How You Can Avoid Hiring Toxic Employees Through Interview

Your success in hiring depends on the quality of the people you employ in strategic roles. You have to make hiring decisions based on reliable data, not just gut instinct and first impressions.

You want to solicit genuine answers which surface the candidate's real opinions, traits, values and skills. Since most candidates have rehearsed for the usual questions, you will need questions that require the candidate to use their experience as examples. These examples will tell you who they are.

Here are the questions:

1. Can you remember ever seeing or hearing about a coworker mistreated in the workplace? How did you manage or react to the situation?

This question will let the candidates reveal their values and ethics. You're also evaluating their capacity to feel empathy and compassion. Moreover, the action they took in this situation tells you about their ability to persuade others to stop the mistreatment or otherwise remedy the situation.

Their response also tells you about their risk tolerance (if they acted alone to stop the mistreatment). Did they gamble their reputation or even their job to do the right thing?

It's crucial to hire an employee who will not negatively affect others with their toxicity.

2. Please describe to me about an especially bad day you've experienced this past year or two - a day when nothing was routine, and almost everything went wrong? How did you manage all the stress and disaster?

Their answer gives you some perspective on what situations they consider "routine" against "disaster" and "especially bad." But the answer you're looking for is their coping mechanisms. Listen carefully to the retelling for words such as "so upset," "so angry," "had a major meltdown," and "frantic,".

Did they solve the problems themselves or did someone else do it? How much and for how long did this problem affect their work and life? How does their idea of "serious" compare with yours? Does their reaction seem right or too much? How did their judgement and solution compare to what you consider proper for the situation?

3. Explain a new idea to me. For example, explain a product to me so well that I could make a presentation on it.

There are not many job candidates who are willing to admit that they have weak communication skills. Job candidates always say they have "excellent oral and written communication skills." This question will put their communication skills to test. As the job candidate explains the product, ask yourself these questions that will reveal the truth about their communication skills:

Do they overview the idea coherently — and then fill in the details?
Do they organise their thoughts clearly and logically?
Do they skip steps and definitions, making assumptions about what you "should" know?
Does their body language suggest impatience?
Do they "talk down" to you, demonstrating arrogance that will likely cause conflict with coworkers or customers on any future job?
Is their language lazy and rude? Again, it's representative of the word they'll use with customers as your representative in casual conversations.

Of course, your interview questions have to meet the job criteria. These questions assume the job candidate must communicate with people and use reasonable judgment.

These three questions can mean the difference between a strategic hire and a costly termination of a toxic employee.

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Source: TLNT