Yesterday’s Advisor covered how to prepare yourself for the first call to a potential candidate. Today, you’ll learn some tips and tricks on actually pulling the call off!
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This crucial moment can play out in so many different ways, and most of that is up to you. Consider these do’s and don’ts.
DO:
- Clearly introduce who you are, and be sure to include the name of your company.
- State your purpose in calling.
- By all means flatter your candidates. Let them know you have specially picked them from a large pool of candidates. After all of your sourcing and preparation, this is very true!
- Take your time and add a few short pauses here and there. Candidates should feel in control of the conversation and have enough time to think. If they didn’t expect a call from you, they might be on guard or suspicious. A little space in a conversation can put them at ease.
Wondering how to kick your interviews up a notch? Start on Wednesday, August 26, 2015, with a new interactive webinar, Behavior Based Interviewing: Best Practices for Hiring the Right Person. Learn More.
DON’T:
- Do not offer them an interview for the same day, or even the next day, even if you really want that position filled quickly. Give your candidate time to do some research. Besides, rushing the process makes you seem desperate.
- Never forget to detail how the interview process works. Let them know what time and where they will be meeting and with whom they will be meeting. Make sure to give them time to write it down, and if there are any other steps involved, let them know. Essentially, give them clear, easy steps to follow. This helps eliminate uncertainty.
- It never helps to misrepresent your company or the position. If candidates ask about the company, use clear terms to describe it. Also, make sure to tell them the job duties in accurate, straightforward terms. They should arrive at the interview ready to talk about the actual job you want them to fill. If their interview doesn’t match the initial phone call, you are likely to lose the candidate.
- Do not answer any questions about pay during the initial phone call. Sometimes a candidate will want to talk pay up front. Unless you work for a company where positions come with fixed pay, it’s best if you don’t mention any numbers at this time. At this point, it would be a guess and might not align with what they could see down the road in an offer. Experts agree that failure to be honest about pay costs many companies good candidates.
Always Follow Up
So you’ve made the call and hopefully you have an interview scheduled. They know what they are supposed to do and when. Why would you follow up? Because it’s polite and it helps put the candidate at ease. Just shoot the person a quick note shortly after you talk summarizing what you talked about. Send another note the day before or early the day of the interview confirming the time and location. Make sure the candidate knows that he or she can contact you with any questions. In fact, some form of communication should take place at each step of the entire process. Employees expect this, and when it doesn’t happen, they feel adrift.
What if you decide not to go with that candidate? What if someone else gets hired before the interview? If this ends up being the case, you should still send a note gently letting the person know what has transpired. It may be hard to give someone bad news, but it’s worse not to. Studies have shown that people who are cold-shouldered by companies at any point during the interview process will often bad-mouth the company to their friends and family and on social media. You may not see it directly, but a bad reputation gets around, and it may cost you in ways you didn’t anticipate.
Register today for this interactive webinar.
Find out who your interviewees really are. Join us Wednesday, August 26, 2015, for a new interactive webinar, Behavior Based Interviewing: Best Practices for Hiring the Right Person. Earn 1.5 hours in HRCI Recertification Credit and 1.5 hours in SHRM Professional Development Credit. Register Now.
By participating in this interactive webinar, you’ll learn:
- Questions that elicit honest answers about the person you might be hiring
- Ways to conduct an interview to eliminate personal opinions and provide an objective view
- How to uncover strengths, skill sets, and weaknesses based on past performance, not hypotheticals
- Legal ramifications of taking notes during the interview
- Ways to train your hiring team in behavior-based interviewing
- Strategies for steering the interview away from vague generalities
- What you need in a candidate for a position and which interview was the strongest
- And much more!
Register now for this event risk-free.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Eastern)
12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Central)
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Mountain)
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit and Professional Development Credit
This program has been approved for 1.5 credit hours toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI) and 1.5 credit hours towards SHRM-CPSM or SHRM-SCPSM.
Join us on Wednesday, August 26, 2015—you’ll get the in-depth Behavior Based Interviewing: Best Practices for Hiring the Right Person webinar AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
Find out more
Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR®/HR Hero® webinars:
- Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
- Get your (and their) specific phoned-in or e-mailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow the presentation.