Hire the Best Staff

Here’s How
Partner one half-hour with someone familiar with the position to evaluate the job. Your evaluation will rank twenty-one job performance skills. Order the skills and likely there's a cluster at the top. Each performance skill has eight sample probe questions and evaluation criteria. A one-hour interview could hold four questions; a longer interview or screening interview may be useful.

Some say it's their hardest interview. I give instructions and ask my least important probe first to get it going. Then I’m quiet as candidates tell what feels right to them. A candidate may skip a question, but eventually every question must be answered in a story; describing who, when, where and so on, such as this selection for ‘Coping’:

Q: 'Tell me about a high stress situation when it was desirable for you to keep a positive attitude. What happened?'

A: "The TelMat buyer surprised the Service Line with a big order Saturday, but only if we could ship it before Thursday. I couldn't commit on my own, so ...."

The response is evaluated down to the question. Behavioral Technology Inc facilitates the evaluation with guides to specific language in the response. Many internet resources suggest interviewers and candidates both focus on STAR; namely Situation or Task, Action Taken, and Result or Outcome. At the Mississippi State Personnel Board this means, “the interviewer expects an answer to a behavioral question to specifically describe a situation or task relevant to the question, to clearly express the action taken, and to succinctly summarize a result or outcome. The STAR process provides a useful frame for considering the worth of an answer.”

These evaluations tie the candidate back to the job skills. I believe the best method to pick the best candidates is also the easiest and most objective; a table with the candidates down the side and job skill evaluations across the top. The methods we reviewed had this in common.

Summary