Did you pass the résumé review test in yesterday’s Advisor? Today, more on how to save your time with résumés.
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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 qualifications
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 office.
Here are three other time-savers to consider.
ATS
First, you may want to consider an applicant tracking system (ATS) 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
- SilkRoad
- ADP®
- Taleo,
- UltiPro®
- Kenexa®
- PeopleSoft
- BambooHR
- Jobvite®
- iRecruit
- PCRecruiter
Looking to expand your use of social media recruiting but don’t know where to begin? Start on Tuesday, June 23, 2015, with a new interactive webinar, Get Linked! Social Media Recruiting Strategies for the Digital Era. Learn More
Sample #3
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.
Of course, a great many companies are streamlining their entire résumé process through technological advances. Social media in particular is drastically changing the recruiting landscape, but it’s all changing so fast that you may not know how to use it to your best advantage. How do you get there? Fortunately, there’s timely help in the form of BLR’s new webinar—Get Linked! Social Media Recruiting Strategies for the Digital Era. In just 60 minutes, on Tuesday, June 23, you’ll learn everything you need to know about social media sourcing—and you’ll get a hands-on, tactical look at how to best use these new skills.
Register today for this interactive webinar.
Become social media-savvy in your recruiting efforts. Join us Tuesday, June 23, 2015, for a new interactive webinar, Get Linked! Social Media Recruiting Strategies for the Digital Era. Earn 1 hour in HRCI Recertification Credit. Register Now
By participating in this interactive webinar, you’ll learn:
- The top 5 sites to become familiar with when sourcing job candidates—especially passive candidates—online
- The demographics of social media usage—why it’s so important for sourcing
- Techniques for proper job posting on social media sites, and how to get the most bang for your pixel buck
- The impact the use of images/video has on online social media recruitment efforts—and what’s “hot” right now in terms of the types of images and videos to post
- The art (and science) of Boolean searches—sample searches you can use right away
- Predictions on where social media recruitment is heading, including the sites and trends to watch for on the social media sourcing horizon
- And much, much more!
Register now for this event risk-free.
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Eastern)
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Central)
12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Mountain)
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1 credit hour toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Join us on Tuesday, June 23, 2015—you’ll get the in-depth Get Linked! Social Media Recruiting Strategies for the Digital Era webinar AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
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Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR/HRhero webinars:
- Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
- Get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow the presentation.