As a restaurant owner, the most important employees you will ever hire are your management positions and in particular your general manager. The people in these positions can make or break your restaurant not to mention your bank account, lifestyle and the role you'll need to play in your restaurant after they are hired.

Go into these hiring situations with a healthy dose of humility. No matter how many interviews you've conducted over your career and how much success you've had it's always possible to make a hiring mistake. The market is filled with an abundance of glib, confident, impressive-sounding job candidates whose greatest skill is in taking job interviews not in managing a restaurant.

Past performance is the best predictor of future performance. When it comes to hiring key people, what candidates SAY they can do doesn't matter, you've GOT to base your decision on what they've actually accomplished in the past.

Here are a few suggestions for identifying past performance:

1. Ask very specific, probing questions in the interview process. Bring in an outside expert, say a consulting chef, if youre hiring a chef if you need to. Ask lots of HOW and WHY questions. Look for specific and detailed responses and specific examples, not vague generalities.
    
2. Verify what candidates claim with their references. Dont always rely on the first level of references, ask the references for the names of other people who have worked with the candidate and contact them too.
    
3. Verify the facts on the candidate's resume. Use an employment screening service to check the veracity of what's on the resume and conduct a background check too.

All of the above can be valuable aids in helping you make a more intelligent and informed hiring decision based on past accomplishments and performance, not empty promises and exaggerated claims.