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A company’s success is partly due to its employees, which makes hiring the right people essential. Not only do you want competent individuals, but you also want to make sure new hires will fit with your company’s culture. Although a person may look great on paper and seem adequate in the interview, they might perform poorly when they actually start the job.

And hiring the wrong people can be detrimental to your company’s bottom line and its employee culture. So the only chance to really weed out the bad from the good is during the interview process. To help managers choose the best people for the job, here are some helpful hints that may help you and your mangers perfect your interviewing skills so that you end up choosing the most qualified candidate for your company.

1. Start Observation Before The Interview

Right before you start the official interview process, have the potential new hires near some of your other employees for about 10 to 15 minutes and observe if they interact with them or just ignore them. If they take an interest in potential future coworkers and ask them questions about the company’s atmosphere you’ll be able to see a bit about their personality before they transition into “interview mode.” And it will also provide insight on if they’ll fit in with the office’s culture.

2. Outline General Areas You’d Like To Cover

Instead of going into an interview with a pre-determined set of questions and a checklist, think about outlining them instead so that you don’t come across as a robot in the interview. Usually, these types of interviews don’t provide a lot of natural flow to the process and might hinder the applicant from really showing their personality to you. And by simply reading off the questions, you might miss nonverbal cues like body language, which can also tell you a lot about the applicant. If you outline the general areas you’d like to cover on a sheet of paper and then cross them off as you go, you’ll have a smoother interview session. Those who read off questions usually don’t get back great detail on applicants.

3. Include More Than One Interviewer

Sometimes, having just one person conduct the interview might not convey everything about the potential new hire, which is why it’s wise to have numerous people conduct the interview. This increases the reliability of the process and provides different takes that will be valuable in the selection process. It’s better to have different interviewers in separate, subsequent sessions so not to cause added nervousness for the applicant.

4. Take Good Notes

During the interview process, taking notes will make the candidate feel as if you’re listening to them and respected. And it will also help you when it comes to decide on which person you’d like to hire for the job since memory is limited. Jot down anything the candidate says that you think will add value to their application so that you can take it into consideration later.

If you follow these simple four interviewing techniques, you’re bound to hire the correct person for whatever job vacancy at your company. And it will help you and other interviewers make more consistent hiring decisions in the future.