How to interview applicants.
If you’re going to be looking for any employees, one of the most important things to consider is how to interview applicants. There are a few things that you should always make sure that you do – and interviews are vitally important. In fact, while you can always find out what your potential employee’s work history is from his or her resume, you’re going to need an interview in order to determine what his or her personality is like. And, let’s face it, when it comes to whether or not you’ll be able to easily train or work with a person, personality is important.
The first thing you should do before you go to interview an applicant is to sit down (either alone, or with the other people who help you run your business) and determine which traits are important to you in an employee. This list will give you guidelines as to what you should try to find out, and it will help you to focus on finding out what you want to know while you interview.
The next thing that you should do is that you should try and formulate a few questions that you need to ask everybody. You should also make sure that you have time to ask additional questions if you are interviewing somebody who sounds good at first.
When it comes time to give the interview, you should make sure that it is being given in the best situation possible for you, and for the applicant. For instance, while you can either give the interview in a public place (over coffee, or dinner), or in a private place, like your office, you should always make sure that the applicant is as relaxed as possible. The more relaxed that the applicant is, the more likely it is that you’ll get the responses you need to get.
Finally, you should make sure that your questions are about things that give you a pretty good idea of what your applicant is like. For instance, you might ask why he or she is applying for the position, or what he or she thought about previous employers. Discovering why the applicant left his or her previous job is a good way to determine how he or she will probably function in your company.
Overall, however, just make sure that you are asking questions you actually care about.