes-no questions. Ask generic, open-ended questions and see how they answer, says attorney Jonathan Broder, owner of Strategic Professional Staffing.How they respond and what they decide to share with you will reveal a lot about how they think and who they are.Ask detailed questions to assess expertise. After youve gotten the candidate to reveal himself or herself, drill down to assess subject-matter expertise and analytical skills with more specific interview questions. You might even bring in a current employee in a similar role to help evaluate her or his prospective peer.Find out what the candidate knows about your small business. Whether from the local newspaper or your web site or public records, theres a lot that a candidate can and therefore should find out about your business before coming to speak with you. Candidates level of knowledge is a good indicator both of their genuine interest in your trade and their research abilities. T ake this opportunity to test them.Pose a question regarding an issue your company has recently confronted.Maybe youve had a customer servicesnafu. Or a human resources issue. Or a cash-flow glitch. Lay out the situation and ask the candidate how they would go about resolving it.Suit the questions to the job and your companys culture. Your small company culture is water, and you are the fish who is so immersed that you cant even see it. But you ignore whats invisible at your peril.Ask two types of questions, says Angelo Kinicki , a professor of management at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.The first type should be behavioral interview questions that assess if the candidate has the knowledge, skills, and competence to do the job. The second kind of question should focus on person-culture fit.Observe their communication style. You may have seen it happen An otherwise competent hire starts work at a small business and a wave of misunderstandings begets a f lut of mishaps. Nows your chance to try to head off such trouble.Have the candidate join a staff discussion, react to a difficult test situation, engage in a discussion on an issue important to the team over a casual lunch, says Bachenheimer. Carefully observe body language, temper, congeniality and other traits not just oral communications.Keep the interview legal. While youre doing all this productive probing, take care to keep the discussion professional at all times. If a question feels too personal and intrusive, it probably is, says Broder, who is an attorney.To ensure you dont expose yourself to legal liability, stick to questions that pertain only to the candidates job history, experience, education and skills. Many ill-advised hiring managers ask about how the candidates home life will affect availability for work this can be illegal as well as unethical. Inform yourself and be sure you follow a legal hiring process.