Nobody teaches you how to interview someone. You just end up doing it, usually for the first time, right in the middle of half-figured-out payroll, paperwork you’re still learning as you go, and a job posting that got way more replies than you expected.
Here’s the part that actually helps: interviewing isn’t a personality trait. It’s a process. Once you’ve got a decent one, the rest gets easier fast.
Why interviewing well matters for a small business
A bad hire can cost your business about 30 percent of that person’s first-year salary. But the number that actually stings more is the time. Rewriting the job post. Doing it all again. Explaining to your team why the new person didn’t work out.
An interview is trying to answer two things at once: can this person do the job, and do they fit how you actually work day to day. Someone can look perfect on paper and still be wrong for a small team where everyone answers the phone, packs boxes, and handles a customer complaint before lunch.
One thing people forget: they’re interviewing you too. If you show up late, ramble, or can’t say what happens next, good candidates notice. And they tell people, which means your interviews are quietly part of your business brand whether you think about it that way or not.
How to interview a candidate, step by step
There’s no perfect formula, but there is a rough order that works. Screen first, define the role, ask consistent questions, score them the same way, and close things out properly. Miss a step and you’ll feel it later, usually when you’re trying to remember why you liked one candidate over another.
Screen candidates before you interview them
Before you burn an hour on a full interview, do a 15-minute call. Phone or video, it doesn’t matter. This isn’t the interview, it’s the filter. Ask about salary range, availability, and whatever the one non-negotiable requirement is for the role.
Skipping this step is how you end up an hour into a great conversation before realizing the person needs 20 dollars more an hour than you can pay. That’s on you, not them.
Define the role before you write a single question
You can’t judge someone against a role you haven’t defined. “Handles social media” doesn’t mean anything. “Schedules 15 posts a week across Instagram and TikTok, replies to comments same-day” means something.
Write down the must-haves. Separately, write down the nice-to-haves, the stuff you’d love but won’t walk away over. And be honest about the soft requirements too, even the ones that feel awkward to put in writing. If you need someone who can jump between three different tasks without hand-holding, that’s a real requirement. Say so, at least to yourself.
Skip this step and your questions end up as vague as the job posting, which means your gut is doing all the deciding later.
Ask the same questions to every candidate
Pick five or six questions and use them for every candidate for that role. This is the boring part that actually works. It’s the difference between comparing people fairly and just remembering who you liked more. (More on which questions to actually ask below.)
Score every candidate the same way
Before anyone walks in, pick three to five things that actually matter for this role. Score each candidate on those, not on a vibe. Here is an example template:
| What you’re checking | Weak | Some evidence | Strong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Communication | |||
| Relevant experience | |||
| Problem solving | |||
| Fits the team |
Don’t just circle a number. Write the actual thing they said. “Strong, described talking a refund dispute down without escalating it” means something in three weeks. A lone number doesn’t.
Fill this out right after, not the next morning after four other interviews have blurred together.
Keep it a conversation, not an interrogation
Structure doesn’t have to mean stiff. Let them ask questions. Actually listen instead of thinking about your next question while they’re mid-sentence, which is easier said than done. Forty-five minutes to an hour is usually plenty for most roles. Going way over that starts feeling like a waste of everyone’s afternoon.
Close the interview the same way every time
Tell them what happens next and roughly when. Then actually do that. People remember when you said “end of the week” and they heard nothing for a month.
What are good interview questions to ask a candidate?
Here are a few interview example questions you can use as-is or adapt, grouped by what each one is actually trying to test:
Behavioral questions (real things that already happened)
- Tell me about a time a customer was genuinely upset with you. What did you do?
- Walk me through a project, start to finish. What obstacles did you have to overcome during it?
- Describe a disagreement with a coworker or manager about how something should get done and how it was resolved.
Skill-based questions (do they actually know the job)
- Walk me through how you’d close the books at month end.
- Give me a rough plan for an email campaign with a two-week runway.
- What would you like to learn during your first month here?
Situational questions (hypotheticals specific to your business)
- Two people on the team disagree about how to handle a client. You step in, what do you say?
- A shipment’s late and a customer’s on the phone. Walk me through that call.
- I ask you to do something totally outside your job description with zero notice. How do you respond?
The behavioral bucket tends to matter more. Past behavior is a decent predictor. Hypotheticals are fine, but most people are pretty good at guessing what answer you want to hear and giving you that instead.
Interview best practices for small business hiring managers
Most of interviewing best practices comes down to two things: staying out of legal trouble and not tripping over the same mistakes everyone makes the first few times they hire.
Stay compliant
Keep questions job-related. Steer clear of age, disability, marital status, religion, whether they’re planning kids, all of it, even if it comes up naturally in conversation. If a candidate has a disability, the ADA angle is to describe what the job actually requires and ask if they can do it, not to ask about the disability directly.
Running interviews on video? A quick heads-up that a barking dog or a less-than-perfect home office won’t count against anyone goes a long way. Not everyone has a quiet room to disappear into.
Watch for common mistakes
- Talking about your own company for 20 minutes before asking the candidate anything
- Asking questions that basically hand over the answer you’re looking for
- Deciding on gut feeling and backfilling the reasoning later
- Skipping references because the conversation felt great
- Winging different questions for each candidate, which makes comparing them nearly impossible
None of this is hard to fix. It just takes remembering to do it once you’re actually in the room and the conversation’s moving.
How to evaluate candidates after the interview
Compare people to the role you defined at the start, not to each other in a vacuum. Go over your notes within a day or two, while you can still remember which candidate said what. If someone else is involved in the decision, make sure you’re both scoring off the same sheet, or you’re just comparing two different opinions and calling it data.
Don’t drag this out. Good people have other options, and a slow process is one of the more common reasons small businesses lose someone they actually wanted.
Setting up your business before you hire
There’s still paperwork. A signed offer, a Form W-4, a Form I-9, plus whatever your state wants on top of that. Before hiring your first employee, it’s worth double-checking your business is actually set up to do it. That means having a real legal entity in place, whether that’s an LLC or a corporation, which usually comes down to filing articles of organization with your state. It also means having an EIN, which you can get for free through the IRS website, since you’ll need it for payroll and tax reporting either way.
If payroll isn’t set up yet, get it running before the first check is due, not the week of.
Conclusion
The first few interviews you run are going to feel a little awkward. That’s fine, that’s normal. Stick with the same structure a handful of times and it stops feeling like performance and starts feeling like a thing you’re just decent at now.