When interviewing candidates for employment there are a few job interview questions and techniques that are vital to remember. This article looks at how to interview to get the very best employees. Your goal is to hire the best, those with great character. If you do, employee retention won't be a problem.

Being Purposeful in Your Job Interview

I believe that you should hire character and attitude first and skills second. If you believe that to be true, then you must show up at the interview knowing the character traits you want to find, as you ask each of you interview questions.

How to Interview With a Purpose

A successful job interview is a two way street. There are things you must learn about the candidate from the job interview questions you ask and there are things the candidate must learn about you, your organization, and the other employees. This will help them to see if this job is right for them too. Employee retention is the goal. It's costly to always be hiring and firing.

You must be able to communicate, when hiring employees, what the job involves, what the culture of your company is, what your desired character traits are, and walk them through an ordinary day. They must understand what your business is like.

It is both a skill and an art to be good at interviewing employees. A common mistake many employers make is to just run through their job interview questions and never explain to the prospective employee what the culture of the business is. Both you and the person in the job interview have to make good decisions.

Let Your Current Employees Help!

Let the candidate interview with one of your employees in addition to yourself. They can find out whether this job will fit them by spending time with a current employee and learning about your culture. They'll often ask them questions they would never ask you. You don't want to hire someone who won't fit in. It wastes your time and theirs.

Look Twice!

Here is a great job interview tip. Take the advice of the carpenter! You know the old carpenter's adage: measure twice, cut once. This works when recruiting employees too. Interview twice, hire once!

You must give a second interview to any candidate with potential. Never make a hiring decision at the first interview. Generally interviews make people nervous. Sometimes a person might do very well at a first interview but another well qualified person may not. That second job interview might just give you the insight you need to understand the person.

Interviewing employees a second time often helps an employee relax and helps you see who they really are. Compare results and answers from both employee interviews to help you determine the best candidate for each position.

It is better to have another employee involved in the first job interview. When the qualified prospect attends the second job interview they are often more comfortable and have thought of other questions. Answering their job interview questions will help both of you and get the best hiring decision. It's not just your job interview questions that matter, it's also the prospective employee's.

Don't forget, that no matter how well you conduct a job interview, you won't really know how things will turn out until the new employee is on the job.

I remember an employee we hired years ago. Three different people interviewed the candidate and she seemed like an outstanding choice. Her first day on the job shocked us all. It was like we must have interviewed her twin sister because the person who showed up for work was nothing like the one we interviewed!

The lesson: some can breeze through your job interview questions and some will struggle. Talk to prior employers, preferably two jobs back. It's an excellent way to gain valuable information and to avoid unhappy surprises. Do it right by taking your time. Interviewing employees is truly as much an art as a skill. Keep working at it.

By: Steven Schlagel, CPA, CFP, JD, a coach and consultant to small business owners. If you want to know more about him visit My-Small-Business-Mentor.com.