Not all job interviews are created equal. If you’ve done this a time or two, you may have noticed that a good interview doesn’t necessarily equal a good employee. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, I won’t lie to you.
Here are five tips to help you shape your interviews in a way that better predicts future job success.
- Search for people with values that align with yours / your company’s. This is an excellent predictor of future job success. About half of your interview questions should be values-based or have a values component.
- The rest of your questions need to tell you with a reasonable level of certainty whether or not they have the knowledge, skills, ability, and experience necessary to do this job.
- When possible, use situational questions — “what would you do if…” instead of “tell me about a time when.” These forecast future success better and give you a chance to see how they think and problem-solve on the spot.
- No close-ended questions. Yes/no, multiple choice, or true/false are useless.
- Try to fit in a work sample that applies to the job — sell me this apple, write a manual on how to use this gadget, edit this document. Feel free to have current employees review and rate these work samples (blind, no names or identifiers).
Happy interviewing, my small business owner friends. Call me if you need help crafting good questions.
— Rachelle
