If you haven’t read part 1, read it here.
When I made my horrible bad hire that made national news, I immediately started reading every hiring book I could get my hands on. I needed help! I needed guidance on how to hire people so that I could run my restaurant. It was completely daunting. Almost every book that I read had a list of questions at the end. One book Hiring the Best by Martin Yate had a list of over 400 questions.
Who has time for 400 questions???
What I have found after interviewing almost 20,000 people in my career is that the questions are less important than the structure of the interview.
Here are 5 tips that are more important than the actual questions:
1) Put a list of 8-10 questions together and ask the same questions in the same order to every single candidate. The analysis is so much easier when you don’t have to question your questions.
2) Ask the question. Listen to the answer. Ask the question. Listen to the answer. An interview is not a back and forth. Your answers to the questions don’t matter, so let the candidate say their answers.
3) Interview in a group. This protects you all from any liability, and you will hear things that your counterpart won’t and vice versa.
4) Limit your list of questions to no more than 15 per interview. I find that after awhile, the candidate gets tired (and so do you). If you have more questions, schedule another interview.
5) And finally, if you are talking, then you aren’t listening. There is a reason that you have 1 mouth and 2 ears. And if you find yourself talking too much, see tip #2.Interviewing a candidate is hard work. It is even harder when you are making up questions as you go along. When you have some structure and consistency in your questions, it becomes way simpler to focus on your candidate.
My clients regularly tell me that just listening helps them make better hiring decisions. And isn’t that what we all want? Don’t forget, if you don’t have the time, energy, or bandwidth to hire yourself, A-list Interviews is here to help.
POWER THOUGHT: Avoid questioning your questions. Put a list together and use it in every interview.