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Here’s the system I recommend:
Make a quick pass through your pile of credentials, glancing at each candidate’s résumé. Don’t read, just glance. (This is critical—résumés can be fascinating, but you must steel yourself. Set the résumé aside the instant you know the person is not fully qualified.)
Put the credentials into three piles:
Pile A=appears to meet all or most qualifications
Pile B=missing one or more important qualification
Pile C=clearly not qualified
If you have a good number of people in Pile A, you won’t have to deal with Piles B and C again. If there are few or none in your Pile A, you’ll either have to modify your expectations, or figure out a way to attract more capable candidates.
Now take Pile A and do a more in-depth review to select your top candidates.
For each candidate, make a note of areas in which you need additional information. For example, say a candidate’s résumé says she is familiar with Web design software, but you must have a person with experience on a specific program. Make a note to explore that by e-mail or in a telephone interview before bringing the candidate into your offices.
Here are three other timesavers to consider.
ATS
First, you may want to consider an applicant tracking system that will help you with this whole process by maintaining the records digitally and helping with reminders, notifications, and so on. You might consider:
- iCIMS
- Jobvite
- iRecruit
- PCRecruiter
- Or any number of others
Best recruitment metrics? Find out what they are and how to calculate in this free downloadable webcast: Reporting for Success: Key Recruitment Metrics to Improve Your Business. Download this free webcast now!
Testing
And the second thing to consider is doing some testing. If there is a key knowledge, skill, or ability that you can test, don’t rely on the interview. For example, in our company we were looking for writers. We’d interview them, and then if we had a good interview, we’d ask them to do some writing for us. And, of course, if they couldn’t write well, no matter how well they had done on the interview, we wouldn’t hire them.
So we started giving the writing test first. Interestingly, this tended to reduce the importance of the interview—if the person could write well, we wanted the person. If the person couldn’t write—no need to interview.
Phone Screen
Typically, after you come up with a collection of candidates to pursue further, you’ll consider a phone screen. This can often help to fill in blanks that weren’t answered by the résumé, and maybe find out about knockout characteristics or about salary expectations.
How to do recruiting is one thing; how to prove you are doing it well is quite another. What metrics resonate with management? Fortunately there’s timely help in the form of a FREE (thanks to sponsor iCIMS) downloadable webcast— Reporting for Success: Key Recruitment Metrics to Improve Your Business. Download this free webcast now!
This downloadable webcast discusses the importance of tracking metrics, as well as explains which metrics you should measure to improve your recruitment effectiveness. You will also learn how the iCIMS Talent Platform can help you report key performance indicators with ease, to drive business success. Download this free webcast now!
Metrics! Here’s a free downloadable webcast Reporting for Success: Key Recruitment Metrics to Improve Your Business. Earn 1 hour in HRCI Recertification Credit. Download this free webcast now!
Listen to this webcast, you’ll learn:
- Common pain points in recruiting & how to address them
- Metrics to help engage hiring managers
- Best metrics to use to be seen as a profit-center
- Demos of iCIMS Connect, Onboard & Tracker I-9
Download this free webcast now!
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1 recertification credit hour toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Download this free webcast now!
About the Webcast Sponsor: iCIMS
iCIMS, a leading provider of innovative Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) talent acquisition solutions, is an Inc. 500 and Software Satisfaction honoree focused on helping businesses win the war for top talent through the implementation of easy-to-use, scalable solutions that are backed by award-winning customer service. iCIMS’ Talent Platform, the industry’s premier candidate management solution, enables organizations to leverage mobile, social, and video technologies to manage their entire talent acquisition lifecycle from building talent pools, to recruiting, to onboarding all within a single web-based application. With more than 2,500 clients worldwide, iCIMS is one of the largest and fastest-growing talent acquisition system providers with offices in North America, UK, and China. To learn more about how iCIMS can help your organization, visit http://www.icims.com or view a free online demo of the iCIMS Talent Platform.