No decision is more critical to the success of your business than the people you hire, so consider carefully the challenge you face in your hiring interviews.

You talk with someone you've probably just met for an hour or two - maybe less. Your objective is to get the information you need for a decision that can have a major impact on the profitability of your business, your career and daily work life, the life of the applicant as well as your legal costs.

The unique demands of the hiring interview are that an extraordinary amount of weight's riding on a very short period of time. It's essential that you get the maximum relevant information during your interviews in the least amount of time.

No decision is more crucial to the success of your business than the people you hire because hiring the wrong applicant is expensive - in both money and morale: The costs of expensive mistakes and repairing the damage before the problem's discovered. The costs of expensive personnel turnover, finding replacements, and bringing them up to speed. The costs of inefficiencies when people aren't truly working as a team.

Hiring decisions often mean the difference between controlling costs - or making expensive mistakes.

You've probably had the experience of someone working for you who's not quite bad enough to terminate, but their performance is far short of what your business needs to succeed. And they stay - sometimes for years - because the cost of finding and training a replacement's time consuming and expensive.

Or someone who infects your organization with a toxic attitude that drains the morale of coworkers - an attitude that makes for bad teamwork costing energy and time to deal with. These are problems you can help stop before they start with the right type of interview techniques.

People who create good teams are first and foremost good job interviewers, because the key to building your own career is to build your organization with quality people.

Behavioral Job Interviews Aren't Typical Work Settings

One of the big problems you face is that job interviews aren't typical work settings. Without skill and planning on the part of the interviewer, applicants tend to show how they do in an interview - not necessarily how they'll do on the job. Applicants also bring their own objective to the interview. Giving you the answers they think you want to hear.

The labor market today is very sophisticated. There are thousands of books and CDs on the market that teach people how to out-interview the interviewer. The best applicants you'll interview will have studied these books and practiced what they're going to tell you.

Be a Savvy Interviewer

Job applicants have become very savvy about interview skills - and you need to be too! Studies show that between a quarter and a third of all applicants misrepresent their work history.

You need good questions - questions that are penetrating and get beyond the applicant's rehearsed answers - together with an effective interview strategy to sift fact from statement and judge the true level of their motivation.

In the unique circumstances of the job interview where a lot of money's riding on the short period of time you have to evaluate the applicant, you need to bring as much objectivity to the process as possible and interview in a manner that keeps you out of trouble with the law.

You Must Interview Legally

A surprising number of commonly asked hiring questions are illegal. It's essential to know what you can ask and how to document the answers to avoid expensive lawsuits.

Over seventy percent of discrimination complaints result from the job interview. Lawyer's fees to defend yourself if a discrimination case goes to court start at $30,000 - even if you prevail!

In today's legal climate around hiring, hiring interviews are no longer something you can 'Do by the seat of your pants' without leaving yourself open to possible lawsuits . An inadvertently asked question that may have a friendly intent, such as "What's your husband's occupation?" can cost you thousands of dollars.

The Three Goals of the Behavioral Interview

An experienced interviewer knows ability to do the job is only one of the goals of the interview. The second area you need to determine is their motivation how dedicated they'll be.

There's a huge difference between being able to do the job, and being motivated and dedicated to doing an excellent job. What does their motivation say about how long they'll stay with your organization?

Most Workers Don't Underperform or Leave Jobs Because They Lack Ability

They lose motivation when the work environment or management style isn't a good fit for them. For a successful hire you need to determine manageability - how they'll accept your direction, criticism and feedback. So much of the day to day tension on the job revolves around this critically important area. A person can be willing and able, but if they're unmanageable you're going to have problems.

Meeting these three goals of the behavioral hiring interview determining ability, motivation and manageability requires planning to get a balanced, systematic coverage of each candidate.

Ability, which includes skills and knowledge can generally be arrived at in the most straight forward manner. Motivation and manageability are more difficult to determine because everyone will tell you in a job interview they'll work hard and follow directions.

You need well crafted behavioral job interview questions and know how to use them to get past the job seeker's facade for the information you really want.

This is the first of a many articles that follow giving you proven behavioral job interview questions and hiring techniques that will give you the maximum information in the minimum amount of time.