Decide what the job needs before you meet anyone. Ask every candidate the same questions, and score what you hear against the job, not against your gut.
The first time I sat on the hiring side of the table, I had a good conversation, liked the person, and hired him. He did not work out, and it took me a while to see why: the interview told me almost nothing about whether he could do the job, only that I enjoyed talking to him. What follows is the method I use now.
What to decide before the first interview
Before you write a single question, pull three or four things straight out of the job description, the things that actually decide whether this hire works out. Not “team player” or “great attitude.” Every posting says that, and none of it is testable in an hour. I mean specific behaviours: can this person read a blueprint and catch an error before it costs you, can they close a sale on the phone without a script, can they handle an angry customer without escalating it to me.
Write each one as something you could watch someone do, not a trait. Not “organized,” but “can run four job sites in a week without missing a delivery.” If you cannot picture the behaviour, you cannot write a question that tests for it, and the interview drifts back into a nice conversation. If your job description does not spell these out already, fix that first. The questions, the timing, and the scorecard below are all built on those three or four lines.
The questions that work
Once you know what the job needs, build “tell me about a time” questions around each one, not hypotheticals. A hypothetical (“what would you do if a customer was upset”) gets a rehearsed answer about what a good employee would do. A behavioural question gets what this person actually did.
Eight I would ask for a typical small-business hire:
- Tell me about a time a customer or client was genuinely upset with you. What happened, and what did you do?
- Tell me about a time you had to choose between two urgent tasks. How did you decide, and what did you do about the one you put off?
- Tell me about a mistake you made at work. What did you do after you noticed it?
- Tell me about a time you had to learn something new quickly to get a job done.
- Tell me about a time you disagreed with a coworker or a boss. What did you do?
- Tell me about a task you had to keep doing even though it was repetitive or unpleasant.
- Tell me about a time nobody was checking on your work for a stretch. What actually got done?
- Tell me about a time you had less time than the job needed. What did you cut, and what did you protect?
A good answer has a real situation, a real action the person took (listen for “I,” not just “we”), and a real result. Owning a mistake tells you more than a spotless story. A weak answer stays vague, gives the team credit with no role for the candidate, or turns into a complaint about someone else.
What you cannot ask in Manitoba
Manitoba’s Human Rights Code covers hiring, and the Commission’s guideline is specific about where interviewers go wrong. On the application itself: “The application form or process should not require an applicant to disclose their age, sex, ancestry, marital or family status, or other protected characteristic, unless that information is relevant to your assessment of them.” Its interview examples all follow one pattern: ask about the job requirement itself, never the personal circumstance behind it.
- Needs someone to open the office for contractors at 6:00 a.m.? Ask about availability at that hour, not about child care.
- Needs someone to drive a forklift? Ask about forklift experience, not about physical limitations.
- Needs travel between sites? Ask about access to a vehicle and overtime, not about family or religious commitments in the evening.
The fix is the same every time: go back to the job description. If a requirement is genuinely essential, you can ask about the requirement itself. What you cannot do is ask about the personal characteristic you are guessing might get in the way of it.
How to run the hour
My structure is simple, and I keep it to about an hour so it does not turn into a rambling coffee chat.
- Open, 5 minutes. Say what the role is and how the hour will run. Save selling the job for after you have seen how they answer.
- Your questions, 30 to 35 minutes. Work through the eight behavioural questions, same order, for every candidate. If an answer is vague, ask one follow-up, and use it for everyone.
- Their questions, 10 to 15 minutes. What they ask tells you almost as much as what they answered.
- Next steps, 5 minutes. Tell them honestly when they will hear back, and hold that date.
How to score it
Score each of the job’s three or four needs on a simple 1 to 3 scale, filled in right after the candidate leaves, before you talk to a co-interviewer or look at the next resume. Wait even until end of day and candidates start to blur together.
| What the job needs | 1: Did not show it | 2: Showed it, with hesitation | 3: Showed it clearly, with a real example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Handles an upset customer without escalating it | No real example, or made it someone else’s fault | Gave an example but it was vague or minor | Specific situation, what they said, and the outcome |
| Works without someone checking in daily | Described needing frequent direction | Some independence, but leaned on a supervisor for decisions | Clear example of running a task alone start to finish |
| Learns a new task quickly on the job | No example of learning something unfamiliar under pressure | Learned it, but slowly or with a lot of help | Picked it up fast, with a specific example |
| Total | Add the three scores. Compare candidates on the total, not on who you liked more. | ||
Swap the three needs for the ones your own job description actually calls for. The scale stays the same.
The mistakes first-time interviewers make
Job Bank, the Government of Canada’s employment site, publishes interview guidance for employers, and two of its warnings match what I got wrong my first several times interviewing someone. “Do not talk too much during the interview,” it says. In my experience that is the easiest mistake to make, because filling silence feels like being a good host.
The same guidance adds: “Do not make a decision too early. Listen carefully to what the candidate has to say through the whole interview.” In my experience the decision usually gets made in the first five minutes, on the handshake and the small talk, and the rest of the hour becomes the interviewer hunting for reasons to confirm it.
The third is hiring the person you enjoyed talking to instead of the person who can do the job. I have done this myself: hired the warm, funny candidate over one who was a little stiff but gave sharper answers. The stiff one would have done the job better. A structured set of questions, scored the same way for everyone, stops the interview from quietly becoming “who did I like.”
References and a work sample as the check on the interview
An interview, even a good one, is still someone telling you about themselves. Two things check whether it holds up.
A work sample. Have the candidate do a small, real piece of the actual job rather than talk about it: price a real job off your numbers, draft a real email to a difficult customer, walk you through a real week of deliveries. Watching a slice of the work tells you more than another round of questions.
References. Call the previous manager and ask specifically how the person behaved under pressure, not just whether the manager would rehire them. Most reference calls only confirm dates and titles; the useful ones ask a pointed question and wait for the answer.
Neither replaces the other. Used together, they catch different surprises.
The three ways I can help, cheapest first
Start at the cheapest one that solves your problem.
Do it yourself on Quadrant. Quadrant, the tool I built and use myself, scores applicants against your job description and builds structured interview questions from it, for a subscription instead of a fee.
Hiring Services, by the job or by the month. I write the posting, publish it, screen every applicant on Quadrant, and hand you a ranked shortlist with an interview guide already built around the job’s needs. One Hire is $2,999 per role. Always Hiring is $1,500 a month for up to three roles, or $2,999 a month for up to ten, three-month minimum, then month to month. Full details on the Hiring Services page.
Contract Recruiting, the full search. You give me the job description, I run the search end to end, including the interviews, and you stay as involved as you want. That is 15% of first-year base salary, $5,000 minimum per role, charged once, no retainer. Full details on the Contract Recruiting page.
Worth reading before your next hire: which DISC profile actually fits a sales role, what Manitoba law says about a probation period, and how to write a job posting that gets applicants.
Questions owners ask first
How many questions should I ask in a first interview?
Enough to test each of the three or four things the job needs, usually six to eight questions total. More than that and you run out of the hour or start repeating yourself. Fewer than that and you have not really tested anything.
Should I take notes during the interview or fill in the scorecard after?
Take short notes during the interview, one line per answer is enough, but fill in the actual 1 to 3 score right after the candidate leaves, before you talk to anyone else about them or look at the next resume. The moment you compare notes with a co-interviewer or move on to the next candidate, your memory of this one starts blending with everyone else's.
Do I need different questions for every role?
The three or four things the job needs change from role to role, so yes, the specific behavioural questions should change too. What does not change is the method: pull the needs from the job description, ask every candidate for that role the same questions, and score against those needs.
What if a candidate gives a great answer that has nothing to do with the job?
Score it low on that need, even if it was a genuinely good story. A strong answer about leading a hockey team does not tell you whether someone can handle an angry customer on the phone. If nobody's answers are landing on what the job needs, that usually means the question needs to be more specific, not that you should lower the bar.
Is a structured interview overkill for hiring one person at a small business?
I do not think so, because a bad hire at a small business costs more, not less, than at a big one. There is no HR department to catch it and no bench of other people to cover the gap. Twenty minutes deciding what the job needs before the interview is cheaper than months of a hire who was likeable but wrong for the seat.
If you want the done-with-you version, see what Hiring Services costs. If you want the whole search off your plate, see what Contract Recruiting costs.
Sources
- Manitoba Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Considerations in Hiring, accessed September 7, 2026. Exact sentences: “The Code prohibits discrimination against individuals based on various characteristics including ancestry, age, sex (including pregnancy), family status, sexual orientation, gender identity and physical or mental disability, in employment” (p.3); “The application form or process should not require an applicant to disclose their age, sex, ancestry, marital or family status, or other protected characteristic, unless that information is relevant to your assessment of them” (p.7); and the reworded-question examples on pages 10 and 11 quoted above.
- Government of Canada, Job Bank, Hire employees, page last modified May 30, 2024, accessed September 7, 2026. Exact sentences: “Do not talk too much during the interview.” and “Do not make a decision too early. Listen carefully to what the candidate has to say through the whole interview.”
- Quadrant, homepage, accessed September 7, 2026: what the assessment measures and how interview questions are built from the job description, described in the “The three ways I can help” section above.