Interviewing someone - what questions?

[tony84]

Sooo im interviewing for my first employee tomorrow.
He will be doing admin for 3-4 months with a view to me training him up as an advisor.

Im 99% sure I will be taking him on as hes pretty enthusiastic, doing his exams himself, got in touch out of the blue and has basically shown a lot of initiative so I would expect that it will work out.

I was going to meet up and just have a chat but I suppose I should ask some questions and I am just wondering if there is anything in particular you ask?

 

[Jon Neale]

If you are interviewing more than one candidate I would recommend having some competency based questions as it allows you to compare candidates. As it sounds you only have a single candidate then maybe try and get them to do a task which you may want them to do (use excel or similar) to see how they fair. Other than that just try to get to understand what makes them tick and what their motivations are, where they want to be in 5 years, strengths/weaknesses/ what they know about you the industry etc. Some of these are a bit lame but will give some indication of the amount of planning/research they have done.This is an indication of how they may work.

 

[godoit]

i use, what are you going to do different from me. Makes me think what they are like as a person and if I can work with them

 

[tony84]

How can anyone answer that unless they know what you do?

 

[swankypants69]

I suppose maybes it would be a good idea to try and ascertain their ambitions

Do they want to be partners with you in the long term?

Or do they want to go off on their own and compete against you?

I suppose what you want from them in the long and short term might dictate what information you need to know now

 

[swankypants69]

It's also very easy to "lead" an interviewee but really you need to hear what they genuinely think and want themselves

Keep your questions open I think

 

[Lezlie]

Having a work colleague is like having a best friend, you need to know that someone has got your back!
When times get tough, its nice knowing your work colleague and yourself can pull through it.
Role-playing is always a good start, customer to agent practice.