Hiring new employees is one of the challenges for a small business' human resources department and can be stressful for a company who is trying to grow. When a company makes a new hire, there's a natural amount of fear or concern wondering whether that employee is going to turn out to be a star performer or a liability. Many times, whether an employee is a star performer or a liability has less to do with their skills, and more to do with their innate attitude and ability to take and handle risk. In addition to the skills that anyone needs to have to perform the functions of the job, a good prospect also needs the following:

• Emotional Intelligence
• Coachability
• Motivation
• Temperament, and
• Technical Competence

In order to align which prospective employees will fit in your company, your company needs to review the atmosphere and goals of your company. A magazine with tight deadlines takes one type of personality; while a physician's office needs a different personality.

Before you know what spectrum of the above list your new employees should be on, you need to evaluate where the company is now and where you want it to be in 5 years or 10 years from now; hence why this area is one of the largest challenges for human resources departments. Then plan for the people you can bring on today who can also grow with the company in the ways that you want your company to grow. Items to consider within the company include:

• The company's attitude
• Technical assessments that you may want to implement
• Do your people need to be detail oriented or be able to see the big picture
• Do they need to be self starters or will they be hand fed their assignments?

Once you have identified a group of people who could do the job, now its time to interview. The interviewee should be talking at least 80 % of the time during the interview. Let them talk, another of the challenges for human resources. Only follow up if the interviewee leaves something out, then ask about it. Pay close attention to what the interviewee is saying and possibly even closer attention to what they are not saying.

Behavioral questions are the big focus these days, ask about a situation they were in and how they resolved the problem. This tells you that they way they did things before will likely be the way they handle them today (or tomorrow) in your company if you hire them. Develop questions that you can draw from with any interview. For instance, tell me of a time in your most recent position where you believed something was handled incorrectly. What did you do about it? Another possible type question is Tell me of a time when you were very proud of your work, what kind of recognition did you receive and how would you have liked to have been recognized?

These types of questions show the interviewer the type of person they are interviewing, and they focus on the behavioral skills the person has; which can make or break a company.

If you did not know these basic pieces of interviewing and company evaluation, you may want to consider consulting with a human resources firm who does this for companies across the country. This allows the owners of the company to focus on new clients and servicing current clients, rather than working inside the business putting out the fires that seem to come up at the most inopportune times. Many times, a consulting firm is less expensive than a small business would assume and may save the business a lot of headaches.