Finding the right people to work in your child care center is cri-ti-cal. We can’t stress that enough. Regardless of the newness or modern nature of your facility or the amazingness of your management technology or the coolness of your playground, if your people are not right for your business and for the industry, you will have issues and how.

There are many lists and guideline articles available about how you should interview – right down to the exact questions you should ask. All of these are great and you should consider them in creating your own interview process and policies.

There are 3 things that seem to offer information that is very telling of the type of person your interviewee is and how well that person might fit into your particular facility. This is sort of what you might call soft information. Some of these items may not have black and white answers but may need for you to weigh the answers in formulating each interviewee’s persona.

Personalize the interview

If you begin your interview by asking the candidate to tell you about themselves, you can take that information and make the questions and discussions that follow more personal to that candidate.

Why should you do this? By making the interview more personal, your candidate will more likely open up to you and reveal some qualities – or weaknesses – that you may find key to your hiring decision or at least important in developing the candidate’s persona.

Use scenarios

Situational discussions will help you to see how the candidate will respond. Be sure to include several different types of scenarios. Include situations where the results carry critical consequences. Don’t try to trick your candidate with these scenarios. If they are bright, they will be able to tell you’re trying to catch them off guard. Do provide scenarios that require thought and may be real judgment calls – even when you are forced to make them for yourself.

Seek out the problem solvers

For a small business like a child care center, this is very important. Every member of your team needs to be focused on improvement whether it is for themselves or for the center as a whole. It is critical for your employees to be able to deal with issues on-the-fly because it isn’t common for children to wait for the person at hand to ask someone else how to respond. Your children and their parents will be much happier with the experience they have with your center and you will be much happier with the performance of your employees.

That being said, your problem-solvers must also be trustworthy or you will not be able to place responsibility in their hands. You will find that this will save you from expending the time and energy in making every decision yourself.

These three key items are included in a ten item guideline published by Care.com.