Hiring new employees can be a lengthy, involved process, and making sure you’ve got the perfect candidate for the job is no easy task. In a day and age where you might receive hundreds of applications for a given position, narrowing down the list can be overwhelming. How can you ensure you find the right person for the job? How do you avoid hiring someone who ultimately turns out to be a bad fit? Take a look at these interviews and hiring tips for a few helpful ideas.

Pre-Employment Testing

Pre-employment tests are a set of assessments that aim to measure different attributes, skills, and abilities, which helps make more effective hiring decisions. Many tests even measure personality traits and working styles to give you insight into whether a candidate will work well in a given position. Pre-employment tests can also help you develop custom interview questions specifically tailored to each candidate. When you take the time to figure out the finer details of each candidate’s experience, skills, and behavioral tendencies, you get a better overall picture of whether a candidate’s claims are true. Incorporating pre-employment testing can drastically reduce your chances of onboarding a bad hire, potentially decreasing employee turnover rates.

Look at Their Social Media

Take some time to briefly review each candidate’s social media profiles to get a better idea of a person’s values, interests, and goals. Social media review is an extremely common practice when it comes to hiring, so there’s no need to feel sleazy about including this in your hiring process. Look for things that stand out to you: Is this person actively involved in your industry? Do they post valuable content that promotes your industry? What kind of information are they sharing – is it inappropriate? Use social media to get a better idea of a candidate’s personality and whether they’ll be a good fit for your company’s culture and goals.

Conduct Multiple-Round Interviews

Conducting multiple interview rounds gives you much deeper insight into each candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and values. Candidates who pass your initial screening and resume review should be invited to participate in a first-round interview where you include each member of your hiring team. Compose thoughtful interview questions that delve into each topic you wish to explore with potential candidates. During each interview, have your hiring team members independently rank each candidate based on their answers to the first-round interview questions. Then, have a team discussion to determine which candidates ranked the highest, why they ranked that way and who will advance to the next round. 

For subsequent interview rounds, compose interview questions that address your team members’ individual concerns about each candidate. Also, fashion questions that seek to further determine what you believe are each candidate’s unique strengths. When you compose targeted questions directed at each individual rather than basic, overarching questions, you’ll receive more thoughtful, individualized insight into each candidate. 

Hiring isn’t easy. Constructing a detailed and insightful interview process can be very challenging – but it’s absolutely doable. As long as you take the time to compose thoughtful, targeted questions and delve deep into each candidate's skills, abilities and personality, you’re off to a great start. The rest of the process will be up to your team’s discretion and your own intuition. Hiring a great team member starts with asking the right questions, so start brainstorming!