Hiring new employess-pre interveiw questions

[jbrenn77]

That’s a good question. I ahve a pre-interview questionnaire but it doesn’t address anger issues or personality issues. It mainly identifies specific characteristics that would tell me whether I think the person would be a good employee or not. Personality is usually figured out after the 3rd or 4th week, anybody can put on a show for awhile.

[David]

There are plenty of personality tests for free or a small fee and directions to analyze the results. These can be given @ some point during the interview process. Also, very important to take a hard look and try to identify the “culture” of your shop. Many owners, including myself have seen their shop through only their eyes. Perhaps exit interviews, trusted clients ect can help you determine this culture and look for traits in the next employee that fall into step with that.

[Tom Piippo]

I use this as a resource when developing an interview. http://www.jobinterviewquestions.org/questions/general-questions.asp

Sometimes I miss the boat when the candidate gives all the right answers, and I realize (too late) I didn’t ask the right questions… such as “do you posess reading comprehension skills?” or even more basically “do you read at a 6th grade level or above?” Just don’t be afraid to cut ’em loose after 3 weeks if you see bad traits coming out.

[mkleiman]

Tim:

This is a great question since the most important decision you make

every day is who you allow in the door to help you run your business.

It is a sorry case but most small business owners have never had any

training in how to hire employees. I will give you a couple of

suggestion

1. The biggest mistake is not knowing what you are looking to hire.

Are you going to train them are do you want them already trained?

What kind of people to you and the rest of the people in your shop

work well with? What kind of attitude do you want the person to have?

How smart do they need to be.

2. Next I would interview for tech skills and ablity to just do the

job. This is a lot easier than trying to find out the soft stuff like

fit, attitude and personality.

3. Build a structure set of questions.

4. Make sure and test for both skills, personality, and attitude.

Remember all a test is, is another interview of the applicant.

5. Make sure and check references

Hope this helps.

If you want more you can go to http://www.kleimanhr.com and sign up as a

member and get lots of free stuff on hiring.

[shutterspeed]

This is an amazing subject Tim! 

Having the best people you can find on board will make your job easier, cost you less, and make you more money. I wish everyone I talk to in the business was so focused on hiring. 

A few things come to mind when it comes to your issues: 

1) Ask very anecdotal questions. Basically, you want to ask them if they’ve ever been in a certain predicament and then ask them how they dealt with the issue. For example: “Have you ever had a problem with another salesperson at a past job? If so, how did you handle it?”

2) Do some proper reference checking. The candidate will undoubtedly write down some references on his/her resume – while these people can give you a baseline of information they might not give you the whole story. If they have LinkedIn, take a look at who they have as connections and reach out to them about your candidate. 

3) There are some amazing psychometric assessments out there whose sole purpose is to check for skill, personality, and culture fit within your company. In essence, it does 90% of the work for you. 

[franklmn]

Before I
interview any potential employees I find it most helpful to look for them on
Facebook. Example; I was looking to hire an experienced salesman and thought found one, however when finding
him on facebook I noticed he posted a picture where he pulled over to watch a
small shopping center on fire with firemen putting the flames out, well his quote
to the picture was “burn MF burn”! Needless to say he never got the
chance for an interview. Facebook can be a powerful tool to find personality
issues.

[mrisich]

I always ask
if they play/played team sports. If they answer yes I was on the tennis team, I
find out if they played singles or doubles.

In our
business it is so important that we work together and communicate with one
another!

 

[Tom]

We have a set of questions that we mostly came up with on our own. Most are not designed to get specific factual answers as much as to get the person to talk about that subject. Bring up a topic and let them talk until there is a long silence. It’s amazing what people will say. 

As far as a list of questions goes….what do YOU want to know about them. As them that.