Advice For Hiring Candidates And Conducting Performance Appraisals

Each month, BSCAI  affinity partners share industry tips to help you build a better business. Below, hear from Affinity HR Group, BSCAI’s endorsed HR partner, on the best ways to handle a potential employee interview, as well as best practices when it comes to employee review processes. Want more industry tips? Visit www.bscai.org/Contractor-Connections-Hub.

 Tip #1: Interviewing Potential Employees

Interviewing a potential employee is a critical piece of the recruiting process and, if handled correctly, it can be effective. If not, it can be worthless. And even worse, asking certain questions can be illegal. Here’s what we recommend:

• Know in advance who will be on the interview team and what questions will be asked.

• Use a panel interview where multiple people are interviewing the candidate at the same time.

• Ask the same or similar questions of all candidates.

• Stick to the script — try not to get off track or be influenced by non-work related questions or conversations.

• Most importantly, avoid prohibited interview questions on topics such as age, national origin and race.

Tip #2: Consider Quarterly Reviews Instead Of Annual Ones

While Affinity HR Group does not have a specific performance management program to recommend, we will confess that we remain underwhelmed with the vast majority of them. 

Annual conversations are hardly sufficient to truly manage performance. Often times the goals change throughout the year but usually the performance goals don’t, meaning that employees are evaluated based on out-of-date criteria. And there is always the problem with recency errors — we forget about the accomplishments or failures early in the 12 month period and put added weight on the performance in the months and weeks leading up to the annual review. Instead, we prefer quarterly goals that require ongoing feedback and communication.