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April 28, 2005

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SO YOU'RE LOOKING TO HIRE a new employee for your small business. How do you separate the disasters from the superstars?

You interview them — carefully.

Conducting a thorough interview that gives you a sense of whether a candidate will thrive in your workplace involves a lot more than just a walkthrough of his or her resume. You need to have a firm sense of the qualities you're looking for and you need to search for those qualities by asking the right questions.

Here are six tips on how to conduct a revealing (and perfectly legal) interview.

1. Before the Interview, Do a Quick Self-Assessment

Are you running a laid-back, family-friendly business with steady revenue? A fast-paced, tumultuous start-up where employees frequently work 12-hour days? Finding an employee who can flourish in your particular business environment might be more important than finding someone whose skills perfectly match the ones you're looking for, says Fran McCormack, managing director of the Charles Sterling Group, a Boston-based executive-search firm.

Once you have a clear sense of the kind of atmosphere and values you want to promote, craft your interview questions accordingly. You might kick off the interview by asking the candidate to describe the work environment he or she is used to as well as what he or she believes would be ideal.

Be careful not to give away too much, too early, says Brian Porter, also a managing director at the Charles Sterling Group. Business owners often begin interviews by describing their company in detail, and then ask the candidate if that sounds good to them. The candidate is, of course, likely to say yes. McCormack suggests flipping the order, asking a candidate to first describe what he or she knows about your company or your industry. "That's a good way to know whether they're really interested in you, or whether they're just looking for a job," he says.

2. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Rather than asking a candidate "Are you a team player?", ask him to give an example of a time he worked with others to pull off a big project. Instead of asking the interviewee whether she got along well with her former boss, ask her to describe a conflict with the boss and how she dealt with it.

Open-ended questions, as opposed to those that prompt "yes" or "no" answers, can induce people to reveal amazing amounts of information about themselves, says Hussam Hamadeh, the co-founder of Vault.com, a New York-based career-information company. Try tossing out a question like, "What did you think of your last employer?" or "What were the people like at your last job?" Remember, in an interview you're hoping to get some information that the candidate hadn't planned on revealing, and you'd be surprised how much bad-mouthing he or she will do. "If the person is angry or bitter at their last employer, that can be a red flag to you," says Hamadeh.

Some of the following interview questions are good, some are bad, and the rest are just plain weird.

Another good strategy is to keep quiet, says Carole Martin, a veteran hiring manager who runs a consulting business and teaches courses at UC Berkeley. "People don't like silence," she says. "If you're quiet, the candidate may fill the silence with words." Jeffrey Maron, the president of Stone Services, an 18-employee spray-painting company in New York, says he tries to let job candidates speak for at least three quarters of an interview. Candidates tend to confess more and more as they ramble on, and so this strategy helps Maron learn who might be a good fit and who he can eliminate.

3. Down to a Few? Have Them Jump Through Hoops

An easy way to narrow your candidate pool is to ask each person to do exactly what will be demanded on the job, only in front of you. If you're hiring an IT person, give her some sample IT glitches to work out. Give designers a short design task or have an instructor teach you a class. Vault.com's Hamadeh says he's found employers who will test a candidate's selling abilities by giving them a random product, like a mug, and asking them to make a sales pitch on the spot. "Why find out that they can't do something on the first day of the job?" he asks.

 

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