How to Interview a Candidate for your Job Opening

1. Remember this is not a social event. This person is not your friend.

2. Remove your ego from the equation. Be genuine.

3. Especially in this economy, do not assume the unemployed person you are interviewing is second class. In fact, don’t treat anyone like they are second class.

4. Start with a plan. Write down the important questions you need answered and ask them. If you need to make a check list of your questions do it and then check them off as they are answered.

5. If they don’t answer directly ask the question again in a different way. Candidates are trying to avoid difficult questions as much as possible. They like to talk around things. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get a real answer out of them. Yes, this speaks to their character.
6. Take notes – write all over their resume.

7. Be real about your needs and wants. Understand the job you are hiring for.

8. Listen. Quit talking so much. Ask your questions and wait for an answer. Stop the chatter.

9. If you don’t like the person at all be gracious and kind when you exit the interview. That person could know the perfect person for your job and will refer them – if you are cordial to them.

10. If you think the person is fantastic don’t over sell the job or the company – again, be real.

No one will call me back!

I am hearing a lot these days, “No one will call me back.” The internet has become the go-to place for recruiting and hiring. The net is great, it makes things easy, but the “people" part sometimes gets forgotten. It’s easy to avoid people with email. So while you are searching for a job – pick up the phone and follow up. Yes, email is great but we are finding that those who spend more time on the phone creating relationships with people are finding jobs faster. 

Pick up the phone and use those great communication skills you've developed over the years.

Friends who need help.

Juggling time is such the dilemma these days at work. What to do? We have recruiting work we need to get done but we also have friends of the firm who need help. These friends have given us business in the past but are out of work now. So, I've been doing a lot of career/life counseling which I enjoy, but we have clients who need our help and I hate to say it but, our clients pay the bills. So my dilemma is how do I split my time?

I think managing my time has always been a problem –well, it has been for me, but when people need assistance with their lives it truly is a dilemma. We have people in crisis. How do you say, “I can’t talk to you now" to people in crisis? You don’t. So I guess why I’m writing this is if you friends of the firm call us for help, we’ll help but just remember, we also have work to do so - be patient – we might not be able to call you right back but we will call you back. We do remember the people who help us out, we do remember who is loyal to us – just be patient.

In the Moment

OK so I'm sitting at home the other day trying to schedule a working lunch meeting with my three year old kid on my lap. I scheduled an overnight meeting - 24 hours. Task master that I can be, that was ridiculous! Very funny though. Good thing my business partner knew me well enough to laugh. So, my work is creeping into home and vice versa. Why am I talking about this?

I just read a hilarious article from Chris Erskine called "The Tricks of 6". It's all about how 6 year olds are in the moment. To quote his article, "All hat and no horse.", but in the moment, I think more people need to be in the moment. So when I'm at home I need to pay attention to the 3 year old on my lap - put down the computer Heidi -- and when I'm at work I need to only check Face Book - OK, maybe twice a day? Let's all try to occasionally quit multi-tasking and be in the moment. We might actually get a bit more done.

Stop Paying for Bad Resumes

Please quit paying thousands of dollars for bad resumes!

We have had too many people coming to us with a bad resume they have paid thousands of dollars for. It's frustrating and infuriating to see good people taken on a cheap ride. Most of these people are unemployed and I think are having their fears preyed on.

If you need resume tips, go through this blog. I have lots of resume writing tips here 
(Resume Writing Tips). If you are totally stuck, phone us, and we’ll help. Don’t spend your mortgage, car payment, or a month of groceries on a bad resume.

Bad Attitudes Don't Sell

Recently we've had a few candidates come in to meet with us with such doom and gloom attitudes. Maybe they are letting down their guard with their old recruiter friends but seriously, bad attitudes don’t sell.

No matter how awful your day, week, year has been, most people prefer their potential employees – leaders of their company -- to have a positive outlook. I’m not saying you can’t gripe every now and then. Life would not be fun without a few sarcastic comments, like the old saying goes, “If you've got something nasty to say come sit by me.” 

But in an interview, please keep the snarky attitude to yourself.

Adding to Your Team

Create an accurate and detailed job description. The number one difficult thing about a search is when the hiring manager has no idea what they want. If you don’t quite know what you need ask around, talk to your employees. They typically know exactly what you need and what you don’t need. Open up those lines of communication.

Think about the intangibles -- the person’s personality. Develop and idea of who would work best on your team. If you have too many introverts who never speak up, maybe you find yourself an extrovert. Make sure you round out your team.

Use your network to find your ideal candidate. Yes, email all your friends and ask who they know. If that doesn’t work then call us. We’ll start using our network.

Conduct an in-depth interview. Make sure you get all your questions answered. Going off the cuff works when you interview all the time (like us) but if you don’t interview often make sure you cover the essentials. Over here we start out new recruiters with an interview cheat sheet. Bring your interview cheat sheet into the interview in case you forget what you need to ask.

Background checks tell all. Make sure you run one on the final candidate. We’ve a had lots of skeletons come out of the closet with a detailed background check.