If you are banking on the old school method of question and answer interviewing, you have a snowballs chance in hell at making a good hire. In fact, randomly picking a candidate out of a hat, without interviewing them, will serve you just as well.

There is a far better way to identify great candidates and it is all rooted in behavioral psychology. In short, the strongest indicator of how a human will perform in the future is by seeing how they performed in the past.

A slacker in his 30’s, will be a slacker in his 40’s. The guy that shows up to work 15 minutes early every day for the past 10 years, is almost certainly going to be showing up to work 15 minutes early for the next 10 years. The woman who sold clients on the big projects last year, is most likely to do it again this year.

With this knowledge at hand, your interviews should revolve around learning the persons past behavior. You should seek out the patterns. If the person’s patterns match what you need, make the hire. If they don’t, pass on the person.

For example, if you are looking to hire a “team player,” and you have a candidate that played singles tennis in high school and college; Then she was an independent sales rep at her first job. And then she was operating a light house on a remote island for 2 years… you probably don’t have a team player. Her pattern indicates independence – you should only hire her if you need that.

Stop using dumb questions, start identifying patterns!