Interviewing candidates for a role is an extremely important part of the screening process and one that you should thoroughly prepare for. There is a tendency in interview to assume that the employer has all the power and that it’s a one sided interrogation. Good people are in demand and they are interviewing you as much as you are assessing them. Always assume the candidate sitting in front of you has just arrived from an interview with your competitor or with a major organization with a CBD address, views across the city and excellent benefits and future prospects. The interview isn’t just an opportunity for the candidate to sell themselves- you, as their prospective employer need to sell your story too. Talk to them like you’d talk to a bank manager or investor. Sell them on your dream but keep it simple. Smart people will make the right decision as long as they believe they have all of the information. Over the years I have learned ten important lessons about recruitment.

Lesson 1: An advertisement on a job board or in a newspaper will not produce a raft of suitable candidates quickly.

The first stage of recruitment is letting people know that you are searching for staff. Job boards and newspapers provide an obvious place to advertise the position. However you must realise that there is a lot of competition for the right skills and when it comes to providing employment, small businesses are not only competing amongst themselves but also with the big end of town.

Your job advertisement might produce twenty or more candidates. The mistake many business owners make is assuming that a suitable candidate will be in that 20. Or they simply decide that one of these people is going to be working for them even before they’ve read a single resume. This is a recipe for disaster and you must accept that it might take a number of rounds of advertising and a number of months to find the right person. Hiring the ‘best of a bad lot’ will get predictably poor results. I often went through five, ten or even fifteen interviews without hiring. While this is very time consuming, the consequences are much more attractive than making a recruitment mistake.

Lesson 2: Interviews are more effective if they are standardised.

Imagine a business owner that conducts two interviews for a role he urgently needs filled. The first candidate comes in wearing a tie that makes the interviewer think of a high school teacher that he disliked. The second candidate reminds him of a high school sweetheart that he still thinks about from time to time. Will both people be asked the same questions? Is the decision to hire likely to be based on skills appropriate to the role?

This is what is called ‘bias creep’ and it can be your worst enemy when it comes to recruiting. The best interviews are based on the skills and competencies required for the role and the best interviewers are those that leave their bias at the door. Although it takes time to develop a structured interview, you are going to need it more than once. It is therefore a good investment of your time and stops you having to reinvent the wheel every time you sit down with someone. Structured interviews mean that every person that applies for the role is asked the same set of questions. This allows you to more accurately compare the merits of each candidate.

The primary goal is always to ensure that the candidate has the necessary skills and experience to perform well in the role once the appropriate training has been provided. The other element of a successful placement is cultural fit. This can be assessed through less structured personal discussion toward the end of the interview or at the second interview stage. Skills and experience are not the only elements to a good fit – having someone that interacts well with others and gels with your corporate identity and vision is also important.

Lesson 3: Not everything written in a resume is true.

Although it is universally accepted that many candidates embellish their skills on their resume I was surprised to discover that some tell straight out lies. They exaggerate their past responsibilities and results and make light of their flaws. As a potential employer, it’s up to you to find out what is true and what is stretching the boundaries of reality. In the past, a lot of emphasis was placed on the reference but this is not always reliable. Most employers are reluctant to provide a reference and if they do it is rarely negative. No candidate in their right mind is going to give the name of someone that doesn’t like them! Plus if an employer wants rid of someone what is to stop them giving a glowing reference? Or conversely if they want to keep that person what is to stop them dropping a few flaws into the conversation to dampen the interest?

The best and perhaps only way to assess someone’s strengths is to ask them pertinent well thought out questions that will highlight their level of skill and understanding.

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