To be nervous that we hire the wrong person for the job again?

[mameulah]

Please, please can you give me your top tips for hiring a new employee.

My DH has his own business and desperately needs a good team of people to delegate too. For one or another the people he has recently hired have turned out to be awful. Lazy, incompetent and dishonest.

What are the best interview questions you have asked/been asked?

What is the best way of checking that the interviewee really is as good as they say they are?

Or any other top tips?

Apologies if this thread would be better suited in another subject area but we have a toddler and a new born due any day now. We desperately need a team behind us so that my DH can spend more some time enjoying our family.

I have always hired for technical roles and tend to pass a fairly simplified example of work across the table. Give them a couple of minutes to look at the data and ask them how they would approach it.

If they can't even begin to describe this or are totally thrown then they are going to be at best slow and probably not up to the job. Quite a few mature candidates with great CVs really failed at this test.

Ultimately in my most recent interviews we took on someone really young and I did get challenged on his few years experience. He is great and everyone agrees now as he is both intelligent but happy to take instruction too.

treacle I agree. It is a harsh question.

But imagine you have two candidates you like and ask them the same question.

One says I want to be a rock star or comedian, I gig every night. The other says I want to run my own company one day or I want to be exec director of a multinational. One is more likely to stay around and take a genuine interest in what the job offers because their dreams are business based not arts based. The dream job could be loosely linked but still related.

OP to check someone's efficiency I'd ask something like:
You're in the office alone in the middle of some filing when the phone rings then a customer walks through the door with a dog, the office mobile goes off too and the customer's dog knocks over a pile of papers. What would you do?

See how they'd prioritise handling all those at once. It's not an easy question to guess the 'right' answer to.

FWIW in your situation I'd take an overqualified mum who wants a job that fits around the DC from 9.30-2.30 over someone greener who could work longer hours for lower pay, unless you absolutely have to have someone in the office 9-5. You could even split the role and have an admin person three or four days a week and an accounts person one or two days a week as the two skills don't always go together.

Fair enough china when you put it in context like that, I can see how it makes sense. Your post terrified me when I first read it though, because all I could think was 'eeek! I'd have to lie and second guess what they're wanting me to say! What would they want me to say? Argggh!'

I have had good success giving people in-tray tests to do. So putting say half a dozen things into a pile that represent the types of things they will have to make decisions about during the job, and leaving them for, say, 20 minutes to crack on and do what they can. Then you discuss with them the various reasons for their decisions.

I have done paid trials in the past as well, and I ask colleagues how they got on with people.

I don't know if anyone has touched upon this up thread or not but be careful what agency you use if you go down that route.

Some are soooo much better than others and actively vet candidates for suitability for roles. Others just send anyone along for interview. If the agency are good, they will already have 'interviewed' the potential candidate and will not put them forward for roles they are unsuited. Good agencies will also require candidates to perform basic tests and will send their scores to potential hiring managers/interviewers.

One thing I would avoid is asking really stupid 'off the wall' questions at interviews either designed to test their 'creativity' or find out how quick thinking they are. In my experience, these questions are a waste of time.

I'd ask questions relevant to the role and that will give you a sense of how much the candidate truly understands what is expected of them/can match examples from their experience to how they will perform the role.

If you haven't used a good agency who carries out thorough reference checks on your behalf, then you need to scrutinise their CV against which roles they have assigned a referee from. E.g if they spent the last few years working at organisation X, you'd expect their referee to be recent and you can check their role within that organisation.

Agree with others who say avoid those who are too whingey/whiney and ask mostly questions about what they can get out of it rather than what they can offer. Gut instinct and the fact that you can get along with them will matter far more in a small team/organisation than a larger one.

Most of all, good luck and hope you both find someone soon. There are lots of good candidates out there, try not to feel too disheartened by previous negative experience.

I disagree, depends on the quirky question.

One of mine is:

you are on a train and are late for a meeting. When the train arrives at the station, you have to jump on a bus to get to the meeting venue. You have no mobile phone. When you get to the bus stop, there is a bus there, but there is a tree branch over the number of the bus so you don't know if it is yours or a random bus. What do you do?

It is wonderful the array of answers. You can find out who is organised, who would take chances and just jump on the unknown bus, who would not get on the bus without being sure it was the right one, who would be mortified that they had left without a means of contact, who would borrow a phone to call and let them know they would be late. The best one was 'I'd call the council immediately and complain about the branch being in the way'. Not only did he jot get the job (internal candidate), but he argued the toss for 20 minutes when I gave him the feedback on why not.

Always trust your gut reaction, never hire someone who feels wrong.

I find it interesting that you're focusing on the interview. What about what happens next? Does your DH do a good job of welcoming them to the company? Are they introduced to people and given an induction? Does someone sit down with them and work out an initial plan with goals to achieve, future training needs etc?

It's not just about hiring the right person but also doing a good job of welcoming and managing them.

My idea of an 'off the wall' question was more along the lines of "what would you do if you were given an elephant?" or some such claptrap. Completely, utterly pointless and time-wasting for both interviewer and interviewee.

We can agree to disagree. Definitely depends on the question. Your 'quirky' example was rather more useful so I wouldn't mind something along those lines in an interview.

Good test for an admin worker especially if petty cash is involved is to give them an excel spreadsheet with some figures already there, and some for them to input. Then get them to balance the columns. The real test is if you put in an anomaly to see if they pick it up (demonstrates an eye for accuracy) also demonstrates their ability to use ms office and basic formulas in spreadsheets.

This is a test I have used when recruiting and often a £5k mistake was not noticed by candidates when given 4 relatively figures to add!

Brilliant advice but also echo Appletini. Don't just think of the interview, think about afterwards. I'm an awful boss because I keep so much in my head (I'm getting better honest!) but has your DH set things up so someone can do the job? Contacts Database, detailed contracts that allow for invoice chasing (by someone who wasn't there when they 'shook' on it), time sheets or stock management systems depending what is relevant. Your DH spending time up front getting things in order will reap benefits later - so be honest with yourself were there any common issues with previous staff ie they both couldn't manage the diary and was it maybe because your DH is doing something that made it difficult (always over runs meetings, or agree ad hoc stuff without checking..) Not saying this is the case but do be brutally honest with your selves on this and it may help post interview.

Here are a couple of the types of tests, e-tray and in-tray, that people have been referring to, obviously make up your own as job-seekers will should have done all of the online ones for practise and know the answers.

e tray exercise www.assessmentday.co.uk/free/e-tray/EtrayExerciseFree-Questions.pdf
e tray answers www.assessmentday.co.uk/free/e-tray/EtrayExerciseFree-Solutions.pdf

In Tray exercise for finance www.assessmentday.co.uk/example-in-tray-assessmentday.pdf
Answers www.assessmentday.co.uk/answers-in-tray-assessmentday.pdf

Thanks again everyone. You are right about investing time in the early stages of employment, and the keeping things in his head. But they are aspects of management that he has hugely improved. And in fairness if you learn quickly that your gut instinct was wrong and your new employee is not as capable as you expected then how you spend your time immediately changes focus.

Today I am gong to write an advert for the admin post. If anyone has any tips on how best to do that? For my money I would love to see the job going to an overqualified Mum returning to work. She could reap the rewards of a job that, once she proved to be competent and efficient, could design hours and conditions to suit herself and in turn we would get the benefit of her enthusiasm, efficiency and of course admin skills.

Hopefully I'll get the advert done by lunchtime, unless of course the baby comes first! What crazy busy times!

Well you could always put in your ad that you welcome returners to work or that flexible hours can be arranged for the right candidate. Then you might attract more high-quality candidates on the look out for a job that suits their family life.

Good luck. Really hope it works out this time. And agree 100% with Apple. Pack first week full of really well planned training (make a list of what they need to learn and tick it off in stages - explained, tested, able to do unaided - not the stupid easy stuff but finding way round complex spreadsheets, data inputting and complex filing systems.)