Firing people is never easy. Hiring even more so.
The better job you do on hiring side, the less job you have to do on firing.

Over years of running my own company I had to hire and fire many people.
I never got used to firing people, so I tried to focus on best possible hiring to avoid this pain.

These days hiring process at Chefparade.cz looks as follows:
Step 1: send us motivational letter answering 4 questions
i) give us specific example when you came up with new solution
ii) give us specific example on situation when you did an extra step
iii) give us specific example when you solved problem
iv) what would you improve on our website

Step 2: testing – candidates with reasonable answers (Step 1) will go through GMAT kind of test consisting of 3 parts
i) math and calculus (to prove he/she is smart)
ii) text understanding (to show he/she can see important things)
iii) logic (to see he/she can connect things)

We have benchmarked all previous employees and some friends in managerial positions and set a border of minimum 85% score to get in.

Step 3: personal interview – we always have 2 people doing interview together (one man and one woman) to have different views on candidate.
It is crucial to get specific examples of past achievements.
We use many small questions here.

Step 4: cooking together – remaining candidates are invited to cook with all Chefparade staff and we spend evening cooking, eating and talking.

Every candidate can talk to anyone from Chefparade in informal environment and all Chefparade employees get to know all candidates.

Once evening is over, and candidates leave, everybody will make a list of who they would hire (without discussing with others).
Then all lists are collected and we start discussion. Person who gets most votes gets hired.

This process is time consuming, expensive and takes lot of efforts to administer and organise.
As a result you will get quality person who most probably fits your company culture.
And you save yourself job of firing couple months down the road.