It’s happened to almost every manager at some point: A person who looked so promising in an interview turned out to be a complete misfit for the position.
With the time and effort it takes to hire and train a new addition to Finance, you want to minimize these “false starts” as best as possible.
The best way to do that: with the questions you ask in the interview.
More confidence in hiring choices
Chances are good someone’s gotten pretty far in the process if you’re interviewing, so you can bring it home by asking these three types of questions:
- Open-ended questions. Strike any questions that can be answered with a yes, a no or a single sentence. Finance staffers have to interact with tons of people both inside and outside of your company. You need articulate people, and leaving questions open-ended will tell you whether a person’s communicates well or not.
- Concrete example of a professional success. Tangible results are fantastic — if an A/R candidate was able to reduce DSO by 4 days at his old job, that’s fantastic. (Even press on just how that situation and result came about.) Seeing what a person considers “success” on the job is very telling.
- A chance to turn the tables. Give candidates a chance to ask you questions. If the person is strictly concerned with vacation policies and soon he or she can use time off, it could be a red flag. On the other hand, if the person knows what the opportunities for advancement are and how career tracks are managed, you may have a winner on your hands.
