1. At ReCellular, Inc., a cellular phone remanufacturing company in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the small business owner put together a list of interview questions that immediately improved the hiring process. The owner first defined the qualities, characteristics, and basic aptitude he wanted to find in a potential remanufacturing employee. The owner wanted to find people who shared these characteristics:

● Excellent attendance and dependability

● Flexibility

● Integrity and honesty

● Motivated and dedicated

● Detail-oriented

● Team-oriented

● Strong work ethic

● Positive, polite, and approachable

● Continuous improvement oriented

● Good communication skills

● Actual hands-on demonstration of capability to sort phones and identify cosmetic problems with phones The owner then worked with several online resources to structure questions that would indicate whether candidates had these characteristics. No list of questions is totally comprehensive; however, these questions are helping the interviewers find better candidates:

● What made you decide to apply at ReCellular?

● Tell me about yourself and your last/current job/class.

● When we call your previous employer for references, what are they likely to tell us in regard to your dependability/

attendance?

● Tell me about a time when you demonstrated your trustworthiness or integrity in school or at work.

This is, of course, a start—your job is to think of other questions that the small business owner may want to ask a potential employee (either for a full-time, part-time, or virtual assistant position).