Last week I was privileged to attend a session by Scott Kuethen on how to hire quality. He is a hiring expert and the CEO of hiring service Flazingo.

Hiring decisions are crucially important, yet relatively infrequent in small business environments. So guys like me enter the all-important hiring process without much practice. Scott, who has 25 years of practice, generously taught us a thorough process for hiring quality. I won’t outline the whole process, but here are my key takeaways and observations.

• Know exactly what you want before you go looking for it. Take the time to define the central mission, responsibilities, outcomes, and requirements of the position first.
• Don’t tell the candidates who you want them to be. A little cynicism is required in the hiring process. If your job posting lists the exact qualifications you want, you will get resumes that magically list those exact qualifications. If you ask questions in the interview like “We really need someone who’s great with Quickbooks. Are you great with Quickbooks?” you are going to get a yes and you won’t learn anything. Don’t say or imply what answers you want.
• Ask behavioral story questions. “Tell me about a time when you had to confront an colleague about something they did that wasn’t right.” Not what would you do in this situation, but what did you do. Then ask questions to probe deeper into that story. Very few people can put together a fake story that holds up, so you will get reality.
• Ask for information that’s not on the resume. Scott recommends sending a questionnaire to about 9 to 12 candidates you’re interested in. He says people get a lot of help with resumes, but the questionnaire will be their own doing and it brings up information that they wouldn’t have volunteered. Also, the questionnaire screens out people who are curious about the job and fired off a resume but are not interested enough to put any work into applying.
• Be warm in person, and skeptical later. A warm, positive interaction with candidates will bring out more honest answers than a tense, skeptical interaction will. Save your skepticism for the evaluation and verification process after the interview.
• My overall conclusion: Hiring well is a lot of work. It takes a big investment of time to map out the mission, responsibilities, and requirements for the position, attract interest from candidates, score resumes, and conduct effective interviews. I wanted to think of hiring as just another task in the day, but it’s more analogous to designing a new product or building new infrastructure. It’s a big investment up front that pays off (or costs) over the long term.