The face of advertising and recruiting is rapidly changing. With the current jobs market scarce on candidates, it can be compelling to simply hire to plug a gap. However, hiring when you’re desperate is a tricky predicament; remember it’s a long and complicated process manage the situation if someone turns out to not quite fit the role!
If you find yourself in the dilemma of hiring on the basis that there are no other candidates, it is prudent to take some extra steps in the process to make sure this really is the best decision for your company. The good news is that there are several options open to you to assist in making your recruitment decisions.
What is the essential information you need to know about the candidates for your role?
Many positions have critical skill-sets that candidates must possess to be successful in their roles. Whether your candidate needs to have a certain qualification or ticket, length of relevant experience, leadership skills, or needs to possess great presentation skills and be articulate, once you know your essential criteria, you can select the right tool to test those attributes, even before you decide who is worthy of an interview.
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Skills, personality and aptitude testing
To ensure your candidates have the capability to meet the demands of your role, you can quickly and reliably measure their abilities. There are various types of tests you can use in your assessment to measure candidates on soft skills such as cognitive ability, personality, situational judgment, as well as hard skills such as role-specific skills (accountant, web developer, etc.), programming knowledge, software proficiency, and more.
These tests include, but are not limited to:
- Personality and culture fit - these tests help to better understand a candidate's potential for job performance and satisfaction
- Cognitive ability - These tests help understand a candidate's capacity for dealing with challenging mental processes successfully
- Language - these tests determine if a candidate has the required language skills before inviting them for an interview
- Situational judgment - these tests assess whether a candidate can apply their knowledge to achieve desired outcomes
- Role-specific skills - these tests quantify a candidate's knowledge of specific professional skills (e.g. customer service)
- Programming skills - these tests show whether a candidate has the knowledge required coding knowledge for a given rooftware skills - these tests show a candidate's comfort level with important software used in the role
Having the right detailed information enables you to easily perform the pre-selection process, without the need to spend lots of money.
Reference checks
Of all the pre-employment checks you can do, references are possibly the least reliable indicator of future performance. Always exercise scepticism here, as referees are often not neutral or unbiased. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for companies to adopt a policy of merely confirming name, position and tenure in a climate where the fear of reprisals deems more detailed or personal references risky. When carrying out reference checks, try and speak to previous managers or supervisors the candidate has reported to, to ensure you are getting a relevant reference for the candidate as an employee. Also consider choosing referees yourself; clearly the candidate is offering referees on their resume that they expect will say good things about them.
Background checks
If it is relevant for the role to carry out further third party checks, make sure you don’t skip on these. Checks into criminal records, drug and alcohol screening and pre-employment medicals may be appropriate.
Making the right hiring decision
Not every business has a dedicated recruitment specialist in their organisation to make hiring decisions, and the results of these decisions can have a long term positive or negative impact on your business. Having the ability to obtain vital information you need to support your recruitment decisions, using one or more of the options above, will ensure that you can efficiently and effectively recruit the right person for your role.
Tim O’Brien
Director
Connecting Industry Talent™
Connect with me for advice or assistance.
tim.obrien@connectingindustry.com.au