When it comes to hiring, there are several stages to the selection process: CV selection, interviews, assessing skills and checking for cultural fit. However, companies can often underestimate the amount of selection that can be done at the CV stage because there’s a lot that CVs can tell you about prospective candidates.
The first thing you want to look for is the CV itself and whether or not it’s clean, well-structured and error-free. It’s very rare, if ever, that a brilliant candidate will send out a sloppy document because every great candidate will understand the importance of that document and will put time, effort and care into it.
Conversely, if a candidate sends you a CV with very bad grammar or typos, then that’s a predictor that they’re going to be sending out documents in their work from your company that have the same mistakes on them.
The next thing companies should look for at the CV selection stage is evidence of progression. So, if a candidate has worked for a company for a short amount of time and been promoted, that shows the employee has done a great job and it’s a really good sign but it can often be something that hiring managers can often overlook.
The third thing to look at is tenure. Not every job suits every candidate and people do make mistakes or find bad culture fits so there will be the odd blip on CVs. However, if you see a candidate has moved within a year for the last four jobs, then you begin to wonder if the common denominator is the candidate. It’s very important in certain areas such as sales, so if you see a sales candidate who is constantly moving, that tells a story and you need to be very careful of it.
Something else to look out for at CV selection stage is the kind of companies the candidate has worked for. For example, if you’re in a start-up and you need to bring in someone to lead the product management function, hiring someone from another start-up or another small business makes a lot of sense because that person will know the environment, the dynamics and what’s required. It can be a real adjustment for some people coming from a very big company into a start-up and vice versa. That’s not to say these candidates won’t be successful, but it shows that there are predictors of future success that can be seen at the CV stage.
If you look at interviewing, most interviews that are done in a haphazard way have very low scores in terms of reliability and validity. They often don’t effectively measure what they should measure and they are unreliable in terms of what results they do produce. With this in mind, the best way to conduct interviews is by asking competency-based questions.
Competencies are transferrable skills such as people leadership, project management, or relationship development and it’s tied into the job analysis phase. If you do a very good job analysis, you’ll have a good understanding of what competencies you’ll need the ideal candidate to have. That way, when you move to interview stage, you’ll be able to measure your candidates against those competencies and you should look for the STAR approach in their answers.
Asking questions in a competency-based format will give you a much more detailed answer than a general question around skills. For example, you could ask someone, “Do you have good project management skills?” and they could say, “Yeah, I’ve got very good project management skills.”
But a more effective question would be, “Can you give me an example of a project that you managed from start to finish that centred around delivering a software product?” Then it’s very hard for the candidate to bluff about their skills and you will be able to tell from the quality of the answer if they actually have the right experience.
Culture is probably something that companies don’t pay enough attention to but in reality, it’s absolutely crucial and should be brought in all the way through the process. Skills and experience are one thing, but we would take the approach that you could find a candidate with skills and experience that far outweigh other candidates, but if their attitude is wrong it’s not going to be a good hire.
You’re better off looking at somebody with lower skills and experience but has the right attitude and is really hungry and driven to succeed because those are the people who will do well in your business.
The best companies out there will all understand why they’re in business and understand their company culture and identity and they’ll interview against that. I think it takes time for some companies to realise the importance of ‘The Why’ and their identity and company culture and to actually give it the attention that it deserves.
If you end up in a situation where you have two candidates and you can’t make up your mind between the two of them, then it’s a great problem to have, you’re in a very lucky situation.
I’d advise companies in this situation to start drilling into their strengths and weaknesses and also go back to the job analysis phase and refine it further. Think about what else you really want or which competencies are the most important and interview both candidates against that.
Want to know more about job analysis, CV selection or improving your interview process? Check out our hiring solutions or contact me directly by email at brian.mcfadden@recruiters.ie or by phone at +353 632 5021
Brian McFadden is the client services director at RECRUITERS
FruitPhoto by Yair Mejía on Unsplash
