MightyRecruiterIt doesn’t matter whether the economy is in tip-top shape or is recovering from a recession like the one we’ve seen since the end of 2007, finding the right employees for your business is key to your success. One of the major disadvantages you have as a business owner during the recovery is the flood of applicants you should expect to see sending in resumes. Weeding through these documents comes with its own set of guidelines, but what do you do once you cull the best from the stack? You schedule interviews, of course, but instead of conducting an interview with the same tired pattern you have had for years, experiment with something a little new: the job-seeker experience. Your best applicants have probably done their very best homework, so check out how these ways you can use what they are learning about the interview process can help you better narrow down the field.
Decide What Qualities Are Most Important to You
One of the most common pieces of interview advice that applicants’ receive is to put their best and most relevant skills and traits forward first. This is true during the resume-writing process, and it’s true for the interview. Interviewees will be prepared to show off their best and diminish their worst. You will need to determine what skills, traits, and other attributes are absolutely necessary to get the job done correctly, and ask questions about these specifically. You will waste time if you discuss anything less than essential. Choose three or four key areas where your candidates must be proficient. If you think it will be helpful in your industry, come up with special cases. These are traits, skills, knowledge, or training that exceed what is necessary or would be a bonus to your business. These special cases could be traded in if a candidate doesn’t possess a desirable but non-essential attribute. These can include higher degrees, certifications, licenses, transferable clientele, or specialized experience that come out while you’re conducting an interview.
Does Their Personality Match Yours?
Applicants are taught to be strong, concise, and themselves. Honesty is always pushed, but you will always get the best versions of people while conducting an interview. Ask questions that get at the heart of who an individual is in the workplace. Whether you own a car dealership, a private counseling office, or a Fortune 500 company, your business has a personality, a heartbeat, and a way of doing things that won’t fit everyone. To help determine what that personality is, ask yourself these questions: – Must employees work together often? – Is the office laid back or finely tuned? – Is the top priority earning profit or encouraging productivity through incentives? – Are employees allowed creative freedom? Are you laid back and focused on incentivizing? Do you have a structured plan for every project? Once you discover what personality your company has, you will be able to determine if that lone-wolf or group-focused employee will fit in or cause problems in the system later on. Train your questions while you’re conducting an interview to identify personality patterns.
Do They Meet Your Hiring Criteria?
You and the interviewee have probably already prepared for this question: Do this person meet the company’s standards? Education, licensing, training, skills, and traits all come into play here, but don’t get bogged down in all of the non-essentials if that is all an applicant can offer you. Consider how much of an individual must perfectly match what you’ve determined to be important. A good minimum percentage to aim for is 60 percent. It is more likely that you will find someone that will match between 60 and 80 percent of attributes necessary to perform the job well. Don’t ignore transferable skills that may come from seemingly irrelevant places, such as volunteer work, hobbies, or interests.
Validate the Interviewee’s Responses
Chances are you’ve been interviewed before and you know how to turn even your worst attributes into gold. To get at the sometimes heavily buried red flags, you will want to ask questions that can dig. There should be three to seven questions that approach an issue or claim in a different way. You don’t want to be aggressive, but you should be challenging the responses you get for honest answers or any red flags.
Find the Golden Employee
You may interview 10, 50, or more people, which not only takes time away from you but time that could be better spent building up your company. By reading how interviewees are preparing for their first meeting with you before you start conducting an interview, you will save yourself time and make it easier to find that right employee. Check out the tools and other articles on Mighty Recruiter to better your business by hiring top talent.