I am in the process of hiring my first direct. This part of the management process is new to me, so I'm flying blinder than normal.
I'm just at the stage of phone screens for a project manager job and interested in suggestions on the types of questions to do at this stage.
Really wishing Mike and Mark would complete the Interviewer series of podcasts magically in the next week. ;)
Thanks,
Joel BC
Learn from Past Mistakes
Joel,
You can ask any of the usual questions mentioned in the podcasts. That's a good start.
After we interview someone on-site, all of the interviewers get together and debrief. If the answer turns out to be "no", we try to talk about how we could have detected it sooner (and cheaper). We've used these discussions to add a few (domain-specific) questions to our phone interviews.
--Rich
Rich gives good advice
Pick any five-8 behavioural questions that will be pertinent to the work you want the person to do. If he/she is an entry level person, asking about a time he had to discipline a direct is probably not going to get you an answer of any value.
If it is customer service, ask questions about how they have handled relationship type issues.
You should be able to look at every question you ask and tie it back to a performance you deem important to being successful in that role.