Ingredients:

Courage
Independence
Leadership
Followership
Love of Management
Takes the Initiative to Make Things Better
Honey (AKA Relationship Builder)
Self-Aware
Humble
Confident

Preparation: Evaluate the resume and application. Prepare questions about why previous career moves were made as this will tell you a lot about the maturity and motivations of the candidate.

Mix: Get the candidate talking. Are you interested in what he or she is saying or is he/she just dribbling on about meaningless stuff? Dribblers tend to do this after becoming employed, too. Does he/she get what being a manager is all about? XX number of years experience managing people does not make one qualified to manage - or an excellent manager.

For each previous position, determine whether he/she improved the business, and in what ways. Find out how this person made the management team stronger and better. Determine whether he/she left destruction (real or human relationships) in his or her wake. This is the most important thing to determine. You want to hire a manager who will improve your business, so you need to know how/whether he/she improved previous businesses.

Test for fit within the culture. This is a valid job-related line of inquiry. Watch for whether the candidate seems connected to the organization's culture and mission and look for chemistry with the hiring manager. You can determine fit by observing him or her and by noticing your comfort level with this person. Do you want him or her around?

Do not rush this recipe. Sometimes it takes a short period of time, an hour, to bake up the right manager. Sometimes, you need to spend several hours. You can add more ingredients to your selection process, but do not need to.

Serves: The entire organization.