How to Ask Interview Questions

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As you begin searching for great employees to join your team or company, you need to think about the interviews you have to conduct. While knowing the right and wrong questions to ask is important, it’s also important to know how to ask those questions. Interview questions can be misleading, misinterpreted, and you give candidates false hope if you aren’t careful.

While in an interview, you as an employer need to pay special attention to your body language, word choice, and even your tone when asking questions. To help you out, here are five tips on asking interview questions:

1. Pay Attention to Tone

You’re probably a really busy person. You need to fill the position quickly. Maybe you get straight to the point with your questions. Maybe you ask broad questions. No matter what questions you’re asking, you need to pay attention to the tone you’re using when asking them. If you ask them quickly or passively, a candidate could get the impression that you don’t care about them or filling the job. Remember, you’re making a first impression with each candidate, so it’s important that you have a professional tone during the interview.

2. Prepare Your Questions

One of the worst things you can do for the candidate’s experience is to not be prepared. Avoiding this requires not only having questions ready for candidates, but reviewing their resumes and cover letters so that you can ask more specific and targeted questions. Remember, you’re trying to figure out if this person can do the job and also fit in with your company culture.

3. Have a Conversation

Since you’re trying to get to know candidates, it helps to have a conversation during the interview. While there is specific information you need to learn from the interview, it allows them to talk about their experiences, passions, and their ideal job and work setting. Having a more natural conversation with candidates will help them be more relaxed and willing to answer all of your questions.

4. Listen and Respond

While a conversation is a key element to every successful interview, you also need to make sure you are listening to what candidates are saying and respond to that. You have prepared questions, but you also need to ask follow-up questions to bounce off what the candidates are saying. Your interview may end up going a different way than you expected, but that can be a really great thing because you could end up finding the perfect candidate. Listening to candidates will help you learn about them and their experiences as employees.

5. Be Honest

During your interview, it may be tempting to talking about only the exciting or fascinating aspects of the position, but you need to be upfront and honest about everything the position entails. It can turn off recent hires if you tell them one thing during an interview and expect something completely different from them as an employee. Be honest with your expectations and be honest with the job requirements. Remember, you could be talking to someone you are going to hire and work with.

Do you have any tips on asking interview questions? How do you handle interviews? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

Positioning for Success: Develop a Process

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Last week we talked about how you need to create purpose in order to better position yourself for success, but it doesn’t stop there. In order to really achieve that success, you have to go beyond the purpose and develop a process for success. While it sounds like a lot of work, you need to put in the time and effort to create the self you want to be.

While this could be applied to your personal life, it also greatly applies to who you are as an employee. When trying to get a new job or start a new career, having a developed process will help. Here are a few things you need in order to position yourself for success:

Passion

We talked about the need for passion when it comes to creating purpose, but it’s also a vital step in developing your process. Without passion, it’s going to be extremely difficult for you to find a job. In fact, if you don’t have passion for what you do, then you need to consider a career change. What are you passionate about? Can you turn that into a career? These are the types of questions to ask yourself before beginning.

Expectations

Do you want to be successful in life and your career? Then don’t expect perfection. Should you always do your best work and work your hardest? Yes, but perfection is impossible. When you set yourself up for perfection, you will fail. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t have high standards, but you need to know your limits and set your expectations within those limitations.

Belief

Above most things, you need to believe in yourself. You need to believe that you will succeed. In order to better position yourself for success, you need to believe that you will be successful. As a step in the process for achieving success, belief is a foundation that you must have. If you don’t believe in yourself, then no one else will and you’ll find the process of getting a job much more difficult.

Self-Evaluation

If you’re caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life, then it can be difficult to shift your focus on pursing a new career. Instead of allowing projects, other people, and hobbies to take all of your time, schedule some “me” time. When you schedule time for yourself, you’re able to better focus and think about how to position yourself.

Relationships

When you are starting a new career, looking for a new job, or simply need some professional advice, it helps to have genuine relationships with established professionals. These people can be in your network, they could be your friends or mentors. No matter what, you need to foster genuine relationships and work at keeping them strong because in the professional world, it pays to have friends.

September Associate of the Month

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At Diverse Staffing, we take great pride in our associates and the work they do. Because our associates are so dedicated and productive, we like to take the time to recognize them and their accomplishments. Our Greenwood Recruiting Center launched a new program in August to start recognizing individual associates for their:

  • Attendance records
  • Skills
  • Recognition from clients/placement
  • Time with Diverse Staffing
  • Work performance

Through the Associate of the Month program, Diverse Staffing is able to engage and recognize our most dedicated and talented workers. This month, we’re excited to announce that Charles Downing received the Associate of the Month award for our Greenwood Recruiting Center. Charles is a dedicated Diverse Staffing associate who exemplifies excellent work performance and attendance.

Keep up the great work, Charles!

September Associate of the Month

Hiring Mistakes to Avoid

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Finding the right hires for your company or business is crucial to productivity, profit, and success. In order to grow and succeed the way you want to, you need the best available talent. One way to not get that talent is to fall victim to hiring mistakes. When you don’t know what mistakes to avoid when hiring, you could end up hiring someone who isn’t a great fit for your company or the position you’re hiring for.

Hiring mistakes happen every day. Unfortunately, they can be rather costly. Instead of wasting money on poor hiring decisions, know those mistakes so you can avoid them in the future:

1. Going with your “gut” feeling.

No matter how great your “gut” or instincts usually are, it isn’t enough when it comes to hiring a new employee. You need to have evidence and data to back up your decision. Just because a job candidate looks great on a resume or nails that pre-screen interview, it doesn’t mean they are right for the job. Take your time, get to know candidates, and interview several people before you make your decision.

2. Not knowing what questions to ask.

It’s important to know the right questions to ask before interviewing someone. Asking about educational background and work experiences are great places to start, but ultimately won’t give you enough information. Instead, you need to ask for specific examples that can point you in the right direction of what this candidate will be like as an employee.

3. Checking for cultural fit.

Whether you know it or not, your business has a culture. Before hiring someone, it’s important to know they’ll fit in the culture you’ve created. The best way to do this is to get to know a candidate on a more personal level. You need to make sure their values as an employee line up with your values as a company.

4. Not having a defined process.

Before you ever begin the hiring or interviewing process, you need to have established processes. These processes range from sourcing job candidates all the way to onboarding new hires. Before you get started, think out timelines, questions, and how you will handle all of the paper work.

Do you have any advice for those getting ready to hire? What mistakes have you made in the past? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments below!

Positioning for Success: Creating Purpose

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When you feel like you’re down on your luck and having trouble finding your next job opportunity, it can be hard to find purpose in anything. From filling out job applications to filing unemployment, you may be pretty discouraged. One of the best ways to combat this feeling is to position yourself for success. It’s easy to give up and settle, but you won’t find success by doing that.

Positioning yourself for success can be difficult and is certainly a journey. However, by creating purpose you may just find the success you are looking for. Even if you are currently unemployed, that doesn’t mean you have to be purposeless. Here are a few ways to position yourself for success by creating purpose:

Brand Yourself

No matter what type of career or industry you work in, knowing who you are is important. Branding yourself can be broken down into just that. While companies use brands to tell consumers and customers about their products and services, you need to create a personal brand that tells potential employers about you. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need a logo or a website. It does however mean you need to evaluate your goals, lifestyle, and your professional persona.

Develop Passion

Without passion, much of life will seem pointless and purposeless. If you aren’t excited about what you do for a living, then you’ll have a much harder time finding a job. You need passion in order to make a difference, make a change, or improve your career. Without passion, you are far more likely to remain stagnant in life. By making conscious choices and decisions to develop a passion for what you do, you’ll find increased results in your job search.

If you want change to happen in your life—if you want to find a new or better job—then you need to focus on these factors:

  • Your mind
  • Your attitude
  • Your appearance
  • Your words
  • Your follow-up

When you focus on these things and make efforts to improve them, then you’ll start to see positive changes happening in your life.

Do you have any suggestions for creating purpose in your life or career? Leave your stories and suggestions in the comments section below!

Diverse Staffing Opens Plainfield Location

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Everyone at Diverse Staffing is proud to announce that we have officially opened our Plainfield recruiting center. Through this office, we’ll be able to better serve our clients on the west side of Indianapolis and connect even more people with job opportunities. For those currently looking for new job or career opportunities, visit our recruiting center at:

160 Plainfield Village Drive, Suite 129

Plainfield, Indiana 46168

We are currently filling for the following positions:

  • Warehouse
  • Pick and Pack
  • Shipping and Receiving
  • Forklift Operators
  • Assembly
  • Material Handlers
  • Machine Operators
  • Equipment Operators
  • Quality Control

If you come to the recruiting center to apply in person, we ask that you bring a copy of your resume (if you have one) and be prepared to interview.

You can also see a list of open positions and apply online here: www.diversestaffing.com/apply.

Call our Plainfield Recruiting center at 317-203-5697 to learn more about job opportunities and Diverse Staffing.

Video Resume: Best Practices

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Depending on the field of work you are in, creating a video resume may be the best way to land a new job. If you work in a highly competitive or creative industry, then a video resume can help you get noticed by potential employers. Not only can you showcase your skills, but you’ll be able to show more of your personality than with a traditional paper resume and cover letter.
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Pull Factors for Your Company

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Have you ever stopped to wonder why people choose to work at your company? For many, it’s all about the pull factors—the things ‘pulling’ candidates and employees into a company. Last week, we talked about the things pushing employees out of your company, but what about the things pulling them in or keeping them there? Whether you cultivate these pull factors or not, they are there.

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