The interview questions that actually predict job performance for home service contractors are behavioral and situational in nature—they ask candidates to describe specific past experiences or respond to realistic job scenarios rather than pitch you on their general qualities or speculate about hypothetical futures. The questions most contractors ask in interviews predict almost nothing and mostly just reveal how good a candidate is at interviewing.
You know what drives me crazy?
Watching a contractor sit across the table from a candidate, ask them where they see themselves in five years, nod thoughtfully at the answer, and then make a hiring decision based primarily on whether they liked the person’s handshake and whether they seemed like they’d fit in.
I’m not making this up. This is how the majority of hiring interviews in home service businesses actually work. Not because the owners are bad at their jobs—they’re usually excellent at their jobs. But because nobody ever taught them how to hire, so they default to the interview format they’ve experienced as candidates: a loosely structured conversation that feels productive but produces decisions that are barely better than a coin flip.
The cost of this approach is staggering. A bad hire in a customer-facing role costs you the direct replacement expense, the training investment, the productivity loss during the gap, the customer relationships damaged during their tenure, and the morale impact on the rest of your team who had to carry the weight. Conservative estimates put the cost of a bad hire at 30% of annual salary. For a technician making $65,000, that’s nearly $20,000 per bad hire. If you’re making two or three bad hires a year—which many growing contractors are—you’re burning $40,000–$60,000 annually on hiring mistakes that a better interview process would have caught.
The good news is that decades of organizational psychology research have identified the interview formats and specific question types that actually predict job performance. They’re not complicated. They’re not expensive. They just require replacing the comfortable-but-useless questions you’ve been asking with ones that actually tell you something.
That’s what this post is about.
Why Most Contractor Hiring Interviews Are Basically Useless
Before we get into what works, let’s be honest about why most hiring interviews don’t.
The traditional job interview—a 30–60 minute conversation where you ask someone about themselves, they tell you how great they are, you both try to seem likeable, and then you make a decision based on gut feeling—has a validity coefficient of about 0.38 in research terms. That means it explains about 14% of the variance in actual job performance. In plain English: a traditional unstructured interview is a slightly better predictor of job success than flipping a coin, but not dramatically so.
Why is the standard interview so bad at predicting performance?
It measures interview skill, not job skill. Candidates who are naturally charming, articulate, and comfortable in social situations perform well in interviews regardless of whether they’re good technicians, good CSRs, or good managers. Candidates who are excellent workers but quieter or less polished in conversation often interview poorly. The interview rewards the wrong things.
It’s dominated by first impressions. Research shows that most interviewers form a strong initial impression within the first 90 seconds of meeting a candidate—and then spend the rest of the interview unconsciously looking for confirmation of that impression. This is called confirmation bias, and it means the “interview” is often just an elaborate exercise in justifying a decision that was already made.
It relies on self-report. You ask candidates about their skills, their work ethic, their reliability. They tell you what they know you want to hear. Nobody walks into an interview and says “honestly I struggle with punctuality and I tend to take shortcuts when I’m tired.” The information you get from self-report questions is almost always positively skewed and rarely predictive.
There are no consistent standards. When every interviewer asks different questions and evaluates candidates differently, there’s no way to compare candidates fairly or learn from hiring outcomes over time. You can’t improve a process you haven’t defined.
The solution to all of these problems is structure. Structured interviews—where every candidate for a role is asked the same questions, evaluated against the same criteria, and scored consistently—outperform unstructured interviews by a significant margin. Add behavioral and situational question formats, and you get a process that actually predicts who will perform.
The Science Behind What Actually Predicts Job Performance
Decades of research in industrial-organizational psychology have identified the hiring assessment methods that best predict job performance. Here’s the ranking, from most to least predictive:
Work sample tests (highest validity): Asking candidates to actually do part of the job—a working interview, a skills assessment, a practical demonstration. Validity coefficient around 0.54. This is the gold standard.
Structured behavioral interviews: Asking candidates to describe specific situations from their past where they demonstrated relevant competencies. Validity coefficient around 0.51.
Structured situational interviews: Presenting candidates with realistic job scenarios and asking how they would handle them. Validity coefficient around 0.50.
Cognitive ability assessments: Testing for problem-solving ability and learning aptitude. Validity coefficient around 0.51 but legally sensitive if not administered carefully.
Unstructured interviews (what most contractors do): Validity coefficient around 0.38. Better than nothing. Not much better than gut feeling.
Reference checks (as typically conducted): Validity coefficient around 0.26. Almost useless in their standard form because references are always positive—but can be valuable when done correctly with specific behavioral questions.
The takeaway: the highest-predicting assessment methods are the ones that either have candidates do actual work (working interviews) or ask them to describe specific past behaviors or respond to specific job scenarios (behavioral and situational interviews). These work because past behavior is the best available predictor of future behavior, and realistic job scenarios reveal how candidates actually think rather than how they want to be perceived.
The Questions to Stop Asking Immediately
Let’s clear out the junk first. These questions appear in interviews constantly and predict almost nothing:
“Where do you see yourself in five years?” What you’re hoping to learn: Is this person ambitious? Are they planning to stay? What you actually learn: Whether they’ve prepared a socially acceptable answer to this common question. Every candidate knows the “right” answer (“I see myself growing with a company like this one, developing my skills and taking on more responsibility”). It tells you nothing.
“What’s your greatest weakness?” What you’re hoping to learn: Self-awareness, honesty. What you actually learn: Whether they’ve rehearsed the classic “my greatest weakness is that I work too hard” deflection. Nobody answers this question honestly in a job interview. The question is useless.
“Why do you want to work here?” What you’re hoping to learn: Genuine motivation and company knowledge. What you actually learn: Whether they Googled your company before the interview. A motivated candidate with good interview prep and an unmotivated candidate who did their homework give indistinguishable answers to this question.
“Tell me about yourself.” What you’re hoping to learn: A narrative that reveals character and fit. What you actually learn: A rehearsed highlight reel that every candidate has prepared because this is always the first question. It’s a warm-up, not an assessment.
“Are you a team player?” What you’re hoping to learn: Whether they collaborate well. What you actually learn: That they know the correct answer is “yes.” Nobody says no to this question.
“How do you handle stress?” What you’re hoping to learn: Resilience and coping strategies. What you actually learn: A theoretical description of how they’d like to handle stress, which may have no connection to how they actually handle it.
“What do you consider your greatest strength?” Same problem as the weakness question, just in the opposite direction. Rehearsed, predictable, tells you nothing you couldn’t have guessed.
Stop asking these questions. Replace them with what follows.
Behavioral Interview Questions That Actually Work
Behavioral questions follow the format: “Tell me about a time when you…” They ask candidates to draw on specific past experiences rather than describe general tendencies or hypothetical responses.
The key is to follow up every behavioral question with probing questions that get to specifics: What exactly did you do? What was the outcome? What would you do differently? Vague, general answers to behavioral questions are a red flag—strong candidates can always point to specific situations.
Here are behavioral questions that work for home service hiring:
For All Roles: Work Ethic and Reliability
“Tell me about a time when you had to push through something really difficult at work—a project that went sideways, a situation that felt overwhelming. What happened and how did you handle it?” What you’re looking for: Specific situation, evidence of perseverance, focus on solutions rather than complaints, honest reflection on what they learned.
“Tell me about a time when you made a significant mistake on the job. What happened, and what did you do about it?” What you’re looking for: Ownership without excessive self-flagellation, honest description of what went wrong, clear explanation of how they fixed it or what they learned. Candidates who can’t identify a genuine mistake are either dishonest or lack self-awareness—neither is a good sign.
“Tell me about a time when you disagreed with how something was being done at a previous job. How did you handle it?” What you’re looking for: Ability to raise concerns through appropriate channels rather than just complaining or going around management, respect for authority even when disagreeing, and outcome orientation. This question reveals a lot about how they’ll handle frustration with your processes and decisions.
For Technician Roles: Technical Problem-Solving
“Tell me about the most difficult diagnostic problem you’ve encountered in your career. Walk me through how you figured it out.” What you’re looking for: Systematic thinking, willingness to ask for help when needed, intellectual curiosity about the problem, and a clear narrative that demonstrates genuine technical engagement rather than a vague claim of competence.
“Tell me about a time when a customer was upset about the work you did or the price you quoted. What happened and how did you handle it?” What you’re looking for: Customer empathy, de-escalation skill, honesty about situations where they were in the wrong, and an outcome where the customer relationship was preserved or salvaged.
“Tell me about a time when you had to complete a job with limited resources—missing a part, short on time, working alone on something that usually takes two people. How did you handle it?” What you’re looking for: Resourcefulness, safety consciousness (did they cut corners on safety?), communication (did they keep the customer informed?), and problem-solving under pressure.
For CSR Roles: Customer Communication
“Tell me about the most difficult customer interaction you’ve ever had. What made it difficult and how did you handle it?” What you’re looking for: De-escalation skill, empathy without being a pushover, ability to maintain professionalism under pressure, and focus on resolution rather than winning the argument.
“Tell me about a time when you had to deliver bad news to a customer—a delay, a price increase, a problem that was going to affect their day. How did you handle the conversation?” What you’re looking for: Direct communication, empathy, proactive problem-solving (offering alternatives or solutions alongside the bad news), and comfort with uncomfortable conversations.
“Tell me about a time when you were handling multiple things at once and something fell through the cracks. What happened?” What you’re looking for: Honesty about a real failure, systems thinking (what process would have prevented it?), and evidence that they learned and adjusted.
For Manager and Team Lead Roles: Leadership
“Tell me about a time when you had to address a performance issue with someone on your team. Walk me through the situation and what you did.” What you’re looking for: Direct communication, fairness, documentation, and outcome—did the person improve or leave, and how does the candidate reflect on how they handled it?
“Tell me about a time when your team was really struggling—morale was low, performance was off, or there was internal conflict. What did you do?” What you’re looking for: Diagnostic thinking (did they identify root cause?), action orientation, team empathy, and willingness to make hard decisions when needed.
“Tell me about a time when you had to implement a change that your team pushed back on. How did you handle the resistance?” What you’re looking for: Communication skill, ability to listen to legitimate concerns while still driving necessary change, and outcome orientation.
Situational Interview Questions for Home Service Roles
Situational questions present a realistic scenario and ask: “What would you do if…” They’re particularly useful for roles where you want to assess judgment and values, not just past experience—including candidates who are newer to the industry and don’t have a deep bank of past situations to draw from.
For Technician Roles
“You arrive at a service call and the repair the customer scheduled is straightforward—you can have it done in 45 minutes. While you’re there, you notice two other issues that aren’t urgent but will likely become problems within the next year. The customer didn’t ask about them. What do you do?” What you’re looking for: Whether they proactively communicate what they found (good), whether they pressure the customer into unnecessary work (bad), and how they frame the conversation. This question reveals their approach to honest upselling.
“You’re on a job and you realize mid-way through that the repair is going to cost significantly more than what you quoted. The customer isn’t home. What do you do?” What you’re looking for: Communication priority (they should call the customer before proceeding), transparency about why the cost changed, and a process for getting authorization before doing additional work.
“You’re on your last call of the day at 4:45pm. The job is going to take at least two hours. You have plans tonight. What do you do?” What you’re looking for: Customer commitment over personal convenience (within reason), and communication skill—do they stay without complaint, do they communicate their situation honestly, do they offer alternatives? This question is a reliable indicator of professionalism and work ethic.
For CSR Roles
“A customer calls furious because a technician was two hours late to their appointment and nobody called to warn them. They’re threatening to leave a one-star review and never use us again. What do you say?” What you’re looking for: Immediate acknowledgment without defensiveness, genuine apology, concrete resolution offer, and retention focus. A candidate who gets defensive about the technician being late has the wrong instincts for a CSR role.
“A customer calls asking for a price estimate over the phone for a service that varies significantly depending on what we find when we get there. How do you handle it?” What you’re looking for: Honest communication about why you can’t give a firm phone estimate, ability to explain the value of a diagnostic visit, and skill at booking the appointment without the customer feeling brushed off.
“It’s a busy Monday morning and you have 12 calls holding, two technicians calling in with questions, and a manager asking for a report. How do you prioritize?” What you’re looking for: Triage instinct (what’s most time-sensitive for customers?), communication skill (letting people know when you’ll get to them), and calm under pressure.
For Manager Roles
“You find out that one of your best technicians—someone customers love and who generates strong revenue—has been cutting corners on safety procedures. What do you do?” What you’re looking for: No hesitation on the safety issue regardless of the technician’s performance, direct conversation, clear consequences, and follow-through. Any candidate who hedges on safety is disqualified.
“A technician comes to you and says they’re thinking about leaving because they feel undervalued. What do you do?” What you’re looking for: Listening first, curiosity about the specific concern, honest assessment of whether the concern is valid, and problem-solving focus. Managers who immediately get defensive or immediately promise raises without understanding the issue have poor instincts.
The Working Interview: Seeing Is Believing
The single highest-validity hiring assessment you can conduct is also the simplest: have the candidate do part of the actual job.
For technician candidates, this means a paid half-day or full-day working interview where they ride along on real service calls with one of your experienced techs. You’re not just watching their technical skills—you’re watching how they interact with customers, how they communicate, how they handle unexpected situations, how they treat their tools, how they carry themselves in a customer’s home.
For CSR candidates, this means sitting in your office for two to three hours and handling real calls—with your support and supervision, not alone. You’ll learn more in those two hours than in ten traditional interviews.
For manager candidates, this is harder to structure but still worth attempting—bringing them in to sit in on a team meeting, review some operational data with you, and give you their read on what they see.
A few ground rules for working interviews:
Pay them for their time. A working interview where you don’t pay is ethically questionable and legally risky. Pay at least minimum wage for the time, make it clear it’s a paid assessment, and get a signed agreement.
Assign a specific observer. Don’t just let the candidate loose and check in at the end. Assign a trusted team member to work alongside them and observe specifically against your evaluation criteria.
Give them real situations. The working interview is only useful if the candidate faces real situations, not staged ones. Put them in the actual environment and watch what happens.
Debrief with your observer immediately after. Memory fades fast. Get your observer’s impressions while they’re fresh, using the same evaluation criteria you use for all candidates.
Red Flags Most Owners Miss Because They’re Too Eager to Fill the Role
Here’s an uncomfortable truth: most bad hires happen not because the red flags weren’t there, but because the owner was too eager to fill an open position to pay attention to them.
Watch for these:
They blame every previous employer. One bad boss is possible. A pattern of bad bosses, bad coworkers, bad companies, bad luck—that pattern follows the person, not the employer.
They can’t give specific examples. When a candidate consistently answers behavioral questions with generalities (“I always communicate proactively with customers”) rather than specific situations (“There was this one time at my last job where…”), they either haven’t done the thing they’re claiming or they’re not self-aware enough to connect their experiences to your questions. Neither is good.
They’re more focused on what you can offer them than what they can contribute. A candidate who spends most of the interview asking about benefits, time off, advancement, and compensation before you’ve even established whether they’re qualified is showing you their priorities.
They’re vague about why they left previous jobs. “It just wasn’t a good fit” for every previous job is not an answer. Push for specifics. The explanation might be completely reasonable—or it might reveal a pattern of conflict, poor performance, or instability.
They’re overly negative about customers. Any candidate who expresses contempt for customers—”people just don’t understand how much this work costs,” “customers are always trying to get something for nothing”—has the wrong attitude for a customer-facing role in home services.
They can’t explain their technical background in plain terms. A technician who can’t explain what they do in language a homeowner would understand is going to struggle in customer communication. Your customers are not industry professionals. Your technicians need to be able to bridge that gap.
Your gut says no but they’re available immediately. Availability is not a qualification. A candidate who can start Monday because they just left their last job abruptly or because nobody else has hired them is not more desirable because of their availability.
Interview Frameworks by Role: Technician, CSR, and Manager
Technician Interview Framework
Round 1: Phone Screen (15 minutes)
- Basic background and experience verification
- Compensation expectations and availability
- One behavioral question: “Tell me about the most challenging diagnostic problem you’ve solved.”
- Go/no-go decision before investing in an in-person interview
Round 2: In-Person Structured Interview (45–60 minutes)
- Three to four behavioral questions from the technician list above
- Two situational questions from the technician list above
- Technical knowledge assessment (specific to your trade—a short written or verbal quiz on common scenarios)
- Tour of your facility and introduction to the team
Round 3: Working Interview (half-day, paid)
- Ride-along with senior technician on two to three service calls
- Observer evaluation against specific criteria
- Debrief with observer and hiring manager
Reference Check: Two professional references with specific behavioral questions (more on this below)
CSR Interview Framework
Round 1: Phone Screen (20 minutes)
- This is itself a communication assessment—how do they sound on the phone? How do they handle unexpected questions?
- Basic background, schedule availability, compensation
- One situational question: “A customer calls furious because of a scheduling mix-up. Walk me through how you’d handle that call.”
Round 2: In-Person Structured Interview (45 minutes)
- Three behavioral questions from the CSR list
- Two situational questions from the CSR list
- Written exercise: Give them a sample customer complaint scenario and ask them to draft the response email or text. This is a quick work sample that reveals communication skill, tone, and professionalism.
Round 3: Working Interview (2–3 hours, paid)
- Supervised real call handling
- Observer evaluation
Manager/Team Lead Interview Framework
Round 1: Phone Screen (20 minutes)
- Background, compensation, availability
- One behavioral leadership question: “Tell me about a time when you had to make a difficult decision about a team member.”
Round 2: In-Person Structured Interview (60–75 minutes)
- Four behavioral questions from the leadership list
- Three situational questions from the manager list
- Discussion of a real operational challenge your business faces—ask them how they’d approach it
- Review of sample team performance data—ask them what they see and what they’d do
Round 3: Team Introduction and Working Session (half-day)
- Meet the team they’d be leading
- Sit in on a team meeting or operational review
- Brief one-on-one conversations with two or three key team members (with their permission) for their impressions
How to Structure the Full Interview Process
A consistent interview process has five elements:
1. A defined scorecard for each role. Before you interview anyone, define the three to five competencies that matter most for success in this specific role. For a technician: technical skill, customer communication, reliability, safety consciousness, upsell capability. For a CSR: phone presence, empathy, organization, problem-solving under pressure. Score every candidate against the same criteria.
2. The same questions for every candidate. This sounds obvious but most interviewers ask different questions to different candidates based on the conversation flow. Consistent questions enable consistent comparison.
3. A numeric scoring system. After each interview, score the candidate on each competency (1–5 works fine). Write down your reasoning while it’s fresh. This removes the “I just felt good about them” factor from the final decision.
4. Multiple interviewers for key roles. Don’t make hiring decisions for important roles based on a single interviewer’s impression. Have two or three people interact with the candidate and compare scores. Disagreements between evaluators are often the most revealing data points.
5. A debrief process. Bring your interviewers together before making a hiring decision. Share scores and reasoning. Identify where impressions diverge and discuss why. Make the final decision as a group or with clear input from everyone who interacted with the candidate.
Evaluating Candidates Consistently Across Your Team
One of the most common failure points in hiring is inconsistent evaluation—where the owner evaluates one candidate against their experience with a previous star performer, while the office manager evaluates the same candidate against their frustration with a recent bad hire. These are completely different standards, and they produce inconsistent decisions.
The fix is a shared scorecard with clear definitions of what each score means for each competency. Not just “1–5 for customer communication” but:
- 5: Candidate gave multiple specific examples of proactively managing difficult customer situations with excellent outcomes. Demonstrated genuine empathy and solution focus.
- 3: Candidate gave one solid example but was vague on others. Shows basic customer service instinct without demonstrated excellence.
- 1: Candidate showed dismissiveness toward customer concerns or was unable to give a specific example of handling a difficult situation.
When your evaluators share a defined standard, their scores become comparable. When they’re scoring based on undefined gut feeling, you’re getting noise.
Common Hiring Mistakes Contractors Make
Mistake #1: Hiring out of desperation. When you need someone yesterday, your standards drop. You overlook red flags. You shorten the process. You make an offer to someone you know isn’t quite right because they’re available. Desperation hiring is the most expensive kind of hiring. Build a candidate pipeline before you have an urgent need.
Mistake #2: Hiring for technical skill and ignoring everything else. Technical skill is necessary but not sufficient in any customer-facing role. A technician who’s brilliant with systems but terrible with customers is a liability. A CSR who’s friendly but disorganized is a problem. Hire for the full profile, not just the hardest-to-teach skill.
Mistake #3: Skipping reference checks. Reference checks done wrong are useless—”Would you rehire this person?” “Yes.” Done. But reference checks done right—specific behavioral questions about specific competencies—can surface information that changes a hiring decision. Ask references: “Tell me about a time when [candidate] had to deal with a difficult customer. How did they handle it?” That’s a different conversation.
Mistake #4: Not involving the team. The people who will work alongside a new hire every day have useful information about fit, culture, and capability. Include at least one team member in the process for every role—not as the decision-maker, but as an input. And take their concerns seriously.
Mistake #5: Making an offer before you’ve checked everything. Background check. License verification (for licensed trades). Reference check. Employment history verification. Do these before you make the offer, not after. Reversing an offer after a background check issue is uncomfortable and sometimes legally complicated.
Mistake #6: Not defining what success looks like before you hire. If you don’t know what a successful first 90 days looks like for this role before you hire, you won’t be able to onboard the person effectively or evaluate whether they’re working out. Define success criteria first—then hire the person most likely to meet them.
Real-World Example: How One Plumbing Contractor Rebuilt Their Hiring Process
A plumbing contractor doing $1.8M in revenue had been through four technician hires in 18 months. Two had been let go within 90 days. One had quit without notice. One was still there but underperforming. The owner was exhausted, frustrated, and starting to believe that “good plumbers just don’t exist anymore.”
When we looked at his hiring process, here’s what we found:
- No consistent interview questions—he went with the flow of the conversation
- No scorecard or evaluation criteria
- No working interview—he hired based on resume and a one-hour conversation
- Reference checks that consisted of “is there anything I should know?” (always answered with no)
- Hiring decisions made within 48 hours of the first interview
We rebuilt the process from scratch:
New process:
- Phone screen with two behavioral questions and one situational question
- In-person structured interview with a five-question behavioral format and a written technical quiz
- Half-day paid working interview with a senior technician as observer
- Structured reference check with three behavioral questions for each reference
- Evaluation scorecard completed by both the owner and the working interview observer before any discussion
The first hire under the new process took three weeks longer than his old approach. The owner was uncomfortable with the pace—he had an open truck that needed a body.
That technician is still with the company 14 months later. He’s their second-highest revenue producer and has a 4.9-star rating across 23 customer reviews. The owner has told me it’s the best hire he’s made in six years.
The process worked not because it was complicated, but because it replaced gut feeling with structure—and structure, consistently applied, produces better decisions.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a full interview process take? For a technician role, plan for two to three weeks from first contact to offer. For a CSR, one to two weeks. For a manager, three to four weeks. Yes, this is longer than most contractors are used to. The time investment is worth it—one bad hire costs far more than two extra weeks of an open position.
What if a candidate won’t do a working interview? A candidate who refuses a paid working interview is telling you something important—either they’re not confident in their actual abilities, they’re fielding multiple offers and don’t want to invest the time, or they don’t take the opportunity seriously. In any of those cases, that’s useful information. Candidates who are confident and motivated almost always accept.
How do I handle it when my gut says yes but the scorecard says no? The scorecard is almost always right. Your gut is pattern-matching against past hires, including ones that turned out badly. If the scorecard reveals a significant gap in a critical competency, trust the data. If the gap is in a less critical area, use it to inform your onboarding plan—here’s where this person needs development.
Should I tell candidates what questions I’m going to ask in advance? For situational questions, yes—giving candidates time to think about how they’d handle a scenario produces better answers and better information. For behavioral questions, no—the point is to see what situations they naturally recall and how they describe their actual experiences.
How do I evaluate technical skill if I’m not a technical expert in the trade? Bring someone who is. A senior technician can assess technical competence in a working interview or a brief skills demonstration far better than a business owner who manages the operation but doesn’t run the calls. You evaluate cultural fit, communication, reliability indicators, and attitude. They evaluate technical competence.
What’s the right compensation to offer during a working interview? At minimum, your local minimum wage. Many contractors pay a full day’s rate at the position’s hourly equivalent. The cost is minimal compared to the information value, and paying fairly signals that you respect people’s time—which is itself a signal about your culture.
How do I handle a reference who gives vague or overly positive answers? Push for specifics. “Can you give me an example of a time when [candidate] had to handle a difficult customer situation?” If they can’t point to a specific example, that’s telling. A reference who genuinely knows and respects the candidate should be able to tell you a specific story. A reference who’s just going through the motions gives you generalities.
What to Do Next
The contractors who hire well don’t have access to a better talent pool than everyone else. They have a better process. They ask better questions. They look at more information before making a decision. And they’ve learned to slow down their hiring instinct long enough to let that information surface.
Here’s where to start this week:
- Write a scorecard for your most commonly hired role. Pick your three to five most important competencies for that position. Define what a 5, a 3, and a 1 looks like for each one. This takes 30 minutes and immediately improves your hiring consistency.
- Build your question bank. From the behavioral and situational questions in this post, select five to seven that are most relevant to your open roles. Write them down. Use the same questions for every candidate going forward.
- Plan your next working interview. For the next position you fill, commit to including a paid working interview as a step in the process. Brief your senior technician or office lead on what to observe and how to report back.
- Update your reference check questions. Replace “Is there anything I should know?” with three specific behavioral questions: one about work ethic, one about customer interaction, one about how they handle mistakes. You’ll get dramatically more useful information.
If you want help building a complete hiring system—from job posting through onboarding—or if you’re dealing with a team performance challenge that traces back to a pattern of hiring decisions, our team works exclusively with home service contractors and we’ve helped businesses at every stage build stronger teams.
Schedule a Strategy Session with Our Team
No pressure. No pitch. Just an honest look at your hiring process and what stronger hiring would mean for your business.