Tips for running a successful interview

Get interviewing tips from an HR expert, and hear how a high-growth business interviews to find the best people for their team.

My name's Antonia Haythornthwaite and I'm the owner of Blue Dot HR. We're a human resources advisory firm for small businesses.

Bringing on the right people to your team is really important. They're the ones who are going to help you achieve your business plan or not, so a really rigorous performance-based interview process is well worth the investment.

I think it's important to be realistic about job so the candidate knows what it is they're potentially walking into. So defining the job in terms of the four or five key elements is a great way to start.

I think for each aspect of the job, asking the candidate to provide a relevant example of an achievement or an accomplishment is important, and listening carefully for similarities or differences in the work itself or the work environment. Just because somebody's been successful in one setting doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be as successful in a different setting.

I think asking follow-up questions to find out more about a candidate's work style is important, so the way that they approach their work and the way they deal with challenges and how they interact with others.

Hi, I'm Samson Ootoovak. I'm a senior developer here at Flick Electric. Flick Electric is an energy company that's grown from about nine to forty people in the last two years. We know we're a little different than other energy companies, and so we want to take the time in an interview process to make sure we find the right fit. We're a really tight-knit team, so it's really important that we hire people that complement our team's dynamics and working style.

Establishing a vision for your team that you want early on is really important in that it really helps focus who you're looking for in the interview process. It's really about building a team to achieve your business's goals to create the kind of workplace that's right for you.

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