An Interview Guide for Hiring Service-Oriented Staff
Use this guide when you are interviewing potential staff members to help you to find out if your job applicants have the key attributes of care providers (based on their behaviors).
Reliability is the ability to deliver what is promised. A reliable care provider: Avoids over promising. Keeps the promises that he or she makes. Communicates to patients and peer care providers what he or she plans to do next. Performs at a consistently high level over time.
Works steadily toward goals that are difficult to reach in spite of obstacles or resistance.
Reliability Questions:
 What motivates you to get your job done?
 How do you know when you have done enough work for the day?
 What is a hard workday for you?
 What kind of situation might cause you to make a promise to a patient/customer?
 What are you most proud of accomplishing in your previous jobs?
Responsiveness is the ability to make a patient’s needs a high priority. A responsive care provider: Demonstrates that patients are important by the choices he or she makes. Quickly answers ringing phones. Quickly acknowledges entering patients. Is willing to put patient needs ahead of his or her own when appropriate.
Responsiveness Questions:
 Is there a right way to greet patients/customers when they enter the office? What is it?
 Is there a right way to answer the phone? What is it?
 Is there a situation that would cause you to work past your regular hours?
 Is there a situation that would cause you to interrupt your lunch?
 How often should these situations happen in a week or a month?
 What does an office owe to a patient/customer as a rule?
Empathy is the ability of a care provider to put himself or herself in the patient’s shoes, or in a peer’s shoes.
An empathic care provider: Displays concern and understanding about the feelings of others. Hears not only their words but also what they feel and mean. Forms partnerships easily with patients to help them achieve their goals and with peers to help them achieve team goals.
Empathy Questions:
 How would patients/customers describe you?
 How would fellow workers describe you?
 What kinds of people are the most difficult to work with or help?
 Is there a time when you should not sell an eyeglass frame to a patient/customer?
 What makes a good team in an office?
 Describe something you did at your last job to promote teamwork.
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An Interview Guide for Hiring Service-Oriented Staff
Assurance is the combination of job knowledge and competence, maturity and professionalism that a care provider demonstrates, so that patients can feel confident in the care that they are receiving.
An assured care provider: Demonstrates, (or will actively learn), job knowledge and skills, and general knowledge of optometry/opticianry. He or she also: Acts and dresses professionally. Stays calm and constructive when handling stressful situations. Influences patients and peers to make good decisions. Demonstrates tolerance, a sense of humor, and patience with patients and peers. Recovers quickly from difficult situations.
Assurance Knowledge Questions: What do you know about:
 Patient pre-testing including, tonometry, Ishihara color test, visual fields?
 Eye pathology, optics, patient record keeping and patient database operations?
 Frame materials and frame adjusting, repair and fitting?
 Lab operations and quality output, including writing lab orders, lensometry, knowledge of various lens types and materials?
 Selling to meet patient optical and lifestyle needs, benefits of extra pairs and sunwear?
Assurance Maturity/Professionalism Questions:
 What frustrates you?
 Describe a deadline situation when you had several tasks to do at once, and how you coped.
 How do you handle patient/customer problems?
 What do you feel that you need to know to do a good job here?
 Can you describe a time that you went out of your way to learn how to do your job better?
Insight is the ability to understand your role in the office and to be your own manager.
An insightful care provider: Recognizes the needs of patients and the practice, and his or her impact on both. Identifies the important aspects of a problem quickly. Learns new information quickly and understands how it applies to the business. Sees what should be done next.
Insight Questions:
 How have you changed since you started working? What do you know about yourself now that you did not know then?
 Why do people like working with you?
 What makes a patient/customer feel that you are doing a good job?
 What makes your boss think that you are doing a good job?
Communication is the ability to speak and listen effectively. A communicative care provider:
Asks good questions. Listens actively and effectively. Speaks in a clear, easy-to-understand manner. Expresses ideas so that others can understand them.
Communication Questions:
 Are there any questions that you have about this job or about our practice?
 Why would working here be different than working somewhere else?
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An Interview Guide for Hiring Service-Oriented Staff
 If you had to write an essay about the importance of quality in business, what would you say about it?
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