When you post a job advertisement you will hopefully start receiving lots of resumes and you need to go through them quickly as top candidates are the most sought after.
If you have asked the candidates to write a cover letter explaining why they would be ideally suited for the job as I suggested in my last article, you will immediately get a sense of how motivated they are and also see their writing skills.
When reviewing the resumes you want to check for the skills that are most essential for the job and eliminate the resumes that lack those critical skills.
Once you have a sufficient number of qualified resumes you can conduct short telephone interviews. This will help you get a feel for the person over the phone and also assess language and communication skills. I like to keep these telephone interviews to no more than 10 minutes.
If I want to go further with the candidates from the telephone interview I will ask them to complete an online assessment that will provide more in-depth information about their past work history and their honesty.
“Forty-two to 55% of resumes have some type of embellishment or inaccuracy” according to Theresa Preg at Atlanta based background screening company First Advantage.
I use the STEP ONE SURVEY II from Profiles International to provide more structured and detailed information about their past work history as well as issues concerning theft of property, data and time. It also measures their attitude in three dimensions, integrity, reliability and work ethic.
What I particularly like about this assessment tool is it provides structured interview questions to use in the first interview. It pinpoints things I should look out for and develops interview questions so I don’t need to spend a lot of time formulating my own. It also tells me if the person was frank when they answered the questionnaire so I know if I can rely on the information.
When hiring a top performer you want to consider three components, the past, the present and the future. The resume and Step One Survey will help gather information about the past and if the person has the knowledge and skills to fit the job. The interview will provide information about the present and give insight into how the candidate will fit with the company fit. To evaluate future performance you want to look at the past present and incorporate further assessment tools to determine job fit. Reference checking will also further validate the information from the resume and interviews.
In future articles and videos I will cover the interview, reference checking and more in depth assessment tools to ensure that you’re hiring the right person for the job.
Stephen Goldberg