Whether you’re a huge or small business, sifting through resumes is a challenge. There are good ones and bad ones, and figuring out what kind of applicant sent what kind of resume can be difficult. The difficulty is increased if you have a large load of applicants and not enough time to acknowledge all of them. Dr. Wendell Williams recently wrote about other effective ways to screen. Here’s what he came up with:
Job Previews. This means giving applicants an accurate portrayal of what a day at work will look like. This doesn’t mean promoting your business. Most applicants don’t have a clear idea of what a work day will look like, so this will hook applicants further, but will turn some away as well. And those that stay are the ones you really want to pay attention to.
Job Related. The questions you ask on applications should be directly related to the job. Nothing less. Run-of-the-mill questions like “Why do you want this job?” are easy to fake out in writing. Be clear and professional.
Predictive. Don’t make a list of common characteristics of your current employees and then use that list to screen applicants. Your employees have already passed the test. Also, putting together an “average” ignores the individual characteristics of employees that make them unique, useful, and special.
Start at the Beginning. Don’t hire for results. Hire for skills. We don’t need to tell you they’re two different things, but you should be hiring because the applicant has the skills you desire. Skills will get you results.
Smart Application Banks. This one takes a bit of homework. Make sure your applications are doing a fine job of determining the candidate’s skills and how useful they are.
The End Game. All of these are ways to help whittle down applications. You don’t have time to interview everybody, of course. So holding onto those that are truly interested in the job and making your applications smarter are perfect ways to get through all those applications.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
