8 great ideas for selecting the right candidate

Business people I speak with tell me that selecting the right candidate, the first time, can be one of the toughest tasks they face. An individual may look good on paper, and even interview well, but a month into the job and they start to have serious problems. I recommend to all my clients that they dedicate time to preparing for the recruitment process before it begins. Time spent on the preparatory stage of recruitment will usually lead to a recruitment process that is faster and more efficient.  This is because you will be focussed on your needs and clear about the person required to fulfil them. Once you’ve done your planning and are ready to start interviewing, follow these 8 great ideas on how to avoid costly mistakes by selecting the right candidate, the first time.

1. Online questionnaires

   If you’re wading through lots of candidates, you can ask them to fill in an online questionnaire. Online advertisers like www.seek.com.au often have them linked to their website or you could make your own using www.surveymonkey.com. If a candidate can’t be bothered to fill out a questionnaire there’s a good chance they’re not going to be committed to the job once they get there – so do both of you a favour and shortlist with a questionnaire.

2. Phone screening

   Using a structured guide and asking a shortlist of questions over the phone can help to significantly whittle down your list of potential employees. It doesn’t cost you much and can reap great rewards in terms of time investment.

3. Behavioural based interviews

   Past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour. If you want a better idea of how a job applicant will perform for you as an employee, use a behavioural-based interview guide. Behavioural questions ask the candidate to tell you about a past experience. For example ask them; “Tell me about a time you had a conflict with a co-worker. How did you handle it? What was the outcome”

4. The At Home interview

   You want to move through the inevitable polite, nervous stage with which all interviews start, as quickly as possible. Once your candidate is relaxed and feels at home you are much more likely to get a sense of their real character and get more honest answers to your questions. Help your candidate to relax and show their true nature by using open body language and asking them the easy questions first.

5. Testing technical skills

   A candidate’s CV will tell you their formal qualifications and work experience, and the interview will give you some idea of their personality, but you’re only taking a wild guess at their actual technical skills unless you give them a test to assess those skills. If you’re interviewing a Trainer, get them to teach you something relevant to the position; if you’re interviewing a Barista, get them to make you a cup of coffee!

6. Check references

   Don’t assume all references will be good and therefore meaningless – they won’t. It is absolutely essential to talk to a candidate’s referees before offering them a position. You should use a guide to keep the discussion brief and on-track. You want to find out about the person’s strengths and weaknesses, whether they are a team player, whether they showed commitment to their team and their employer in the past, and whether or not the referee would hire them again, amongst other things. Referees are generally truthful, and you may be surprised by what they’ll tell you!

7. Use an objective rating scale

   It is imperative that you use an objective rating scale with clear criteria and scoring rules. Apart from being fair and professional, it helps you to be consistent over time, should the process take a couple of weeks, or if several people are sharing the interviewing and decision-making responsibilities. You may find that you need to go to second-round interviews, or that you need to recruit again in a few months and, if so, you can refer to these scores to help you choose further candidates. Of course you will want to use your “gut instinct” when choosing a new recruit, but this should always be in addition to an objective system.

8. Behavioural profiling tools

   When interviewing recruits you may want to consider using a behavioural profiling tool. These usually come in the form of a questionnaire that the candidate fills in and which you then score against a results sheet. This will place your candidate into broad categories for areas such as personality type, preferred work environments, thinking style, work habits, etc. Every “type” has potential strengths and challenges in particular roles, so data on correlations between type and occupation can identify potentially good matches, or conversely, throw up some areas of caution. Objective, clinically-proven, test results will help you to make a more informed decision about whether a potential employee has the temperament and skills to match the role you are offering.

Recruitment can be an expensive and time consuming process – added to this the damage that the wrong employee can wreak on a small team of workers and you will see that planning and investing in your recruitment process will be valuable time and money spent.

Sheralyn Guy, is director of HRhelp, a company dedicated to providing affordable, practical and effective HR services to small to medium sized businesses. For further great HR ideas call +61 2 8006 1280, email gethelp@hrhelp.com.au or go online at www.hrhelp.com.au