Hire slow, fire fast!

You might have heard the adage, but still need help on what it means.

Hire slow means avoiding your gut instinct and identifying whether the candidate will be a good fit for the culture, the team and the job.

A toxic employee can be especially damaging to a team, so be on the lookout for signs of incivility.  Try these questions:

·      Ask what their former employees say about them (ask for the good and the bad)

·      Ask them to share a time they had to deal with stress or conflict and follow up by asking how they dealt with it.

·      Ask them what they’d like to improve about themselves (in fact, ask them this question a couple of times to get them to dig deep and share 3 things)

And…ask the Receptionist how the candidate treated them or take the candidate out for lunch and see how they treat those who serve you.  You might even want to have the restaurant mess up their order (like Charles Schwab CEO, Walt Bettinger) to check their response.