Corra Daily Planet

Did You Hire A Bad Santa?

We saw this article on Yahoo.com

Berlin is facing an acute shortage of Santas just a month before Christmas, the head of a Father Christmas placement agency said Monday.

The director of Berlin’s “Heinzelmaennchen” agency, which provides Santas to thousands of Berlin families every Christmas Eve, said he was having trouble getting enough qualified help.

“We prefer chubby men, of course, ideally with a real beard but we’re not picky and take what we get,” said director Rene Heydeck, whose official title is Ober-Weinachtsmann (chief Santa Claus).

The Santas, many of whom are students, earn 28 euros ($37) a visit for bringing a sack of presents provided by the parents into each home and handing them out. But Santas must also pay 45 euros for a costume and give the agency 15 percent of earnings.

“In a lot of families in Berlin it’s a tradition that carries on even after the children grow older and stop believing,” Heydeck said.

Each Santa visits an average of 10 to 12 families, although some have managed up to 20.

“It’s hard work and sometimes you have to run faster if you fall behind schedule,” Heydeck said. “But it’s great fun.”

All over the country and even the world retailers are looking for elderly fat man with white beards who can pose as Santa Claus and promise kids toys and goodies they will probably never receive. If they can’t find the jolly old white bearded guy, they will settle for someone who wants the job who doesn’t mind wearing pillows under his costume and itchy false hair and beards. For that matter, he may not mind nervous little children drooling or otherwise relieving themselves on his red tunic.

Back in the days of yore, Corra remembers come Christmas and even old winos had a shot at the job. They may have been crusty and such, but most were benign and seldom breached their compact with the children. But those were different times, and today a retail Santa could really be a pervert, even on someone on a sexual offender’s registry. While many retailers check out whom they hire, others only pretend to and in desperation give the applicant the job.

If you think not, last year CBS News ran a television segment where CBS had one of its staff pose as a convicted
felon and sexual offender, replete with a record of convictions. He applied for a Santa gig in five shopping centers in the Los Angeles area and was accepted everywhere. When CBS confronted the hiring parties with the news they had just hired a pervert, three swore they had conducted background searches, and one didn’t return any calls.

The point of all this, as a hiring retailer, employing a sexual offender, a child molester, as Santa Claus is a really bad idea. It leaves you and your business open for liability and all sorts of bad publicity. The only way to determine whether someone has a record is to run a background check and make sure what he puts on his resume is on the up and up.

So help us all share a wonderful holiday season. Don’t be putting a child on the lap of a sexual offender. Run a serious background check. For the few bucks you spend, it will do you wonders in preventing litigation and creating good will. Remember, these are children we are dealing with, after all. Our job is to protect them from those who could ruin their young lives.

As Corra says, check them out before you hire.

Private Pilots Over Cities; For Pleasure Or Terror?

We found this in the New York Times.

SCHUMER CALLS FOR AIR TRAFFIC REVIEW Senator Charles Schumer yesterday called on the Federal Aviation Administration to complete a review of New York’s airspace in the next 90 days in light of the plane crash that killed the New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor,. The senator proposed several measures including assessing whether pilots should have background checks before being allowed to fly in river corridors or over Manhattan. Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the F.A.A., said that the agency would continue to review the air space over New York.

It is pretty amazing to Corra, after the catastrophe of 9/11 that private pilots are permitted to fly merrily along the New York Skyline or any other city skyline, until the city once again is forced to endure yet another crash into one of its fabled structures. This, to Corra, is like an invitation for terrorists. A simple question comes to mind–only now they are getting around to the idea of background checks?

Any private pilot in this day and age should be subject to his review on the Terrorist Watch or OFAC report as well as Federal Criminal Searches. It is just common sense, which one pundit once remarked, unfortunately, is not so common. But then we should at least pretend to be smart about our home security and run background checks on anyone capable of turning even a modest leisure plane into a deadly weapon.

Check them out before they fly over a city near you.

Human Resources Finds Many Younger People Not Great Job Candidates

We found this interesting article on Inc.com

Younger Employees Lack Basic Skills

By: Angus Loten

A new survey of employers finds that recent high school and college graduates fall short in a number of areas.

With small businesses scrambling to find qualified employees, a recent national survey of employers found that young people are increasingly ill-prepared for today’s workforce, lacking basic skills in communications and critical thinking.

Of 431 human resource managers polled, more than 70 percent said recently hired high school students proved to be deficient in academic skills, such as grammar, spelling, and written communications, according to a survey released on Oct. 4 by a coalition of business research and advocacy groups, including the Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

An overwhelming majority cited problems new hires had handling such routine tasks as writing memos, letters, and other reports, the survey found.

Poor writing skills also proved to be problematic for two-year and four-year college graduates, though to a lesser extent, according to the survey’s respondents.

Another 70 percent said recent high school graduates also lacked applied skills, including professionalism, a sense of work ethic, and critical thinking, which more than half described as “very important” for succeeding in the workplace, the study found. Among these skills were personal accountability, effective working habits, punctuality, working with others, and workload management.

Researchers said the findings reflect the growing frustration of employers seeking qualified workers within a tight labor market, and could have grave consequences on the competitiveness of the U.S. workforce as well as the vulnerability of the economy in the global marketplace.

“It is clear from the report that greater communication and collaboration between the business sector and educators is critical to ensure that young people are prepared to enter the workforce of the 21st century,” Richard Cavanagh, president and CEO of the Conference Board, said in a statement.

In September, just over half of the nation’s small businesses hired or tried to hire at least one new employee, based on a monthly survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, a Washington-based lobby group.

Of those with positions to fill, more than 80 percent of small-business owners reported finding few or no qualified applications, with as many as 12 percent citing a lack of qualified employees as their biggest business problem — the highest number in five years, the group said.

According to the Conference Board survey, employers said they would likely start raising the level of qualifications required for most new positions. Some 28 percent said they would stop hiring applicants with only a high school diploma within the next five years, while more than half said they would increase the number of new hires with a college degree, the survey found.

Beyond that, business leaders are also “actively engaged in efforts to address the skills gap through a variety of initiatives,” said Donna Klein, president and CEO of Corporate Voices for Working Families, an business advocacy group that bridges private and public sector issues.

These initiatives include efforts to boost students’ academic performance by partnering schools with businesses to provide mentoring programs, internships, job-shadowing programs, and summer job opportunities, Klein said.

Among the skills expected to be essential for businesses in the years ahead, nearly three-fourths of employers polled ranked creativity and innovation in the top five. Other sought-after skills included foreign languages, and understanding of global markets, and the economic and cultural impacts of globalization, the survey said.

Corra finds this depressing but not surprising. Corra realizes there are millions of truly intelligent and ambitious younger people in our country. But Corra also sees the type of results reported in the article as as part of the dumbing down process, mixed with rewarding kids in youth groups by giving them trophies for participating as opposed to excelling. Perhaps we shouldn’t get started about the way we coddle our youth for fear of hurting their self-esteem, how we apologize for their obesity and lack of ambition. We fear basic games like tag and dodgeball since they might impose on someone’s sense of self.

And then we wonder why our youth are lazy and are outperformed by students in many other parts of the world. We don’t raise them to be competitive anymore; we raise them with inflated senses of expectation and entitlement. Corra so far hasn’t even mentioned the drug problems, the credit problems and the criminal propensities that seemed to have captured more than a few of our younger job candidates.

So as a human resource manager, you should be careful and run criminal checks, credit checks and possibly civil checks on your job candidates.

Anyway…studies show they might not be up to the job. Our kids lack skill sets and are, oh what a surprise, somewhat lazy. If they lie about their resume Corra finds they will mostly lie about education, so be sure to run education verification checks.
Remember, check them out before you hire.

When You Are Among The Top Fifty, You Don’t Need A Background Check

FORTUNE 50 Most Powerful Women in Business

FORTUNE’s annual ranking of America’s leading businesswomen

Full list

Highest paid

Age

Women to watch

Newcomers

Exits

Perennials

International

Age

Rank Name Company Age

22 Charlene Begley General Electric 39

9 Sallie Krawcheck Citigroup 41

32 Pat Curran Wal-Mart Stores 42

33 Lisa Weber MetLife 43

18 Abigail Johnson Fidelity 44

50 Stacey Snider Viacom 45

24 Lois Quam UnitedHealth Group 45

45 Claire Watts Wal-Mart Stores 46

43 Deirdre Connelly Eli Lilly 46

31 Mary Minnick Coca-Cola 46

20 Susan Ivey R.J. Reynolds Tobacco 47

46 Catherine West J.C. Penney 47

13 Anne Sweeney Disney Media Networks 48

14 Ann Livermore Hewlett-Packard 48

27 Ursula Burns Xerox 48

41 Amy Pascal Sony 48

42 Dawn Hudson PepsiCo 48

7 Andrea Jung Avon 48

39 Carrie Cox Schering-Plough 49

16 Ginni Rometty IBM 49

17 Susan Desmond-Hellmann Genentech 49

29 Linda Dillman Wal-Mart 50

23 Amy Brinkley Bank of America 50

21 Ellen Kullman DuPont 50

40 Paula Rosput Reynolds Safeco 50

3 Meg Whitman eBay 50

1 Indra Nooyi PepsiCo 50

48 Diane Gulyas DuPont 50

19 Zoe Cruz Morgan Stanley 51

10 Susan Arnold Procter & Gamble 52

26 Carol Meyrowitz TJX Cos. 52

44 Ellyn McColgan Fidelity 52

35 Joanne Maguire Lockheed Martin 52

37 Colleen Goggins Johnson & Johnson 52

47 Nancy Peretsman Allen & Co. 52

5 Irene Rosenfeld Kraft Foods 52

8 Oprah Winfrey Harpo Inc. 52

11 Christine Poon Johnson & Johnson 53

2 Anne Mulcahy Xerox 53

6 Brenda Barnes Sara Lee 53

4 Pat Woertz Archer Daniels Midland 53

25 Heidi Miller J.P. Morgan Chase 53

12 Judy McGrath Viacom 54

15 Ann Moore Time Inc. 56

36 Doreen Toben Verizon 56

30 Shelly Lazarus Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide 59

49 Christina Gold Western Union 59

34 Mary Sammons Rite Aid 60

38 Cathleen Black Hearst Magazines 62

28 Martha Stewart Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Corra would like to congratulate these fifty women for their achievements in industry. While we almost always urge for background checks, this is one time we can honestly say these women are who they say they are.

That said, if your employment candidate isn’t on a list like this, we suggest strongly that your human resource department always conduct a background check. There is nothing more cost effective than pre-employment screening to reduce your llitigation risks and to help avoid employee turnover, employee theft and violence in the work place.

Remember what Corra says, Check them out before you hire.

Worker Shortage May Cause Human Resources To Overlook Negative Candidate Backgrounds

Workforce shortages are driving up wages for trained talent in the U.S. and abroad, according to a report released Tuesday, October 24, by recruiting firm Manpower Professional.Twenty-five percent of employers surveyed say they are paying higher salaries for qualified professionals this year. Manpower conducted the survey, which encompassed nearly 32,000 companies across 26 countries and territories, in July and August.

“The talent shortage is here and wage inflation is increasing in the specialized skill sets and industry sectors where talent is already scarce,” says Jeffrey A. Joerres, Manpower’s chairman and CEO.

Survey participants in the Asia-Pacific region are feeling the brunt of wage increases, according to the report. About 55 percent of respondents in Singapore, 40 percent in New Zealand and 38 percent in Australia are experiencing wage inflation.

The U.S. has not been left unscathed. About 40 percent of the companies participating in the survey reported plans to offer increased compensation.

Shortages of qualified professionals are fueling the wage increases. Some 45 percent of participants in the survey reported difficulties in finding educated talent, particularly in the fields of IT, nursing, engineering and accounting.

Talent shortages were most pronounced in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. More than 40 percent of survey participants from Peru, Japan, Mexico and the U.S. report experiencing shortages in professional talent.

There is a double-whammy effect produced by the workforce scarcity: Operational costs go up while corporate expansion gets stuck in neutral. Overall, almost 30 percent of the respondents say they would have hired more workers during the past six months had there been qualified talent to draw from.

This dynamic was even more pronounced in the U.S., where nearly half of the participants say they would have hired more permanent and professional staffers had the right candidates come along.

Corra realizes that the worldwide talent shortage lends new credibility to the old adage “good help is hard to find.” But then the operative word here is good help, and not merely help you throw into the mix on the hope they will do the job only to find out they are incompetent, have substance abuse problems or a record of violent crimes.

Because, while you have jobs to fill, staffing your work force with the wrong kind of people can prove very costly. There are myriad ways you can lose money, not the least of them being costly litigation. A turnover rate can cost a fortune on retraining, product deficiencies and a general decline in company morale. Corra has yet to mention theft of databases and proprietary property, along with the standard stealing of office supplies and inventory.

So while you may be in a rush to hire people, make sure your human resource staff takes the time to run appropriate pre-employment screening. for a few bucks you can save a small fortune and alleviate the risk of violence in your work place. A good background check, begins with the criminal check, and usually the Social Security Trace to be sure a candidate is legally allowed to work in this country. With the government cracking down on companies who knowingly hire undocumented workers, you can find yourself facing finds and all kinds of penalties for not checking it out.

Corra advises you to always do yourself a favor and check them out before you hire.

Volume Job Hires Require Careful Background Searches

We found this article on Techlinks.

ADP to Create 1,000 Jobs in Augusta

Governor Sonny Perdue and Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver announced today that global business solutions provider Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) will locate a business solutions center in Augusta, investing more than $30 million and creating 1,000 jobs.

“ADP is recognized throughout the world as a leader in business solutions, and now Georgians will play an even greater role in continuing to build the customer-focused reputation of this company,” said Governor Sonny Perdue. “The company’s decision to grow here in Georgia is a testament to our strong business climate and our commitment to provide businesses with a trained and talented workforce.”

Governor Perdue and Mayor Copenhaver were joined at today’s announcement by ADP Senior Vice President Steve Penrose and Development Authority of Augusta-Richmond County Chairman Loren Perry. The event was held at the Augusta Marriott Hotel adjacent to the Augusta Riverwalk.

“The city of Augusta is proud to call ADP our newest corporate citizen and community partner,” said Mayor Deke Copenhaver. “We welcome them with open arms and are ready to support them in any way possible.”

The new ADP Solution Center will provide business-to-business support to assist clients using payroll and HR-related applications, as well as automotive dealer-related products and services.

“We are delighted to be opening a new ADP Solution Center in Augusta and expand our presence in Georgia, home to ADP’s National Account Services Headquarters,” said Gary Butler, president and CEO of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. “As an industry leader, we’re committed to delivering world class service that exceeds our clients’ requirements and expectations. Over the next five years, we expect to hire 1,000 associates in Augusta and employ nearly 4,000 residents of this great state.”

“We are extremely excited to join and contribute to Augusta’s growing business community,” said Steve Penrose. “We will begin hiring and training early next year, in a temporary facility, and plan to open our doors by March 2007. We then plan to start building a new ADP facility in Augusta in late 2007 to support our growth plans.”

The Development Authority of Augusta-Richmond County helped to facilitate ADP’s selection of Augusta.

“We are proud of the teamwork on the local and state level to bring ADP to Augusta,” said Development Authority Chairman Loren Perry. “ADP recognized that the Augusta area has all the requirements they needed, such as a well-trained labor pool, a very low cost-of-living and a community with a bright future. We’re thrilled to have ADP as our corporate neighbor.”

With nearly $9 billion in revenues and more than 570,000 clients worldwide, ADP is recognized as one of the largest providers of a broad range of premier, mission-critical, cost-effective transaction processing and information-based business solutions.

Corra thinks this is always good news for a region and state. Nothing better than to have a large company move in and begin to hire local workers. Not only do the workers benefit but so does the shop owners, service people and the state piggy bank.

But sometimes volume candidate searches can lead to an overload on Human Resources, which in turn results in perfunctory background searches. In a rush to hire and fill the numerous positions, sometimes candidate qualification standards are lowered. In the rush unqualified and even candidates who may pose a danger to your work place may get hired.

Corra believes that no matter what the rush, take you time to make sure a candidate is who he really says he is. Make sure his criminal record is clean, his credit isn’t upside down and he is free of the liens and judgments that could serve as a distraction while costing your company time and money. Be sure to review civil records and study all background report and motor vehicle records for possible signs of substance abuse.

Despite all the crunch, the age old axiom an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is still true. So keep to your standards and make sure you cover enough a candidates’ background to make a thoughtful decision.

As Corra says, check him out before you hire.

Some Job Candidates Apply Thinking You Won’t Find Their Old Criminal Records

We found this article in the New York Times.

Expunged Criminal Records Live to Tell Tales

In 41 states, people accused or convicted of crimes have the legal right to rewrite history. They can have their criminal records expunged, and in theory that means that all traces of their encounters with the justice system will disappear.But enormous commercial databases are fast undoing the societal bargain of expungement, one that used to give people who had committed minor crimes a clean slate and a fresh start.Most states seal at least some records of juvenile offenses. Many states also allow adults arrested for or convicted of minor crimes like possessing marijuana, shoplifting or disorderly conduct to ask a judge, sometimes after a certain amount of time has passed without further trouble, to expunge their records. If the judge agrees, the records are destroyed or sealed.But real expungement is becoming significantly harder to accomplish in the electronic age. Records once held only in paper form by law enforcement agencies, courts and corrections departments are now routinely digitized and sold in bulk to the private sector. Some commercial databases now contain more than 100 million criminal records. They are updated only fitfully, and expunged records now often turn up in criminal background checks ordered by employers and landlords.Thomas A. Wilder, the district clerk for Tarrant County in Fort Worth, said he had received harsh criticism for refusing, on principle, to sell criminal history records in bulk.“How the hell do I expunge anything,” Mr. Wilder asked, “if I sell tapes and disks all over the country?”

Private database companies say they are diligent in updating their records to reflect the later expungement of criminal records. But lawyers, judges and experts in criminal justice say it is common for people to lose jobs and housing over information in databases that courts have ordered expunged.

These critics say that even the biggest vendors do not always update their records promptly and thoroughly and that many smaller ones use outdated, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate data.

Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer in Miami, tells her clients that expungement is a waste of time. “To tell someone their record is gone is essentially to lie to them,” Ms. Rodriguez-Taseff said. “In an electronic age, people should understand that once they have been convicted or arrested that will never go away.”

Judge Stanford Blake, whose court often enters expungement orders, said his inability to make them effective had left him feeling frustrated and helpless.

“It’s a horrible situation,” said Judge Blake, the administrative judge of the criminal division of the Eleventh Circuit Court in Miami. “It’s the ultimate Big Brother, always watching you.”

The rise in the availability of criminal histories has been accompanied by a surge in demand for them. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, criminal background checks have become routine in many employment applications.

“Something like 80 percent of large- or medium-sized employers now do background checks,” said Debbie A. Mukamal, the director of the Prisoner Reentry Institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “Employers need to know about job-related convictions to make a nuanced, responsible decision so that they can protect themselves and the public and give people a fair shot at employment.”

But the current system, Ms. Mukamal added, is not working. “It’s unfettered,” she said. “It’s not regulated. There’s misinformation.”

ChoicePoint, one of the larger database companies, performed nine million background checks last year, said Matt Furman, a spokesman. The company’s error rate is very small, Mr. Furman said. “One out of every thousand background checks has led to a consumer contact” disputing or complaining about the information provided, he said, “and one of a thousand contacts results in a change.”

There have been only a few lawsuits taking issue with the information provided to employers in background checks.

In one, filed in June in federal court in Brooklyn, Victor Guevares sued a company that had offered him a job and a database company that he says caused the offer to be withdrawn.

Mr. Guevares, now 33, was convicted of disorderly conduct more than a decade ago. New York considers that a violation like a traffic infraction rather than a crime and bars database companies from reporting such offenses to employers.

But Acxiom, a database company, reported the disorderly conduct charges to the Tyco Healthcare Group, which had offered Mr. Guevares a job in 2004. Tyco promptly withdrew the offer, one that would have doubled Mr. Guevares’s salary, to $46,000. It based its decision, his lawsuit says, on its mistaken understanding that he had committed a misdemeanor and had lied on his application about whether he had ever been “convicted of any crime which was not expunged or sealed by a court.”

Mr. Guevares, a gregarious man with a shaved head and big brown eyes, said that losing the job, which would have propelled his family into the middle class, devastated him. “I’ve never been arrested,” he said. “I’ve never been locked up. I’ve never done jail time.”

In court papers, both companies denied wrongdoing, and Tyco has sued Acxiom for breach of contract.

Catherine H. O’Neill, a lawyer with the Legal Action Center, which represents Mr. Guevares, said Acxiom deserved much of the blame.

“They should not have been vacuuming up this information in the first place,” Ms. O’Neill said.

A lawyer for Acxiom and a spokesman for Tyco declined to comment.

There is often plenty of fault to go around. Even within the government, various agencies often fail to coordinate their records.

“The problem often arises,” said Ms. Rodriguez-Taseff, the Miami lawyer, “because so many agencies have access to criminal records — the department of corrections, the police, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the courts. Even though you have an expunged record, oftentimes a policing agency or a corrections facility allows private entities to gain access to it.”

Some state laws place the burden on employers, on the apparent theory that the problem is not the availability of information but the use to which it is put. Illinois, for instance, prohibits prospective employers from asking about or making decisions based on expunged or sealed criminal histories.

A Minnesota man who agreed to talk about his experiences in exchange for anonymity said an expunged 1992 felony conviction — he declined to say for what — and erroneous information about a crime he did not commit have kept him from obtaining work for six months.

He said the database companies he contacted had been responsive if not especially fast in clearing up the problem. Some told him they updated their records annually. “I don’t think the consumer reporting agencies mean to be” reporting inaccurate or sealed information, he said. “They just need to get new CD’s.”

In November 2005, a Florida woman obtained a court order expunging records concerning her arrest in a domestic dispute the previous spring. The judge ordered the state and local police, the county sheriff and the court clerk to “expunge all information concerning indicia of arrest or criminal history.”

But when the woman tried to buy a condominium this summer, the arrest nonetheless popped up in a routine background check. The deal fell through.

“It’s going to haunt her for the rest of her life,” said a relative of the woman, who shared court and Internet search records in exchange for a promise not to identify her or her family. “They’re using public records at a given point in time and they’re not updating them, and they’re ruining people’s lives.”

Margaret Colgate Love, the nation’s pardon attorney for most of the 1990’s and the author of a new book called “Relief from the Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Conviction,” said problems like these were rooted in the nature of expungement.

“It does reveal,” Ms. Love said, “how perilous it is to build a public policy on a lie.”

Good HR Interviews Will Reveal Good Job Candidates

We found this on Inc.com

How To Interview Candidates: Part 1

Lay the foundation before beginning to interview candidates.

From: Monster.com
By: Louise Kursmark, Monster Contributing Writer

Interviewing has been called an art, and there’s no doubt that it calls for insight and creativity. But it’s also a science, requiring process, methods, and consistency to produce truly accurate and effective results. Look at it this way: Your art will flourish within the sound framework of a systematic, scientific approach.

“Having a preplanned structure ensures you’re asking the right questions,” says Shelly Goldman of The Goldman Group Advantage, a Reston, Virginia, executive recruiting firm. Whether she’s recruiting 50 entry-level workers or just one C-level executive, Goldman takes the time to lay the foundation before beginning to interview candidates. Here are some guidelines.

Define your objectives before you start

Even if you think you’re an expert interviewer, a “seat-of-the-pants” approach can backfire. Take the time to clearly define what you are looking for before you begin recruiting.

• Describe the position’s duties and the technical knowledge and skills required to do the job.
• Identify success factors: How did previous top performers in this job behave?
• Establish performance expectations: What do you expect this person to accomplish?

For this step, bring in the hiring manager as well as peers or those who have performed the job in the past to make sure that you are painting an accurate picture of the ideal candidate. Armed with this information, you’ll be better able to evaluate each candidate.

Select your questions in advance

Don’t rely on a job description and a candidate’s resume to structure the interview. You’ll get much better information if you carefully pre-select questions that allow you to evaluate whether a candidate has those skills and behaviors you’ve identified as essential for the job.

You might include some or all of these types of questions:

1. Icebreakers: As their name implies, icebreakers are used to build rapport and set candidates at ease before beginning the formal interview. Examples:

• Did you have any trouble finding our office?
• Before we start, would you like a cup of coffee or glass of ice water?
• Tell me about yourself.

2. Traditional Questions: With these, you can gather general information about a candidate and their skills and experience. Because these questions are asked often, many candidates will have prepared answers to them, so they can be used to help candidates feel at ease in the early stages of an interview. Examples:

• What are your greatest strengths?
• What is your experience with [competency, skill, function, etc.]?
• Why do you want to work for us?

3. Situational Questions: Ask candidates what they would do in a specific situation relevant to the job at hand. These questions can help you understand a candidate’s thought process. Examples:

• How would you deal with an irate customer?
• If we were to hire you, what is the first thing you would do?
• How do you deal with stress on the job?

4. Behavior-Based Questions: These require candidates to share a specific example from their past experience. Each complete answer from a candidate should be in the form of a SAR response–the complete Situation, Action, and Result. If a candidate skips any of these three elements, prompt them to fill in the blanks. Examples:

• Tell me about a crisis you could have prevented. Did you do anything differently after the crisis had passed?
• Tell me how you resolve crises by deploying your team members. Give me a specific example.
• Crises usually require us to act quickly. In retrospect, how would you have handled a recent crisis differently, if you had been given more time to think before acting?

“Behavior-based interviewing ensures we are making good decisions based on established criteria for success, in the position or in the organization,” says Joan Woodward, assistant vice president and senior human resources business partner at Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati.

5. Culture-Fit Questions: These will help you select candidates who are motivated and suited to perform well in the unique environment of your organization. Examples:

• What gave you the greatest feeling of achievement in your last job? Why was this so satisfying?
• Why did you choose this type of work?
• What motivates you to work hard? Give me some examples.

Build an interview team

Whenever possible, have more than one person interview candidates; you’ll gain a balanced perspective and be more likely to have a fair hiring process. In addition to the reporting manager and a Human Resources representative, think about including some of the people who will be working with the new hire.

At Fifth Third Bank, by the time candidates reach Joan Woodward, they have already been pre-screened for essential job skills. “One of the most important things for me is to find out if they are going to fit within the culture and the team environment at Fifth Third,” she says. “My favorite kinds of questions are to determine if they are going to be a good team member, because the team environment is a critical component of our culture at Fifth Third.”

Now that you’ve prepared thoroughly, you can begin the interview process. In Part 2 of this series, we’ll address how to select an initial candidate pool, conduct the interview, document your findings, and communicate with candidates for a smooth, professional, and ultimately effective selection process.

Corra thinks this article lays excellent ground work for good interview procedures. Of course, any interview and candidate selection should be followed by a comprehensive employment screening program. This is increasingly important, and it is for no small reason that about eighty percent of American businesses conduct at least the routine criminal check as well as credit and civil reviews.

Increasingly, as insurance companies hand this responsibility back to trucking companies and other clients, there is a greater demand for Motor Vehicle Records (MVR).

Interview your candidate thoroughly and carefully. then run a background check to see if he or she is really telling the truth. It will save you money on rehiring, retraining, liability and breakdown of morale in the work place.

So, as Corra says, check them out before you hire.