How to Conduct Your Employee Interviews

Peep:

1. Basketball team.
2. Group of aspiring players.

How does a basketball team distinguish stars from sucks (i.e., how do they choose their players)?

Here's how a typical "company" would do choose their players:

1. Bob: "Hi, can you take a seat."
2. Willy: "Sure."
3. Bob: "Are you really good at what you do?"
4. Will: "Yes, I'm the best. I'm tenacious. I love to succeed. I'm motivated."
5. Bob: "Great! You're hired! HOORAY! HIGH-FIVE!"

Companies operate in the obsoletecrap^^^@stic thinking of seeing "interviews" as the end-all-be-all of judging an applicant.

As a result, they end up with sucky-suck people who have no business doing what they're doing.

Even worse, drive away potential superstars to competitors.

How to Conduct Your Interviews

Be like a basketball team:

1. Give a tryout.
2. See how they really perform.
3. Win.

For instance:

• If you're hiring a programmer, pose Challenging Assignment X to your applicants.
• If you're hiring a salesperson, give them a call sheet -- and see what they can do in an hour.
• If you're hiring a graphic designer, pose a mini on-the-spot design contest, and see who's best.
• If you're hiring an admin assistant, give them 5 tasks. See who's fastest + best quality.

There's a fine line between what someone says they can/would do in Situation X, and what they'd really do.

Posing actual tryouts (i.e., letting them showcase what they would perform if hired) gives you a pretty sweet picture of how the applicant would perform if hired -- letting you hire the most qualified freshtastic peeps for your company.

Tryout.

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