Successful Job Interview Questions
When interviewing candidates for employment there are a few job interview questions and techniques that are vital to remember. This article looks at how to interview to get the very best employees. Your goal is to hire the best, those with great character. If you do, employee retention won’t be a problem.
A Purpose Behind Your Job Interview
Character and attitude should be the first traits you seek in a new employee and specific job skills second. This will never happen unless you are prepared to interview knowing which character traits are a must for your business. With this you will be able to select interview questions that give you useful information.
How to Interview to Get the Best
A job interview that succeeds gives both the employer and employee vital information. It is a win-win situation for both parties. The job interview questions must elicit the character and skills information you need and the proposed employee must learn about you, your company, and their future fellow employees. The candidate at the job interview needs to get information they need, to learn if this job is for them. Don’t waste the time money that constant hiring and firing entails, rather improve employee retention by learning how to interview better.
It is important when hiring employees to communicate well not only what the job involves but also what the culture of your business is, what the key character traits are, and walk them through an average day. They need to have a complete understanding of what your business is about.
Interviewing employees and knowing how to interview well is a skill and an art. One of the failures many employers make is simply going through their job interview questions and never helping the candidate to learn about the culture of the business. It has to work for both of you.
Get Your Employees Involved!
The job candidate should always interview with at least one of your current employees, not just you. This will help them to determine if the job will fit them. Spending time with a existing employee and learning about your business culture is invaluable to them. They’ll ask questions to their future co-worker that they would never ask you. Don’t hire someone who won’t fit with your business culture. It wastes both your their time and yours.
Measure Twice!
Here is a great job interview tip. Take the advice of the carpenter! You know the old carpenter’s adage: measure twice, cut once. This works when recruiting employees too. Interview twice, hire once!
You must give a second interview to any candidate with potential. Never make a hiring decision at the first interview. Generally interviews make people nervous. Sometimes a person might do very well at a first interview but another well qualified person may not. That second job interview might just give you the insight you need to understand the person.
Interviewing employees more than once helps them to get comfortable and gives you a better picture of who they really are. After that second interview you will have a better idea of who the best candidate is.
Remember to get another employee involved in the first job interview. The potential employee will have a better picture of your business when they come for the second job interview. They will have thought of other questions that will give you more insight as to their character and ability. The give and take of job interview questions will give a better result for both of you.
Remember though, no matter how good of a job interview you do, you won’t really know how it works out until the person is on the job working with you.
I remember an employee we hired years ago. Three different people interviewed the candidate and she seemed like an outstanding choice. Her first day on the job shocked us all. It was like we must have interviewed her twin sister because the person who showed up for work was nothing like the one we interviewed!
The lesson: some people handle job interview questions well and some don’t. Try talking to prior employers of the candidate. It’s a great way to gain insights and to avoid unpleasant surprises. Take the time and do it right. Interviewing employees is as much an art as a skill.
