By Shelley Ball, Communicate Personnel Managing Director for Gauteng and Durban

Often, clients ask us how they or we can determine whether a candidate really fits in with their team. It’s actually the easiest thing in the world. Place your candidate in a situation where they must perform some of the duties of the position, and see how they perform the work while you observe their inter-personal abilities in action.

Ask the candidate to take a day off work, and then invite them into a real, live meeting where your team is working on a project. (Obviously, you don't want this to be a setting where any company confidential information would be divulged.) Let the candidates know in advance that they should feel free to participate just as if they were employees – it is very unfair to make them expect an interview, if you’re planning a work session. Then just observe them.

The point is to stimulate actual work behaviour. No matter how well designed an interview question is, it will never reveal the full breadth of information you can get when you give a candidate some real work to do.

Even nervous candidates tend to relax when they realise that instead of having to answer contrived questions, they just need to show how they handle the work. It also makes it impossible for them to lie about their true capabilities.

Good candidates will have done their homework and be prepared to offer comments and suggestions. Of course, they may be off the mark for lack of detailed knowledge about your operation, but what matters are how they participate.

Do they indicate a willingness to learn from others? Are they open to changing their perspective? Do they behave like they can work with your team? Do their suggestions generally make sense and demonstrate the knowledge and skills necessary to tackle the responsibilities of the position?

This kind of experience reveals substantive aspects of a person's skills and abilities. It also reveals their personality in a natural setting. It's hard to pretend to be someone you're not when you're focused on actually working with a group of other people. Personalities and attitudes are revealed. Quirks and social skills are showcased as well.

Often, a company will use a lunch or drinks (yes, these scare all of us!) meeting to really get to know a candidate; but even that is artificial, because the candidate is nervously trying to do the right thing. In a natural work setting, where all the candidate's faculties are focused on a real work task, the person is revealed. What you see in that work session is what you will get if you hire them.

After this working meeting, have the candidate visit with two or three team members, but not to have interviews. Instead, let them shadow your staff members for an hour or so a piece. Stop in to observe each interaction. Then debrief each team member and the candidate. You will learn a lot – and possibly even more about your current staff!

Experts in our industry often advise using "the behavioural interview" to assess the factors we're talking about. This is where the candidate tells how she handled a situation in the past.

In my opinion – even though we are often forced to use behavioural interviewing as well -, that's risky, because people can make incidents up on the spot, and even if they're honest, the demand characteristic of such questioning can colour their responses dramatically.

The other problem is that there is no behaviour in the behavioural interview - it's all story telling. Why mess with hypothetical situations or with history, when you can take a look at how a person handles a real, live situation in your own work setting?

You can still conduct a traditional interview and even administer objective tests. But I believe the best way to assess a person's skills, style, personality, and cultural fit is to let them work with your team for a while. You'll learn a lot because it's real, it's live, and there's no faking it.

The really great candidates will shine, while the tire-kickers will probably decline to come share some work with you. Why rely on questions and talk, when you can see and judge a person's ability to actually work with the rest of your employees?

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