SCREENING THE CANDIDATES (PT 2)

With a screening time-management process in place, the next issue to address is actually reviewing the CVs successfully.

My experience in assisting companies with their recruitment, especially for permanent placements, is that the best 'paper match' is often interviewed and that this best 'paper match' is then usually not hired because they don't match-up to expectations come the interview. Instead, the person who is offered the post is usually a good match in terms of culture, personality, desire and enthusiasm; may often be short on experience but has a career trending in the right direction.

That is to say, if going purely on the basis of the CV one person would be hired, but when the interview is taken into account too, someone else will win out.

That experience has led me to take a controversial approach to reviewing CVs in that I look for reasons to include people in the process rather than reasons to exclude them. That is a fundamental shift in attitude, away from the commonly held 'weeding out' approach. My view is that being positive in this way pays dividends come the interview stage and, indeed, with the person appointed to the post.

Reviewing CVs

The most common thing to do when reviewing CVs is to see how long someone has worked with a particular experience or technical skill. Indeed, until the age discrimination laws were introduced in Europe, a standard job description would actually set out the number of years experience in a particular task that was required.

Now that this is illegal, better job specifications have become much more important - as discussed in earlier blogs. From these improved specifications we can see the measurements for success and the behaviours we expect the candidates to demonstrate so that the position works for all parties, and this means we have some useful criteria to actually review CVs against.

Step-by-step:

1. Put together a list of the requirements from the job description that you can screen for and see in a CV.

For instance, you can see technical skills, accuracy and attention to detail because of the tasks carried out and how well the CV has been put together. Higgledy-piggledy CVs with grammatical and spelling errors do not suggest an organised person with good attention to detail. If they are to have a customer- or supplier-facing role but can’t set up their own CV properly then what are you customers and suppliers going to experience?
In contrast, as we discussed previously, flexibility and whether the person is a team player or not are difficult to ascertain from a CV so, despite people putting it in their summary or profile, there isn't a measurable context in which to make a judgement in the screening process.

2. Read the CV in depth, not just a scan.

I read CVs in chronological order which invariably involves reading from the bottom up so that I can obtain a good picture of a candidate's progression. The employees who will make the most difference can usually demonstrate progression through their roles and this will usually translate into desire and enthusiasm.

3.  Look for trends.

Within a candidate's progression I look for trends in achievements that are similar to those that will be needed in the post, and for improving results and responsibilities as their career has progressed. I also look for new skills that have been developed throughout their career.

4. Ask questions.

We all get frustrated when we are given 17 page CVs. Therefore, we should not be surprised when there is information missing on a two- or three-page CV so that you can’t get a complete picture of the applicant. This can be easily rectified by going back for specific information or lining up a pre-interview screening conversation. (This is a topic which I will cover in a future blog.) Don't reject candidates because a CV doesn't have all the answers.

5. Keep track.

Detail each applicant on your spreadsheet (as explained earlier) so that you can both track your pipeline easily for the people that you want to move to the next stage and maintain a record as to why applicants have been rejected. In today’s litigious times, tracking reasons for rejection are vital throughout the process to ensure that you do not run into discrimination issues.

6. Prefer Referrals

Barring exceptional circumstances, always discuss any employee-referred CVs with the employee and select their referrals to be taken to the interview stage. The employee understands the company culture, the way you work and your expectations and is likely to be suggesting a person who will work well in the organisation and contribute significantly, rather than the perfect 'paper match' (who often isn’t hired).

In Summary

To move through the screening process effectively and efficiently follow these steps:

• Impose good time management practices on yourself and review the applications in small manageable batches.
• Seek to screen applicants in rather than out, using the success measures and behaviours from your job description.
• Read CVs chronologically to accurately assess career progression.
• If a trend or skill is not clear do not dismiss the CV and applicant out of hand. Instead, ask for more information.
• Track reasons for screening in and for screening out.

At the end of this stage, you should have your initial screening organised and know who you want to take forward and who to exclude. This means you can now you can set up your interviews.

Next Time

Setting up interviews and protecting your reputation as you let applicants know that you will not be moving forward with them.

SCREENING THE CANDIDATES (PT 1)

Previously, we looked at resourcing strategies to attract the best candidates to your organisation and up until now you have been able to go at your own pace when managing this. However, once the candidates' CVs or applications are arriving the pressure is on you to stay on top of the process.

To make good recruiting decisions you must apply a consistent approach to reviewing applicants, while all the time you need to remember that the candidates who can make a difference are also sought by your competitors and many other companies so the whole process you're following has to be quick. Like I said, the pressure is on!

Time management

The screening process is fairly straightforward if there are only a small number of applicants and that may be the case for rare skill sets. However, the general reality is that there will always be a large number of respondents and that means reviewing them all properly can quickly get out of hand.

So, remembering that the best applicants are snapped up fast, you have to be able to set time aside quickly to review the applicants, set interviews and make the appointment. This is easier said than done!  We are all working to tight budgets and staffing numbers, and so we're all already extremely busy with little room to delegate tasks to already-maxed-out colleagues. This means managing your time is crucial. Having an 'expiry date' in your mind for CVs as they arrive is a very helpful first step.

The recruitment industry understands the need for speed. As a recruiter, the best time to be working on a permanent placement is when the client's interview process has already started because once under way the process typically will only take a couple of weeks rather than the six-to-eight that can be involved while CVs were being submitted and reviewed. Recruiters know that "time kills all deals" and that the best applicants rapidly find other roles, so a two week time frame means that there is a much greater chance of the placement happening when compared to the standard six-to-eight weeks.

If you do adopt my suggestion of an 'expiry date' for CVs to help keep the process moving quickly then by all means you can carry on reviewing additional CVs as they come in after that date, and adding additional interview slots for the late arrivals if they are good enough. However, you must start the process according to your initially set time-frame otherwise the good candidates that you thought might well be right at the outset will have disappeared while you were waiting for late arrivals.

The key element to running the process effectively is not to allow the CVs to build up. Reviewing 10 CVs is more straightforward and less daunting than reviewing 100. So, for 20 minutes at the start or end of each day you review the CVs that have come in and short list accordingly. This is much easier than printing off 100 CVs on Friday to read over the weekend. It creates additional stress and sours the weekend, especially the Sunday night when you invariably get around to doing it! And reviewing applicants in a sour mood is no way forward.

Managing the Screening if you are Working with Recruiters

If you are working with recruiters the number of applications can be controlled more effectively: if hiring through a Preferred Supplier List then insist on seeing only the best two or three CVs from each supplier. The issue with the PSL is that it usually has three-to-five recruitment firms in competition with each other. As such they have to send a CV as they come across it, to avoid a competing firm submitting it prior to them. This means some of the quality control is not there and that any better candidates they discover later in the process require special dispensation to be submitted or, worse,  are not submitted at all.

If dealing with a recruiter that you have personally chosen, then you will already have established they know the good from the bad and that they can supply you with the best three CVs. You should expect them to take a couple of days to come back to you so that they can carry this work out effectively.

If a recruiter sends a large volume of CVs then do not work with them. Their role is to carry out much of the initial screening for you. If they can't do this then there is little or no value to the relationship and you should find someone who can genuinely help you employ the best people for your business.

Next Time:

How to screen the CVs successfully.

ATTRACTING THE RIGHT CANDIDATE (PT 3)

We have looked at the many sources of candidates available for free or for a small advertising cost - but without the cost of a recruitment firm. Whatever approach you opt for, a key element in driving your recruitment is to ensure that the vacancy (opportunity) is presented in a way that will make it attractive to prospective candidate. This is what we're looking at this week.

Ensure Your Message Sells the Opportunity

Your goal (with my help) is to recruit the staff who will create a significant and positive impact for your business.

A risk with advertising (through traditional media, online media or through the social and business pages like LinkedIn etc) is that you only attract the people looking for jobs. These are not necessarily the strongest candidates in the market place as a whole.

To be fair, in a downturn there may be some good quality candidates being made available through redundancies etc. That aside, my experience of times of recession is that the strongest candidates are even more likely than at other times to stay with their existing employers for fear of being 'last in and first out' in a new organisation, and there's also often a general lack of confidence that the grass will be greener elsewhere.

This makes it vital that your advertisement conveys a powerful message that motivates a candidate to take action - including changing their job.

Unfortunately the reality is that, like the job specifications discussed earlier, typical adverts lead with a brief history of the company or a summary of what the candidate will be expected to do. This is dull! It will rarely attract the star candidates who can have a really positive impact on your business. (The only exceptions are if the employer is clearly the leader in their field or if it is obviously an extremely attractive proposition. Examples might be a mechanic joining a Formula 1 racing team or a web developer joining Google.)

State The Benefits

Most people are aware of the notions of 'features and benefits', and these apply to a vacancy too. When writing job adverts most people lead with features out of habit and, because it is a habit, it is easier to do so. This is not effective. Lead with the benefits.

A simple way to ensure you lead with the benefits and make your opportunity attractive is to ensure that the statements begin with the future tense, with modal verbs such as can and will. You then follow with features and these will be in the present tense - such as are. Also, focus on the person who will be joining you and not about your organisation.

A simple example from my own industry would be if we were looking for a recruitment consultant:

• We are a 10 year old recruitment company which has been working in the IT and engineering sectors. We are looking to hire an experienced recruiter to grow a desk in a niche market. You will have been running your own desk, be a self-starter and have written over £150,000 of new business per annum.

This is dull and sounds like most of the other job advertisements. Below is the same message but written with a bit more thought to the applicant's view.

• This is an exciting opportunity which will allow you to develop your career and take it in the direction you choose. You will be working with one of the strongest recruiters in the industry and will benefit from close one-to-one training which will ensure that you will learn rapidly and enjoy rapid career progression. You will be assisted via our reputation within our specialisations which will allow you far easier access to these markets, allowing you to build your career and income. You will have demonstrable career growth developed through building strong relationships with high integrity and you will want to learn from the best to be the best in the industry.

I hope you can see that the second example is more interesting and motivating. As a result, it is more likely to attract a high calibre applicant who can make a difference to the business.

It is a useful exercise to check the internet and the job pages in newspapers and read just how few advertisements talk about what is in it for the candidate, instead focusing on their own organisations or merely describing the job in hand.

In order to develop an appealing advertisement talk to your staff about why they joined, what makes the place exciting and/or fun and what encourages them to stay. Ask your clients and suppliers why they work with you. You may well pick up some interesting benefits you wouldn't have thought of by yourself, and it is far easier to use these than to sit down with a blank piece of paper wondering where to start.

Each company has reasons that people join and stay. It might be the management style, the way you interact with clients, the way you promote from within, your training or whatever. In the case of my own companies, it is the entrepreneurial style of the business that makes it attractive to creative sales people who can manage their time well.

Once you have some of the benefits of working with your company, you should look at what happens once the person has taken on the role. People who are going to make a difference to your business are going to be motivated. In order to be motivated to join your business they need to understand that if they produce more than you expect from them, then they will accelerate their progress or they will receive top rewards and recognition.

Which of the following sounds more appealing?-

• An accountant required to take over an existing client base and maintain the steady growth within the accounts.

Or

• An opportunity for you to progress to associate partner within the next two years by taking over an existing client base and maintaining the year on year growth of 5% or more per annum.

They are both the same role but it's not hard to see that the second version is far more likely to attract the high achiever who will make a difference to your business.

Leading with benefits rather than features takes practice but the good thing is, it becomes easier the more you think this way. The differences between making really good appointments versus average or poor recruits are huge . More is achieved, the workplace buzzes, you can trust your team to perform for you and you have fewer personnel issues as the great candidates will not require the hand-holding and support. Learning to 'think benefits' is worth the effort.

Measure Your Responses

Recruitment sources established and attractive benefit-led advert written, a vital additional preliminary step is to make sure you can measure each route to market and each advertisement for efficacy.

A simple spreadsheet will be fine for this, tracking each advert and each medium used. It should detail the number of responses, the number taken forward and the interviews, notes on the interviews through to job-offer, acceptance and start. Each time you tweak an ad or place it through a different medium the response should be tracked separately. This will provide a detailed, simple-to-use recruitment pipeline which, at the same time, allows you to quickly see what has and what hasn’t worked with your advertising mediums and ad wordings, so you can be more effective in the future. This might sound like a small thing, but get it in place before you actually start recruiting or you'll quickly lose the ability to track what you're doing - thus making learning from what you do impossible.

Contact me if you would like help in setting tracking up. It is very straightforward to take on once you have it in place and have used it 'for real'.

Next Time:

How to handle the response and candidate pipeline.

ATTRACTING THE RIGHT CANDIDATE (PT 2)

Last time we looked at procuring staff for larger organisations, and in particular making  the best use of a recruitment company. However, for anyone with budget concerns a recruitment company's fees are an additional expense that is sometimes necessary and expedient, but would be better avoided if possible. If that's the case for you, there are alternative ways of sourcing good staff.

I will be looking at these alternatives in greater depth in future editions of this blog, but below  is an over-view of some of the principal strategies which are effective in attracting strong staff to your business - and which are either low cost or free.

Employee Referrals:

This is arguably the strongest source of high quality new employees. Who is going to recommend someone who will not be good for the role or fit in? Human nature is to look good in the eyes of others and be respected. As a result, we refer someone for a role because, to the best of our belief, the person will be effective and reflect well upon us.

My partners in Equitylinked and Big Project Consulting were both referred to me and started working with me at Osirian prior to us setting them up in their own businesses. I, for one, can definitely testify that employee referrals are very effective.

In order to make employee referrals effective you have to provide an environment which encourages and enthuses employees to be on the lookout for candidates all the time. An incentive scheme should be in place too as additional encouragement. A very effective way to take advantage of employee referrals is to request them when a new employee starts working for you.

Your website:

Using your web site to recruit can have very little or no incremental cost and provides unlimited space to talk about the positions available and the benefits of working with your business. A "careers" or "jobs with us" menu item on your website will lead people there. Ensure that interested parties can easily apply, ideally through multiple channels including - online, by email, post, phone, in person or fax, and if not practicable through the channel that best suits you.

Social and Business Online Media:

Time aside, this is another low-cost or free avenue, and one that is growing very rapidly. Develop your own and your corporate profile on these sites, keep it updated and over time these could become a major source of quality applicants.

Of course, time constraints can quickly become an issue and particularly at present, when we are all attempting to run lean businesses and departments. Maintaining your online presence can become very time consuming and therefore it's important to decide at the outset which social media sites to focus your activities on, as there is a growing plethora.

At Osirian we were faced with the same issue and ran a simple electronic survey with our contacts to establish how they use the online environment, and cross-referenced this with their age profiles.

The information we received showed that 93% of respondents use LinkedIn for their own professional profiles and many for their companies as well.  Facebook is used by 53% of our customers, but almost entirely for keeping in touch with friends and family.  MySpace and Twitter came in with 13% each.  These results proved that we were placing our emphasis in most of the right places and that developing a strategy for Twitter (despite it being the buzz at the moment) was not as urgent as we thought because our audience profile is not attracted to it - at least not yet!

Please email me if you would like to see the survey questions and summarised results. After all, it is easier to adapt and improve something that has already been prepared than create your own survey from scratch.

Irrespective of our own results, the largest and most used social and business media sites are LinkedIn, Xing (a European site comparable to LinkedIn), Facebook and Twitter. There are many more but these are good starting places to develop your personal and business profiles as best suits your target audience. If there are any good quality sector-specific networking sites which are applicable to you and your business then these should be utilised too.

Online and Offline Advertising:

During recent years there has been a growing number of advertising mediums all contacting us with convincing reasons to buy from them and offering excellent discounts if we take up their offers.

In order to move forward it is useful to understand the media that most applies to your requirements. A good starting place is to ask your existing staff what they read and where they access it from. Alternatively, look at the job specification you have created and search for similar roles on the web and see where they were advertised.

My personal experience is:

The large online job boards such as Monster, Jobsite and Reed in the UK are effective for general requirements;

You have to do some detective work to find the specialist and niche web sites for very specific requirements;

Any web sites have to have been up and running for some time to become known and generate a good candidate flow.

Small web sites which have recently started offer very low rates or free advertising but lack the candidate flow and can consequently waste your time and resources.

Online advertising aside, the majority of my own company's recruiting successes have come from one of our two local newspapers. Build a relationship with the advertising salesperson and over time you can influence where the ads are placed in the paper. (Marketing specialists suggest part way down on the outside of the right hand page.)

In a downturn newspapers struggle for advertising and revenue. Take advantage of this and negotiate hard for a good rate, additional discounts for running the ad more than once and demand colour for no additional charge. You’ll be amazed how helpful they will be for you in today's environment.

Networking:

It is very rare that we don’t know people who work in our own industry or similar industries. Let everyone know you are recruiting and ask if they know someone who might be interested. In today’s economic environment that good news will circulate and your network or their networks may well know someone who can help.

Customers:

This ties in closely with networking. Let your customers know that you are recruiting. They will know people in your sector and at your competitors. Treat it like an employee referral - i.e. as high priority - and ensure that your customers are offered incentives or discounts as a thank you.

Former Employees:

It is always good to stay in touch with past employees, especially those who you valued and regretted losing. By staying in touch and updating them on what is happening you could catch them at a time when it might be appropriate for them to look at coming back. Even if they cannot be tempted, they can be an excellent source of referrals and the employee referral scheme should apply to them too.

Other Sources:

There are many other sources, depending on time and budget. A brief summary includes flyers, signs, billboards, job fairs, radio, Jobcentres, cards in newsagents, universities and colleges and their Alumni networks. Many universities in the UK have access to government grants which allow you to recover some of the cost of the first few months salaries if you hire people who have graduated in the last couple of years. One of my companies, Equitylinked, works closely with Reading University in a relationship that helps the University now but in the coming years is expected to work well for both parties.

Next Time:

How to ensure your message sells the opportunity, and how to measure responses to your message.