Monday, April 13, 2009

Hiring a Receptionist. Crikey!

You may remember that I mentioned (last week or the week before) that I'm hiring a new receptionist at work. I put an ad on Craig's List and have been inundated with emails and faxes of resumes. I've figured out a pretty stringent means of weeding out the undesirables and began the interviewing process last week.

Wow. It doesn't matter how prepared I think I am with my list of questions these candidates are still hard to read and truly believe. I'm not a very trusting person to begin with. The last person I recommended we hire turned out to be a complete waste of our time, and we had to modify some of our personnel policies to formally put an end to some of the bad habits this person brought with him. I hate it that some people can interview so well and turn out to be total louses. I don't want that to happen again with filling the receptionist position.

I find myself questioning my own judgment repeatedly. This is beginning to drive me insane. I actually felt my heart speed up after I finished with my first interview this morning. Why after the interview was over and not before? I guess I'm just being paranoid about missing any red flags, or being overly harsh on someone that could be a truly good fit for our business. I have another face-to-face interview this morning, then I'm back to making calls and conducting phone interviews.

Have you found yourself in this situation? If you have any recommendations on the interview process, or reading between the garbled lines of interview communique, I would greatly appreciate it. You not only help me to learn from your experiences, but you will also help to lower my blood pressure!!! Thank you very much in advance for your input!

Have a great Monday, my friends!