On your quest for the perfect candidate you might overlook one important componenthow will they fit with the company culture? This type of "fit" is important to their happiness with the company and your happiness with them.

First, you need to think about what qualities make people effective in doing their jobs. Is a very upfront, challenging, demanding style required to get what they need? Think about this in reference to handling external clients, vendors, or even internal clients. Someone who is more softspoken and is coming into a demanding environment may find themselves pushed around and frustrated that they can't get their job done. There are people who can learn to step up to the challenge, and those who are naturally more introverted and reticent who just don't have it in them.

A more common problem is hiring someone who is pushier and bringing them into a more collaborative, consensus-decision making environment. These people can have abrasive qualities that don't mesh with what you have in place, and cause a lot of resentment among your current staff and customers.

So how do you trap for that?

Ask them questions about a time when they had any sort of customer service problem. It can be a frustration with an airline, the post office, grocery store, or a situation at their current job. You want to hear examples of how they treat people when they are not getting what they want, and what it takes for them to get really angry. How did they handle the situation? What did they do as their issue wasn't getting resolved in the early stages of the conflict? How quickly did it escalate? When they are describing this situation, are they getting angry all over again? Can they empathize with the customer service person who is trying to help them? Listen closely to how they handle the situation because this will give you an idea of their thought process in handling conflicts at your company.

Again, you can use the lead in "This job requires that you get information from many different parts of the organization. They don't report directly to you, but you need them to help you get deliverables to clients. Have you ever been in this situation, and can you tell me about a time when you had a conflict with one of these people?" or "How would you describe your style in working with others?" If they tell you that they can't think of a time when this happened, just tell them to take their time, everyone has an occasion when they had to resolve a conflict with someonegive them a minute to think of a good example.

Abrasive people are more likely to have these examples at the tip of their tongue, and will relish describing them and how they handled the offending party. You need to assess if their actions were warranted for the situation, and if that style is going to work well within your organization.

Copywrite 2006 Melanie Szlucha