Hiring is one of the most important and critical tasks for any small business owner. Roles are generally less defined in a small business and just about every position involves meaningful interaction with customers. After all, your business is only as good as your people.
But how do you know who the good people are? And how do you determine which candidates will perform to your expectations? Anyone can put on a good show for a few hours during an interview. What you want are people who will still be good next year.
For those reasons and more, the questions you need to ask a candidate before hiring them to join your small business are different than the ones you’d need to ask if you were hiring for a large company. This interview with Tony Robbins really shed some light on the interview process. Here are Robbin’s top questions:
1. Can they do this job extremely well? First and foremost, we want to hire someone who can do the job really well.
2. Will they continue to do the job extremely well long term? What are the person’s goals, and are those goals in alignment with the actual position? We are proud to have built our company on the longevity of our employees, so being committed to the job long term and/or wanting to grow with the company long term are key assets.
3. Is it the right team fit? The person can be an extraordinary performer, but if they don’t fit with the team, it can cause chaos. Fitting into ECHOtape culture is critical to our overall health.
There’s one more question that we always like to ask: Why should we hire you? This question is the perfect way to open things up and allow the person to show you what they bring to the table. Sometimes the most compelling qualities are hidden within the stories we tell. A good hiring manager can pull those stories out as the conversation progresses and this question helps to accomplish that. Plus, it’s an opportunity for them to display talents that you might not have thought to ask about during the interview.
What interview questions do you think are crucial during the hiring process? Do you have a unique hiring story to tell?
