Hiring Guide: How to Discern Great Candidates from Average Ones

It’s not so discern whether an interviewee will be a good fit for your company or not. Although you will never know if a candidate is good until they actually start the job, there are some tips and tricks to use to help discern whether an candidate will follow through on their promises to work hard and follow procedure. Here are the ways that I’ve found help sift through the candidates that will prove their worth and the candidates that will poison the culture.

It’s not possible to get to know someone well enough for a job even if you give them a full 30-min interview. And despite what the higher managers believe, these online assessment forms do absolutely nothing to determine the qualifications of a candidate. You have only a few minutes to make as much judgement as you can to determine whether this person will be helpful or hurtful to you. If you make the wrong decision, you might be left with a bigger headache than when you started.

Of course, before the interview even begins, you need to look at their resume. What is their experience like? They may have plenty of experience in the restaurant industry, and they may try to capitalize off the fact that they’ve worked for so many types of restaurants. However, this knowledge and flexibility of which they market themselves may be a way to disguise the fact that they are a job-hopper. In other words, this person may have plenty of experience, but only because they spend only a few months at each company. Do not be fooled to believe that they will commit to you when they have no history of committing to anyone else.

As well, look at their application. Is it riddled with spelling and grammar errors? If so, what does that tell you about the kind of person sitting in front of you? It usually implies that they aren’t very smart, or at the very least, they choose to spend their time with memes and internet rather than reading and self-development. One of my favorite ways to judge whether or not a candidate will be good is to pay attention to their handwriting. It’s very common for someone with a very disorganized mind to have very poor handwriting. At the very least, good penmanship shows care for their own professionalism. In my opinion, a person’s handwriting can be a more important indicator of quality that what they actually write.

The answers to the questions you ask will determine the content you have to work with when deciding whether or not to hire someone. Therefore, ask your questions in order to gain the most information as possible. Go into the interview knowing which questions you will definitely ask and some more questions that their answers may lead to. For example, you may initially ask, “what were your responsibilities at x company?”, and depending on their answer, you may ask “What did you learn from that experience?” or “Why did you choose to leave?”.

I advise you to avoid going into an interview with the intention of looking for specific answers. Often, people will study interview questions and formulate an answer based on what is expected of them to say. If you are just looking for someone to answer the questions “correctly” you will not have a good view of a candidate other than the fact that they can memorize a list of answers. To combat this, you ought to listen closely to how they answer and ask follow-up questions for clarification. The follow-up questions are going to be the questions that actually give you a better image of the personality and work style of the interviewee. The person may have memorized the answers to the initial questions, but they will be taken off guard when they are asked to clarify or explain further.

Another way to get real answers is by asking questions that you know aren’t on one of those lists. Some example questions could be, “When did you feel the most proud?”, “What did you learn from your biggest failure?”, or “What would be a reason I should not hire you?”. These questions require the interviewee to use a more complex way of thinking that engages their thought. Because these answers are not thought out in advance, you will likely get a much more honest answer, which gives you a better look into the person’s personality.

Don’t listen to just the content of their answers but the manner in which they deliver. Even if you don’t listen to their answer at all, ask yourself what can you learn about this person just from the way they act and speak? Even before the interview starts, what did they wear to the interview? What do they smell like? Does it look like they prepared for the interview at all or are they just assuming that they’ll get a job because “they’ll take anyone”? Are they even making eye contact and sitting up straight? Does it even seem like they want the job or do they feel forced to get one? You can tell a lot more about someone based on the way they present themselves through dress and speech than the actual answers they give.

I’ve found it very effective to ask personal questions during the job interview. As long as the questions are not too personal, there’s no reason why you can’t ask a candidate about their personal life. It’s a great way to immediately get to the root of who this person is. The question I ask at every interview I conduct is – “What do you do on a typical day off?” The answer to this question gives me 90% of what I need to know about this person. If their answer is “I just hang around and play video games”, you know that this person is not an ambitious person with goals in mind. If their answer is “I love going to the gym and spending time with my kids”, you know this person is health-and-family-oriented. The better answer between the two ought to be obvious. The answers to the personal questions are the most valuable answers they give in the whole interview.

You will never be a perfect interviewer with the ability to judge a good or bad candidate 100% of the time – it’s just not possible. It takes time to be a good interviewer, but as you do them over and over looking for new ways to get the information out of each candidate, you will quickly develop your skills to at least get a good picture of each person before they start the job.