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How To Deal With More Than One Great Candidate

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Recruitment is all about finding that perfect candidate, but what happens when we end up with more than one? Every now and then, an effective recruitment process gathers multiple suitable applicants, any of which you would love to hire, but unfortunately only have one position.

While this is a good problem to have, it can be a situation where we miss out on strong talent that could be valuable down the line or even currently in a different section of the business. So how do we address it?

 

How to Handle Several Excellent Applicants

 

  • Find a Lateral Position – Often we find applicants who seem like excellent organisational fits but due to a slightly better applicant, they miss out on the position and you miss out on a potentially valuable employee. When you have situations like these make sure to keep in mind any upcoming or other current  positions you will be hiring for that may match the candidate’s skill-set. Furthermore, communicate this consideration to the candidate. This will keep their job seeking mentality engaged with your organisation and potentially line up a strong hire down the line.
  • Talent Pooling – Building off the last point, even if you have no other positions available, communicate your own positive feedback to the candidate in terms of their application performance and their strong fit and ask to keep their details on file in a talent pool. While this is not revolutionary, this is often just used as a way to mollify disappointed candidates, but if managed correctly can over the long-term, build a database of already positively-screened candidates as your first port of call for future roles. Additionally, a strong Candidate Management System, such as Scout, is invaluable in the process of building these kind of pools.
  • Keep them on in a Project or Contract Basis  – An additional approach you can take is to consider outsourcing work to the promising individual on specific projects or for a particularly busy period. This has the double effect of keeping them engaged with a presence in the organisation for when a role becomes available, while allowing you to examine their on-the-job performance. While many candidates may not engage such a proposal, the individuals who are exceptionally motivated to join your organisation will often seriously consider such an offer, and relish the opportunity to get their foot in the door.

 

Now while this may seem a best-case kind of problem, it still is a problem. Recruiters need to be ready and possess the tools to track and manage human talent as it moves around their organisation. By building a positive connection with all candidates through strong candidate care and considerations like the above, you can streamline your recruitment to not only make current applicants more valuable, but build your employer brand positively within the market.

 

Shortlisting on a Shoe String

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Your Pocket Guide to Shortlisting on a Budget.

Recruitment can be costly – in terms of time and money. Finding the right person can take up to 68 days, according to a 2015 study by management consultancy company, CEB. Regardless of the process, recruitment costs can reach up to two-thirds of an employee’s annual salary, according to WorkplaceInfo.

At Employment Office, we believe the recruitment process is an exciting opportunity to discover your next star – and should not be seen as a burden to your bottom line!

With this in mind, we have put together a little pocket guide to shortlisting on a budget – a guide to finding the right people for your organisation, minimising the time and cost impacts, and without compromising the quality of your recruitment process.

Read on as we share with you the most efficient way to conduct shortlisting – a six step strategy focusing on getting recruitment right from the get-go, that promises to keep your hip-pocket happy.

  1. Conduct a detailed job analysis

It is essential that you identify, and get all stakeholders on the same page regarding; the aim of the role, the position description, the selection criteria, and the vision of your ideal candidate.

Organise a single meeting with all staff involved in the hiring process (Recruiter, HR team, Future Leader) to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Be sure to brief each staff member on the aim of the meeting beforehand and inform them to bring any relevant material (previous job descriptions, hand over notes and an exit interview transcription). This simple but critical step will minimalize email-tennis and set the ball in motion for the next stage of recruitment, helping condense the time to hire.

  1. Seek the right information from applicants

With certain competitive roles attracting hundreds of applicants, it is simply not viable to read every resume and cover letter. ‘Screening questions’ refers to a series of questions determined by you that will immediately ‘knock out’ unsuitable candidates, and equally, draw attention to outstanding candidates.

75 to 88 per cent of applicants are screened-out when the recruiter first glances at their resume.

Screening questions help accelerate the recruitment process as you no longer need to sift through hundreds of irrelevant resumes that recruitment software will automatically identify as unsuitable.

When designing screening questions, consider which factors are ‘make or break’ in terms of legal requirements and the candidates’ skills.
Legal necessities: If your role requires a heavy vehicle licence or re-assignment to a remote location, be sure to flag these in your screening questions. It sounds simple, but all too often recruiters forget to ask candidates about key criteria, resulting in time being wasted by sorting through resumes of candidates who legally cannot do the job.

Qualifications: Many competitive jobs have non-negotiable requirements – you can set the bar high with screening questions, weeding out candidates who haven’t yet reached the required number of years of experience or level of education that the role demands.

In-depth insights: Design open-ended questions with the key requirements of the role in mind. Your questions could include anything from ‘Describe what you have learned from other leaders, and how this has shaped your leadership style,’ to ‘Discuss a time when you had to deal with a serious customer service issue – how did you handle the situation?’

  1. Screen with phone or video interview

Before investing time and energy in face to face interviews, it’s essential to communicate with candidates in real-time to get a sense of their personality and verbal communication skills. A phone interview, or better, a recorded video interview as conducted at Employment Office, will help you arrive at a high-quality shortlist with new intel that you can use to guide inform your questions in the final face-to-face interviews.
When resources are tight, every minute counts, so be ready with a list of questions at hand and know what you are looking for in terms of essential, desirable and undesirable responses. 15 to 25 minutes should be sufficient for you to decide whether to continue the candidate to the next stage.

  1. Conduct Face to Face interviews

Structure and standardise the interviews – Have a clear plan of how your interview should go and keep an eye on the clock to stay on track. This will get easier each time. Secondly, ensure all interviews follow a similar structure to make it easy to compare applicants later.

Involve others – Having multiple interviewers reduces bias and enables recruiters to focus on one or two skill sets each, rather than one interviewer looking for all qualities in the candidate. Alternatively, one recruiter could ask questions, while the other HR representative takes notes.

Address what’s important: the behavioural and theoretical – To craft your interview questions, revisit the job description and consider the key selection criteria. Ask questions that address experience, skills, values and desired behavioural tendencies.

The best questions challenge candidates to share an anecdote with you – perhaps a time when they overcame pressure or made a significant change to processes within their company in the face of unyielding resistance. Telling a story makes it easier for the candidate to relax, and gives you the opportunity to tease out the candidate’s skills, rather than the candidate simply listing their attributes.

Compare apples with apples – Many recruiters assign ratings to each response in order to have a numerical figure that will enable them to quickly identify outstanding candidates. To reduce the margin of error, ensure all interviews have the same idea of what a ‘10’ and ‘0’ looks like.

Consider cultural fit – The face-to-face interview represents a critical opportunity for you to consider if the person would adapt to your work environment and feel comfortable among your team. Does the candidate prefer to work independently or with the team?

  1. Consider a Group Assessment Day (GAD)

For organisations hiring in bulk or testing a number of strong applicants for a competitive position, a Group Assessment Day is a popular alternative to multiple interviews. GADs afford recruiters the benefits of an individual interview (as some recruiters choose to conduct individual interviews during the GAD), and the opportunity to observe candidates in teams, and in role-play situations relevant to the role.

Observing candidates for two hours or more for both behavioural and skills qualities means that you improve your chance of uncovering the best match for the role, compared to only analysing a candidate in an individual interview.

In the short term, GADs save HR managers, who are hiring in bulk, from hours in the interview room. In the long term, GADs lead to higher quality hires and thus, reduced turnover.

  1. Give your candidate the all-clear

Remember, more often than not, outstanding candidates are also applying to your competitors. Thus, at this late stage of the recruitment process, your candidates are a ‘flight risk’ – they are time sensitive, so you must be too. We recommend conducting background and reference checks as efficiently as possible.

Background checks– Keep your workplace safe and protected from legal nightmares by conducting thorough pre-employment checks. This could include police checks, education verification checks, medical checks and visa checks.

Skills testing– A simple online skills test could mean the difference between an outstanding hire and an incorrect hire. A skills test is an easy way to ensure candidates have the skills they claim. Skills testing could include Microsoft office testing, typing, numeracy and literacy, and attention to detail, technical writing and business communication tests, or more comprehensive tests relevant to particular roles.

The Key Take-Away

Ultimately, the key take-away is that you can only save time and money in the long term by implementing high-quality recruitment practices today. A streamlined recruitment method as outlined above will save your team hours in manual labour and will cut-out non-essential communication. This means your candidate-attraction strategy will be lean in terms of resources but mean in terms of hire-power.

 

Editor’s note: In celebration of the holiday season, Employment Office is delighted to offer clients our Candidate Video Star Special. Book by 5pm Thursday 21st Dec and we will:

  • Rate and rank your candidates according to your criteria
  • Record up to 10 video screening interviews (each approx 10 minutes duration)
  • Tailor the interview questions to your needs
  • Accelerate the screening process, getting you to the best candidates quicker and without hassle
  • Handle all candidate care over the Christmas period
  • Assist with scheduling your face to face interviews

Contact us today and mention ‘Christmas Special’ to take advantage of this fantastic offer.

Employment Office is the leader when it comes to uncovering top talent. Click to learn why we are not a traditional dinosaur recruitment agency, and how we can give you bang for your buck.

Sources:

 WorkplaceInfo, Recruiting Costs, accessed 2017,

http://workplaceinfo.com.au/recruitment/problems-and-challenges/recruiting-costs

Signature Staff, The True Cost of Hiring New Employees, 2016

https://www.signaturestaff.com.au/blog/true-cost-hiring-new-employees/

CEB, Recruiting Slowdown Hurts the Bottom Line, 2015: https://www.cebglobal.com/human-resources/recruiting/accelerating-recruiting.html

Ideal, Shortlisting Step-By Step Guide For Candidate Recruitment, accessed 2017, https://ideal.com/shortlisting/

 

 

 

 

 

Do Reference Checks Still Matter?

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“References Available Upon Request”

This sentence is placed smack dab at the bottom of almost every resume and CV you’ll collect. Employers like references. Applicants hate asking for them and do not like to bother their friends and coworkers. So what you get is a compromise – the acknowledgement that if you want references, you can have them, but only if you remember to ask.

How Much Do References Matter?

Reference checks have been an important part of the recruitment process for decades. But how much do they really matter? The original purpose of a reference was to get any other information you could about an employee that they didn’t share on their resume. But with the internet, and the legal protections that applicants have preventing negative information, enough information is already online that that’s become less useful. So what are the benefits of reference checks?

Benefits of Reference Checks

Reference checks still can hold a lot of information, and are a great tool for recruiters. Benefits of reference checks include:

  • Verifying Claims – One of the remaining benefits of reference checks is the ability to verify claims that the applicant made on their resume. For example, if an employee claims “I created the company website,” you can talk to a reference and ask “who created the company website?” in an effort to verify the accuracy of that statement. That can be very valuable for those that are hiring someone based on specific experiences or achievements.
  • Showing Preparation – It’s not always the quality of the reference check that matters. Sometimes it’s “did they prepare their references, and are their references prepared to vouch for them?” Applicants that ask their references, prepare the numbers and contact information, let them know you’re calling, etc., are the ones that are going to be better employees, no matter what the references say.
  • Genuine Praise – This can be hard for most people to hear on the phone, but those that are very good at figuring out what is genuine and what is not will often find that genuine praise has a greater impact on their hiring decisions than fake praise. If you call someone’s boss, and they sound like they truly valued that employee, that’s a good sign.

Each of these would not be possible without the benefit of a reference check.

How to Get the Most From Your Reference Checks

Reference checks haven’t lost their value. The problem is that most people do not use reference checks correctly. They ask only a few vague questions and aren’t listening for the intricacies of the answer. Reference checks can be invaluable, as long as you know what to ask and how to manage them correctly.

For your recruitment and branding concerns you can contact Employment Office at info@employmentoffice.com.