The Art of the Interview - Part 2 of 4 on Hiring
Practical Tips for Small Business Owners
Finding and hiring the right people is not a skill or class taught in business school or entrepreneurship courses, although it is an incredibly important one for small business owners to know. Perhaps this is because performing a hiring interview is both an art and a science, as no two interviews will be the same.
Below we will go through some practical tips for small business owners to learn and understand how to give effective and informative interviews. Following these tips will help you find and identify job applicants who are a good fit for your company.
Prepare thoroughly for each interview
A good interview should feel more like a conversation than an interrogation, meaning that it should be lighthearted and friendly. Your job applicant will likely be nervous, even if they don’t show it outwardly, so setting a friendly tone from the outset will help them feel more at ease and allow their true personality to shine.
That being said, it is also imperative that an employer or hiring manager walk into the interview from a position of being informed about the candidate, which requires thorough preparation. You shouldn’t use this information to fire off questions (which will make them even more nervous) but to develop a better picture of the candidate based on the information you’ve learned.
Using a friendly tone to ask questions about any elements that may not match between a candidate’s resume and interview responses can help to identify the nature of any discrepancies. If a candidate was deceptive or outright untruthful on their resume and/or job application, a well-run interview should be able to flush out those discrepancies without allowing them to realize that you are on to anything.
To do so, however, the interviewer has to be thoroughly prepared for the interview.
Use behavior-based interview questions
Behavior-based interview questions allow applicants to describe things in their own words rather than giving simple “yes or no” answers. This also allows the interviewer to see how they “think on their feet” and respond, especially to questions that may not necessarily be expected.
These types of questions are especially important for positions that may interact with people outside of the company (sales, customer service, etc) or in a team environment internally. Some good examples of behavior-based questions for job interviews are:
Listen more than you talk
Small business owners and hiring managers shouldn’t try to be Jason Bourne, but there are some elements of spycraft and that shadowy world that should be used in the art of the interview. Notably, both superspies and good hiring practitioners should focus more on listening than on talking while conducting an interview.
Here’s why:
First, the interview isn’t about you, and nearly all of the focus should be on determining whether the person sitting in front of you will make a valuable addition to your team.
Second, there is also a lot that can be gleaned by things that aren’t spoken, yet are still important indicators in and of themselves. Is the person overly fidgety, anxious, nervous, or perspiring? Is that an appropriate level of nervousness given the situation and experience level of the applicant, or an indicator of something else?
Are they put together or disheveled? If they are male, are their nails trimmed well? We all know about paying attention to the care that someone puts into their shoes, but how well do their clothes match? Looking at how much care and attention they put into meeting a potential employer may tell you a lot about how much care they will put into their performance.
The more time you spend talking during an interview, the less time you have to assess both the spoken and unspoken things that the candidate may be telling or showing you about themselves.
Assess cultural fit as well as skills
A resume can tell you a lot about an applicant’s experience and education, but they don’t really tell you much about how well they will fit into your company culture. Some companies put an inordinate amount of time and effort into ensuring that potential employees are a good fit and that they will work well with the current team. This can be wise for a small-team environment or a company that puts a lot of focus on its team dynamics.
Asking questions about their life, interests, and goals that aren’t on a resume may help to develop a full picture of the applicant that can help you understand if they are a good fit. It may also be a wise move to take them around the workplace so they can meet other potential team members. This will allow you to watch how they interact or how they react in unexpected situations.
Involve team members in the interview process
Involving team members in the interview process can help to gauge potential culture fit, as outlined above, but it can offer other benefits as well. Depending on the size of your company, there is a good chance that there are some day-to-day requirements that team members doing the work will have a more comprehensive understanding of than the person doing the interviewing.
While you may be viewing the potential candidate through the lens of a hiring manager, the people doing the work will see them as a potential team member. Including other members of your company or team will allow them to make their assessments of a candidate, and those assessments should be considered valuable in the overall decision.
Remember that an interview should be conducted in a friendly and light-hearted environment so that you get to see a true picture of the candidate. Care should be taken to ensure that placement, situation, questions asked, and the overall tone should be welcoming and friendly rather than intimidating.
This can be done by taking the candidate on a walk to where the work is done to meet other team members, or you may bring others in to join you for the interview in an office setting. This can be used to add specifics or perspective on what the job entails and also allows the team members to get a feel for each candidate as well.
After all, they will be the ones working directly with them.
Conduct multiple interviews for key positions
Interviews should be conducted in as timely a manner as possible, but key positions should only be awarded after multiple interviews. These can be done in different settings or environments, or with different interviewers, but a comprehensive understanding of a potential key employee needs to be established before an offer is tendered.
A small business can feel far more like a family or team than medium or large-sized firms, which makes understanding how well the candidate fits into your culture important. Even if they are the right person for the job, if they aren’t a good fit for your company culture it may be a wrong choice.
Some business owners will have final interviews with potential key employees in non-work environments to gauge how they interact outside of the workplace. Golf courses and games used to be the “go-to” for these types of scenarios, but that is falling more out of practice with the changing social dynamics.
Finding a non-standard environment may often help to show more aspects of the candidate than the office would, so take the time to meet with potential key employees in multiple settings to get a fuller picture of their personality and fit.
Closing
If hiring the best talent is important to you, an interview is your first opportunity to see applicants as a person beyond their resume. There is no “one size fits all” approach to interviews, but the strategies shared in this article can help the hiring process be more productive. Follow these strategies to use that time wisely and make the most informed hiring decisions possible.
