How to Hire the Best Employees

By Ward Morrison

The success of your company not only relies on your insightful strategy, superior product, and favorable financial results, it also (and far more substantially) depends on the caliber of people who are working toward that very success. 

While that sentiment is widely agreed upon amongst business owners, hiring great people can be difficult. How do you weed out the “professional interviewers” who fall short on the job? How do you select individuals who will support the health of your office culture? And most importantly, how do you identify the potential employees with exceptional work ethic?

Learning how to hire the best employees is both an art and a science that I have honed over the years and though I continually fine-tune my interviewing approach, there are several techniques that have proven effective time and time again:

Referral Programs

With hiring websites and online recruiters becoming more prominent, talent pools can become overwhelming.  Not only are resume piles growing but potential hires are mindlessly applying to countless jobs daily. Do yourself a favor and enact a referral program at your company. By rewarding current employees for successful hires, you’re reducing your interviewing workload and upping the chance that your new employee will be a good cultural fit. After all, no one knows your company culture better than your current employees.

Hire Slow, Fire Fast

Rushing the hiring process is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Not only is firing an employee, training another new hire, and doing damage control costly, it can take a toll on the well-being of everyone on your team. Deliberate and graduated interview steps slow the process and allow you the time to determine if this potential employee will be the right fit. I recommend including 3-5 quality touch points with a candidate before extending an offer:

1.     Initial interview with leadership

2.     Secondary interview with several other key team members

3.     Performance sample

4.     Reference check

5.     Take them out to dine (for executive hires) 

Taking your time is important but be sure to communicate with your candidate(s) clearly if there’s a delay in scheduling – you don’t want to lose good talent because they assumed you weren’t interested.

While hiring slow is essential, firing fast can be just as crucial. An employee with a negative attitude can impact your entire staff. Nip the damage in the bud with a swift goodbye. 

Culture is Everything

One of your main interview goals should be to understand who you’re interviewing. You don’t want a company full of clones – in fact a contrarian can drive innovation and push existing employees to improve performance. However, your new employee’s values should align with those of your company.

More importantly, your employee should never “kiss up and kick down.” If you catch an interviewee being rude to your janitor, move on (no matter how pedigreed and skilled they are). It’s always a red flag if this person treats people at various levels within the corporation differently. Seek someone who is kind and inquisitive with everyone.

My Favorite Interview Questions

My go-to interview questions are almost always situational.  Anyone can tell you who they want to be, but they have to walk the walk to tell you how they’ve actually responded in a difficult situation. If you want to dig even deeper, ask how they responded differently in a second, yet similar situation. This will get them outside their comfort zone and can reveal what kind of person they are under pressure. A person who responds flexibly and learns from their experiences but remains true to their values from situation to situation is often a good hire.

I also think it’s essential to ask about hobbies and volunteer work. Not only can hobbies and volunteer work connect the cultural fit dots to current employees, they can also highlight commitment levels.

Finally, contextual questions are a must. I use my job description and the candidate’s resume to guide my questions. No two interviews are the same.

Types of Interview Questions to Avoid

I’m not a fan of the recent trend toward what I call gimmick questions (ie: What type of office supply are you and why? Does a cooked hotdog split horizontally or vertically and why?). In my opinion, the cornier the question, the cornier the answer. Unless your goal is to uncover creativity, you’re better off sticking with situational and contextual questions. I often get the feeling that gimmick questions serve the purpose of entertaining the interviewer more than they serve the purpose of revealing key values or features of a candidate. 

A Few Final Tips in How to Hire the Best Employees

1.     Test your candidate(s) on their potential job task. If they’ll be writing, assign an article relevant to your industry. If they’ll be handling finances, evaluate them on an advanced Excel task. If they will be offering products or services to consumers, engage in a roll play scenario.

2.     Hiring for an executive position? Take your candidate to dinner and pay close attention to how they treat waitstaff and other restaurant employees – this will likely translate to how they treat your staff. Notice how they behave as they become more comfortable throughout the meal. You might even consider inviting a spouse/partner, if they have one. Their interaction and the spouse/partner’s willingness to participate can provide much added information.

3.     Never skip the essential step of checking references!

4.     Sometimes it just comes down to your gut feeling. Go with it.

5.     I always seek to hire people who are better, smarter, and faster than I am. If you want to fill your company with great people, you should too.