How to Interview Potential Employees

Whenever you are interviewing candidates to fill a vacancy in your business you want to do all that you can to ensure that the candidate you hire is the best one for the job. You want individuals who are dedicated, hard working, and will fit in with the other members of your team. In order to attract the right candidates to apply for a position in your company, you will have to carefully consider how to structure and formulate the initial job listing. You will then have to devise an interview strategy which allows you to properly assess candidates suitability.

The interview itself is the most important part of the entire process, it is here that you will first come face to face with potential candidates and will be able to make your most detailed assessment of their suitability. We have put together a brief guide designed to help you in making the right choice when interviewing potential candidates for a role in your business.

Selecting Candidates

Before you can interview any potential candidates, you must first entice them into applying for the position to begin with. To this end you should make sure that you take the time necessary to put together an inviting job listing. Make sure that the job listing includes all the key information that candidates will want to know. Remember, you want to do all that you can to ensure that those that apply for the job are going to be the best candidates possible.

Your job listing should really sell the position to readers, but without making overblown and superfluous promises. You should display confidence in both you and your business while making sure that you don’t promise more than you can ever hope to deliver.

The Application Process

It is always a good idea to have candidates go through an application process before arranging any kind of formal interview. This will give you a way of screening candidates and making sure that you only interview those who seem the most promising and best suited. The easiest way of achieving this is to have candidates fill in an application form; using this form you can request specific pieces of information and are therefore able to better tailor the pool of candidates that you call in for an interview.

Check out this example of a KFC job application for inspiration.

The Interview

In preparation for the interview itself, you should make sure that you take the time to work out exactly what it is that you are looking for in the candidates and what criteria you will use to assess their suitability for your business. You should try and keep things as natural and conversation-like as possible, but at the same time it is wise to have a prepared list of questions to ask each candidate. By asking them the same questions it will make it easier to compare them directly.

Interviewing candidates isn’t rocket science, but it is also very easy to get it wrong if you don’t take the time to prepare. This can result in you hiring someone who is unsuitable to work in your company and create numerous problems down the road.