How to Interview a Potential Employee

Interviewing skills are important, because you need to be sure to ask the right questions, but not ask any questions you should not, by law, ask. There is a fine line between what is an acceptable question to gain useful information for making a decision and asking inappropriate questions that might even lead to a lawsuit. Additionally, you want to make sure you get enough information to make an informed decision about who is best to hire for the job, and you have a very limited amount of time to determine this.

Because of this, you need to get all the preliminary stuff out of the way either prior to or immediately after the interview. If you have an application or a resume from the potential candidate, you have a wealth of information from which to start.

Call and check references, ask questions that pertain to the information given on the resume. Doing reference checks prior to an interview might actually help you decide if you even want to waste your time interviewing the candidate, or it might give you a good set of questions to ask during the interview.

Make a list of questions you want to ask the potential candidates, and stick to the list and ask the same questions of all candidates. This is the only way you can compare and contrast the same qualities in each candidate. If you ask different questions of every applicant, you can’t compare their answers and determine who satisfies the requirements best. That doesn’t mean you can’t deviate from the list if the candidate answers a question that leads you to wanting additional information, but it’s important to ask all candidates at least the same base questions.

Interview questions should focus mostly on the candidate's ability to perform the job duties required of them should you hire them for the position. Secondly, you can focus on education and experience from the past to help determine if they are qualified to fulfill those duties. And lastly, you will want references or information about work ethic, responsibility, and performance by using their past work history as a guide.