Improve your company’s chances of making the right hire by using the proper hiring procedure.

By Peter B. Terenzio

Hiring the right employee the first time not only saves you time and money but will enhance the overall success of your business. The wrong hire will certainly cost you time and money, but could also cost you customers, reduce productivity, or worse, damage employee morale. While hiring the right employee will never be an exact science, implementing an interviewing and hiring process will go a long way towards ensuring that the new employee you hire will not only have the skill and attitude to do the job you need done, but will also fit into your company’s culture and work well with your other employees and your customers. There are 12 key steps to a successful interviewing and hiring process:

Step #1
Prepare a list of the responsibilities and skills the job requires. This list of responsibilities should include all the duties, tasks, skills and schedule requirements which encompass the job being filled. The list should include any required past work experience or professional certifications required in the position. Finally, and as importantly, you need to identify and list those attitude and personality elements of the job that will be important to you, your other employees and your customers.

Here is an example of a list of responsibilities for an in-house customer service representative who will be interacting with customers over the phone:

• Full-time position Monday through Friday (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.), some Saturdays required in season
• Ability to work overtime
• Computer skills (strong keyboard skills), knowledge of Microsoft Word and Excel, ability to talk on the phone and type in orders, requests, etc.
• Writing skills
• Pleasant, professional telephone skills (to be assessed)
• Basic math skills (to be assessed)
• Bilingual in Spanish a plus
• Past customer service experience, particularly in a home service company
• Demonstrates a positive attitude toward customers and solving problems
• Demonstrates an ability to work with others and be a team player
• Flexible, able to handle several tasks at the same time, willing to help in the stock room or other assigned duties when phones are slow
• Demonstrates an interest in the business and willingness to learn
• Reliable

This list now serves as your guide for filling the open job. You will use the list to develop the questions to be used during the next phase of the process. Also, this list of duties, required skills and experience will help you compose the ad you will use to solicit applicants for the job.

Step #2
Prepare the standard list of questions you will use for both the initial phone screening and the first in-person interview. Based on your list of responsibilities and duties, prepare a list of questions you will use for an initial phone screening and first interview. You should use the same list of questions for every candidate. These questions should be direct and open-ended and should cover the skills, duties and behaviors required in the job.

Open-ended questions are the most effective means to elicit the information you need to judge job candidates. Closed-ended questions (those that can be answered with only a “yes” or “no” response) can lead you to an uninformed conclusion about the candidate’s skills or attitude about the area in question. For example, a poor question on customer service is: “Do you have good customer service skills?” A more effective question regarding customer service would be: “Can you give me some examples of how you went above and beyond in providing outstanding customer service to a customer?” In the first question, the candidate can give you a simple “yes” or “no” answer and you will have to accept their word on the matter. However, the second question forces the candidate to go into detail and give you specific examples. In this case, if the candidate is unable to cite solid examples, he or she is most likely not the right candidate for the job.

Always include in your list of questions: “What attracts you to this position?” and “Why are you open to a job change at this time?” These two questions help you assess the candidate’s motivation and their degree of interest in the position. You should be able to sense the level of excitement and enthusiasm of the candidates— thus indicating better potential candidates for the position.

Step #3
Conduct a screening interview over the phone. Using three or four set questions, conduct an initial phone screening interview with each candidate you deem may be a good possibility for the position. Again, these should be the same questions for each candidate. These questions should be basic but key to the job. Good screening questions may ask about a particular skill set that is essential for the job, about compensation expectations, and about the candidate’s ability to meet the schedule for the position. A quick phone screening eliminates candidates who don’t meet the basic requirements of the position, can’t meet the required schedule, or want more compensation than you are able to offer. This will save you time in the hiring process because in a few short minutes you can ascertain the candidate’s basic fit and reserve your time and energy for in-person interviews with candidates that meet the basic job specifications. This phone screening interview has an additional benefit for any position requiring telephone skills because you can determine how professional the person will sound over the phone to your customers, vendors and other business contacts.

Step #4
Review the candidate’s resume in detail prior to the first in person interview. During this review, focus on the number of jobs the candidate has held and what the tenure of each of those jobs has been. Also assess how each of those jobs may apply to the position you are looking to fill. Of greatest importance is to identify any date gaps in the candidate’s resume. If the person didn’t work between 2003 and 2004, you need to ask about the gap. You should also always question why the person left past positions. Both these areas of inquiry will give you insight into the candidate’s work attitudes, dedication and reliability. Don’t be overly optimistic. If someone is changing jobs frequently, what makes you think your position will be different? And if every job change was because they couldn’t get along with their boss, what makes you think the candidate will like their next supervisor? Set aside time to do this review before meeting the candidate; it should not take place 5 minutes before the interview or in front of the candidate.

Step #5
Test for skills. When possible, it is important to incorporate some assessment of key skill requirements into the interviewing process. Whether the skill is a candidate’s knowledge of how to use a particular piece of software or of how to operate a forklift truck or a jackhammer, make arrangements that allow you to observe the skill being performed by the candidate. If the job requires writing, set up a scenario in your place of business to check their ability to produce a well written document that fits your needs. Be creative and be sure to observe the skill performed in person.

Step #6
Approach the interview as if this is the candidate’s first job assignment. It is important that you have this mindset when evaluating the job applicant’s candidacy. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Was the candidate on time for the interview?
• Was the candidate’s dress and grooming appropriate for the position?
• Was the candidate enthusiastic and prepared for the interview? Did he or she ask good questions?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, look out! If a potential employee is not on time, unenthusiastic and doesn’t display a strong interest in the position during the interview, what makes you think he or she will do so as an employee when taking care of your customers?

Step #7
Set the stage for the interview. To receive open and honest responses to your questions as well as be able to evaluate the candidate’s responses accurately, it is important to set the right environment. First, interview in a place where you will not be interrupted and can focus only on the interview. If your place of business won’t work, then improvise— use a hotel lobby or a coffee shop. Start the interview by telling the candidate, “I need you to be open and honest about your responses to my questions and I will do the same so that we can both properly conclude whether or not this job is a good fit for you.” You don’t want to make a mistake by hiring the wrong person or—even worse—let a great candidate go by because you were not focused.

Step #8
Don’t talk too much during the interview: let the candidate do the talking while you do the listening. Most interviewers talk too much during the interview and either end up feeding the right answers to the candidate or don’t find out enough about the candidate. Again, use open-ended questions, ask for examples of their successes or behaviors, and keep your ears open. You will be surprised by what candidates will tell you if you let them.

Step #9
When possible, use multiple interviewers. If at all possible, especially if you are hiring an important position for your firm, use multiple interviewers as part of your process. In this instance, the first interview process will consist of two separate interviews. Each interviewer should have a distinct set of questions to ask with a few duplications to check for consistency of the candidate’s responses. Two views are better than one, and often a second interviewer will discover something positive or negative that the other interviewer missed. If you don’t have an appropriate person in your business, use your accountant, lawyer, business coach or a business colleague you trust.

Step #10
Always see a candidate twice before you think about extending an offer. This is a critical step that should always be followed when you think the candidate could fill your job opening. In many cases, you will have your top candidate/ candidates come back for a second interview, but it should only be individuals you are seriously considering hiring. You may think this is time-consuming, but when making an important decision, you need to reflect on your decision. You need to see the candidate again to validate your earlier impressions. During this interview, you also need to ascertain how the candidate feels about the opportunity. I highly recommend you ask these questions at the start of the second interview: “Now that you have been in for an interview and had a chance to think about this job, what excites you about this opportunity? What concerns you?” If you still feel strongly about the candidate, the second interview is a chance to begin the bonding process and tell the candidate why you think they would fit well in your company.

Step #11
Always check references. Many people feel you can’t get honest references today or that candidates will only give you references who will say great things about them, so checking references is not worth the time and effort. I couldn’t disagree more! A reference list is an important part of the due diligence process in hiring the right employee. If you use the reference process right, you can get some valuable information to confirm your decision. To make references valuable, you need to do the following:

• In almost all cases, the references should be business references only.
• Review the list. Make sure you have titles and know their relationship to the candidate. Try to get at least two former bosses, a peer and, if the candidate was in a supervisory position, someone who worked for them. If a candidate doesn’t list a former boss as a reference, warning bells should go off in your head! If a former supervisor can’t list a former subordinate as a reference, another warning signal should go off in your head.
• Make the call yourself to at least one supervisor; don’t delegate that to someone else in your company or a third-party recruiter. When you talk to the supervisor, first verify the business relationship and time the candidate worked with the individual. Then ask pointed questions to verify the candidate’s skill set. For example, “Did the candidate use Excel often in their position, and what was their level of competency?” Finally, try to ask these two open-ended questions: “What is the best way to manage and motivate this person? What could this person improve on?”

Step #12
You are both a buyer and a seller in the interview process. Remember—always be a buyer first! There are times when you will fall in love with a candidate immediately during the interview process. Resist the urge to short-cut the process. If the individual is the right candidate, then using the process will confirm your first impression. If not, you saved yourself a bad hire. You become a partial seller during the second interview and a complete seller only after you have completed the reference checks.

Interviewing and hiring will never be an exact science. But, if you use a process and stick to it, you will make more solid hires and greatly reduce the chances of making a poor choice that could hurt your business.

Peter B. Terenzio, Jr. (pterenzio@tab-newjersey.com) is the co-founder of L&T Associates, Maximizing Business Results, LLC. L&T Associates specializes in providing management consulting and coaching services to businesses. Prior to forming L&T Associates, Peter spent 25 years as a senior business executive in the fields of human resources, operations and general administration within the manufacturing, home service and retail business sector.