When you pre-screen employees before hiring them, you’re investing time and effort to avoid wasting time and money later on. Every bad hire costs you and your team resources. Here’s how you can use pre-screening to hire right the first time.
Keep interviews simple
Your interviews should get to the heart of what you need quickly. Pay attention to how they handle hard questions, the language they use, and whether or not they shift blame. Here are a few questions you can ask to gain a better understanding of their behaviors and values.
- What’s one time something went wrong at work, and how did you handle it?
- What’s an example of how you demonstrated leadership?
- What was your previous boss like?
- Why did you decide to leave your previous job?
- What steps would you take if a client was unhappy?
Pay attention to skills and qualifications
Careful screening and background checks can save you from headaches and hiring mistakes. However, the most difficult poor candidates to weed out aren’t always obvious. Sometimes, an applicant can seem great to work with, but lack necessary skills for their tasks.
It’s easy to believe that someone you like is inherently good at what they do as well. Fact of the matter is someone could be a great person, but not the best at what they do. Don’t let the charisma of a candidate affect your judgement of their skills and ability to do the job.
Use assessments to gauge fit and capability
Despite the best HR training available, there are some things that are hard to see from resumes, applications, and interviews alone. You need to know how a potential new hire will fit into your team. Will their personalities match the company culture? Will their teamwork skills fit in with the personalities that are already on your team?
Normally, you would need to work with a new hire for a few months to see how they interact and get along with the rest of your team, but if you find out they’re a bad fit after those months, you would have wasted time and money already training them. To avoid this, use assessments like a DISC personality overview to pre-screen employees. If you have your existing team members take the assessment, and ask your potential new hires to as well, you’ll be able to see how they’ll interact and make sure your team is balanced.
What are your tips for pre-screening employees? Share them in the comments below!
About the Author: Jocelyn Pick
