For employers: Interview dynamics for small businesses

Small businesses can find recruitment and job interviews a real and expensive problem. Often the management lack the expertise to deal with interviews properly, and hiring becomes a very hit or miss process.

Most small business managers have at least some level of experience in the interviewer's role, but the only real guarantees of success are good organization and clear objectives.

Interview dynamics, or the principles of how interviews function, are quite different for small businesses from those of larger businesses. The principles are the same, but the mechanics are often very diverse.

Extremely important:

• A job interview is a formal legal process.
• It's essential that your hiring processes are in accordance with law.
• The preparation of the interview, advertisement of the job vacancy and other hiring procedures need to be simple and straightforward.
• Hiring processes must be fully documented.
• Employers must keep records as required by law.

Documentation

The interview process requires:

Employer generated documents:

• Job description
• Position related details like salary, benefits, etc.
• Job criteri
a
• Advertisement
• Information pack (if applicable)

Applicant generated documents:

• Application forms
• Curriculum Vitae
• Personal information (as required for business purposes)
• Identification information (where required)

Interview generated documents:

• Schedule of interviews
• Copies of notification to interviewees
• Copies of notifications to those not selected for interview
• Interview notes and minutes
• Recommendation from interview panel
• Written decision by employer for hiring (more common in smaller businesses)

Conducting the interview: Pros and Cons of doing it yourself

Small businesses have one advantage when hiring. Just about everything is done in house in a small business. That can be helpful when organizing your hiring and interview processes.

However- Not everybody is a good interviewer. You need to judge the real benefits of the interview:

Pros:

• You meet the applicants and can exercise your own judgment.
• You can check out applicants to the extent you feel necessary.
• You can assess personality, and the 'fit' factor in relation to your business.
• In house interviews don't cost a lot of money.

Cons:

• You don't think you can do an interview well enough.
• You're not comfortable with the interview process.
• You're not happy about the technical and legal side of the interview.
• In house interviews do cost a lot of time.

The Pros are self explanatory, and meet the needs of employers who want to use their own judgment when hiring.

The Cons need more explanation, and we can show you what to do with those situations.

Alternatives to conducting the interview yourself

• Hire an employment agency to deal with the applications and interview.
• Get an experienced interviewer to conduct the interview in house.

The advantage of this approach is that all the legal requirements are covered in the course of the process. You can also get some professional guidance about your hiring practices, which can be invaluable.

The most important thing about hiring processes for small businesses is that they must be cost effective.

You can spend a lot of time money and effort just trying to find staff.

Take the time to find out which method of hiring works best, produces the right people for the jobs, and your hiring problems are solved.