How many of you fell in love and asked your future spouse to marry you all in the span of 45 minutes? I would venture to guess not many. For those who have, congratulations–you are rare. So my question is why you consider interviewing a prospective employee to be any different? I have spoken to many companies out there that interview a candidate for about 45 minutes and maybe check a couple of references, hire and then they wonder why they are disappointed that the person wasn’t who they thought they were.

It is important to spend the time to get to know your future employee. You have to dig in and bypass the nice suit and the canned interview answers to see the real person. Here are a few things to watch out for when looking for that perfect hire:

1) Are you desperate to fill your position or is the person desperate to get a job? Either one is fraught with peril, not to mention very unattractive. Both parties will usually see and hear what they want to and ignore any potential warning signs that it is not a good match.
2) Does the candidate bad mouth their former employer? Even if it might be warranted this is a big red flag for many reasons. One being if their former employer was so bad and they were so good why did they stay there? Two, you may as well sign yourself up to be the next in line for the bad mouth train.
3) Don’t hire with your gut. You hear employers say “I went with my gut on this one”. Well you may as well throw a dart at a wall full of resumes and hire that person. Your gut may give you some inkling about someone, BUT you have to follow that with doing your due diligence to prove or disprove what your gut told you.

So when you interview the next “A player” for your company, remember to start off with the goal of really getting to know that person and determining if there is a long term match there, not just filling the empty chair in your company. Everyone will benefit from it.