Being a small business owner typically means you have minimal experience with human resources. With only a small team, you won’t be in the habit of hiring new employees and likely won’t have a standard procedure for interviewing.
However, you don’t have to let your inexperience shine through. Instead, you can empower yourself to conduct job interviews confidently by reviewing the tips below.
- Establish the Ideal Interview Space
A dedicated interview space creates an instant aura of professionalism. This means that it’s typically not advisable to hold job interviews in the lunch room while other employees are milling around, enjoying their breaks.
Thankfully, there are plenty of easy solutions. For example, most premium serviced offices will allow you to book meeting rooms, whether you’re a regular member or not. Depending on the nature of your interviews, you can book a spacious boardroom, a teleconferencing room, or a smaller one-on-one space.
- Create an Interviewing Procedure
If you have multiple people to interview, it’s crucial to have a tried and true interviewing procedure to ensure each meeting runs smoothly. You might start with pre-interview questions, which can help you decide whether to add an applicant to the interviewing stage.
It’s often advisable for pre-interview questions to be industry-related as this gives you a sense of your prospective employees’ skills and qualifications. You might also make a plan for how long each interview should take, who else besides you will sit in, and how you will start and finish each interview.
- Hold a Video Call First
Technology has made finding suitable applicants for a job position far easier. Rather than inviting every applicant for an in-person interview, you can filter out unsuitable ones by hosting an initial video call.
Video conferencing tools are now more popular than ever, with at least 65% of businesses utilizing them in 2022. While they are helpful for everyday communications, video calls can also be an efficient way to get a feel for someone’s suitability for a job, saving both you and them the hassle of unnecessary in-person meetings.
- Ask the Right Questions
Small business owners generally hire so infrequently that they don’t have a list of successful questions they know to ask. To ensure you’re perfectly prepared, compile a list and get familiar with it before you meet with your first applicant.
Some of the best questions include:
- Why should we hire you?
- What are you hoping to achieve in this role?
- What do you know about the company?
- What are you proud of in your professional life?
- What is important to you in a work role and environment?
- How would former managers and coworkers describe you?
- Conduct a Workplace Tour
If you’ve got a good feeling about specific candidates, invite them to take a workplace tour with you. Be sure to make it clear that a tour doesn’t indicate they have secured the role. Instead, it allows them to get a feel for where they’d be working. You might even encourage them to ask other employees questions to learn more about the workplace and their potential role within it.
- Ask About References
Job references can indicate someone’s suitability for a job based on past employment. However, applicants rarely choose someone who will say negative things about them. So, to gain a bit more information, ask them about their references and why they selected them. You might also see the value in looking for other references to be entirely confident in your hiring decision.
Being inexperienced with job interviews doesn’t mean you can’t excel. Follow the tips above, and applicants won’t notice you’re as nervous as they are.
