Preparation is the key to conducting any good interview, however many hiring managers and employers neglect to go over a candidate's paper work prior to the interview. Skimming over a resume right before the interview or as your interviewing potential employees is rude and makes your company look bad. Part of finding the right questions to ask potential employees, is knowing what's already on their resume.

With the idea of preparing yourself ahead of time, sit down and figure out some of the key characteristics you would like your employees to have, or better yet some characteristics that your employees now have. Some good characteristics to look for are:

• Excellent attendance and dependability: You don't want to hire employees who flake out on you all the time or are sick more than half the time they're at work.
• Integrity and Honesty: Every company should strive to hire individuals with integrity and honesty to uphold a certain reputation among consumers.
• Good communication skills: Many companies require you to work with other employees as well as deal with customers so communication skills are a must.
• Motivated: It's very difficult to motivate someone to do something, so finding employees who are self motivated is a bonus for your company.
• Positive: There is much to say about a work environment that promotes positive energy and one that does not. Companies with positive employees are far more productive than those who are not.

Finding the right questions

As you look through resumes and decide which characteristics to look for in potential employees you can then begin to come up with meaningful questions to help you narrow the pick down. The questions you ask for hiring will be somewhat different than others, because every company is different. The following questions are just general ones to help get you started thinking:

1. Why do you want to work with us? (Is it the pay? Do they love the company? Etc.)
2. What are the last 5 jobs you were employed in? (This will give you a good idea of where the employee is coming from and what experience they have.)
3. What would your last employer say about your dependability, attendance, and work ethic?
4. When have you done more on a job than was required and what were you doing?
5. Do you set goals for yourself? Tell me about a goal you set and how you achieved it?
6. Tell me how communication has played a positive role in your life and how the lack of communication has hindered you.
7. Tell me how you would react to a job with a team that had failed? (This will give you a good idea on whether or not they can take responsibility for their own and their team's actions, or if they like to place blame.)

Asking quality questions to make hiring easier is an important step in finding the right employees for any company. Without the right questions you are basically sitting with a stranger trying to have a conversation. Prepare yourself ahead of time, consider key characteristics of good employees, and come up with some meaningful questions.