When you are hiring a new employee, know what kind of person you are looking for. Well conducted interviews should allow you to select the best people for your positions. Take time to do things right. The most time should be spent in preparation and research, but know that doing the work now will save you the trouble of employing a sub par employee in the future. Here is our steps on How to Conduct a Job Interview.

1. Know your rights and responsibilities as an employer. Be aware that employers cannot ask questions about religion, national origin, age, height, weight, marital status, disability, or gender unless they represent indisputable qualifications essential to the operation of the business.

2. Format an application or announce your acceptance of resumes. Consider creating a questionnaire to go along with your application if you have a job that requires specific knowledge or experience.

3. Create a grading rubric to analyze the information you will collect from the interviews. If you are the hiring manager, be ready to utilize your assistant managers in the interview process, especially if they are the ones that will have to train and supervise the newcomer.

4. Post the job opening to as broad an audience as you are willing to sift through.

5. Become familiar with your candidates resumes. Call the best for a face to face interview.

6. Be congenial, but do not spend too much time finding out biographical information. Be open and honest about any research you might do on the prospective employee’s background. Tell them that you will be calling their references if you will be doing so. You might decide to ask candidates in advance if they have anything they would be embarrassed to have an employer see online if you must view candidates personal websites (i.e. MySpace, Facebook.

7. Ask many behavioral questions, including examples of these behaviors in work performance. Ask candidates about the hardest situations they have had to deal with. If you are hiring a supervisor, ask them how they rallied a team to accomplish a hard goal. If you are hiring a sales representative, ask them how they dealt with an angry customer.

8. Be consistent throughout all of the interviews. Ask the same questions in the same tone of voice. Be ready to use the knowledge that you have so carefully gathered quickly. Get your new employee on the job as soon as possible, but make a careful analytical assessment beforehand.

Do not judge anyone too quickly and utilize your associate’s judgments to buttress your decision making. May the next job interview that you conduct be a successful one because of these guidelines on How to Conduct a Job Interview.

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