How is your business doing?  Well, we hope!  If you are recruiting new staff to either expand your company or replace employees who have moved onto pastures new then we have a few tips for candidate screening.  This will mean that you filter out the ones not suitable and interview those most suited for the role.

Pre-screening Calls

Every now and again, one of our client’s asks us to contact a number of applicants for a pre-screening call.   On CV, they have the relevant skill set but we ask a number of questions on behalf of the company to ascertain reasons for application, salary expectation, level of industry knowledge (do they know the answers to one or two technical questions) and general personality and communication skills.  We put this information in a spreadsheet for the client and then they go onto contact the ones that best fit the role.

Video

Another client was recruiting for workshop facilitators to support with running workshops for young people.  The candidates needed to be dynamic and engaging in order to hold the attention of the audience they were delivering to.  So, as well as filling in an application form, they were required to upload a short video clip of either them teaching, performing or introducing themselves.

Test

When we assisted with the recruitment process of junior team members for a Financial Research company, one of the pre-requisites of candidates making it to interview stage was for them to sit a short online maths test, as one of the main areas of responsibility in the role was to make and check financial calculations.

Psychometric Testing

We were recently contacted by Thrive (the reason we started researching this article), who in their introductory email say that 3 out of 4 businesses are using pre-hiring assessments.  This company specialise in psychometric testing and if you are hiring over 40 staff per year then it might make economical sense to look them up.

 Online Candidate Assessment Tools

There is a plethora of online candidate assessment tools out there which will help you whittle down the long list to a short list.  We’d heard of one tool which sets the candidate a task and then takes screen shots (with the permission of the candidate) over the duration of the task.  It is very insightful into the behaviour of the individual candidates:  one stopped half way through for a cigarette, another changed his outfit 5 times!  Anyway, we digress… LinkedIn have a list of talent acquisition tools here, so take a look.

We hope some of the above techniques have given you an idea or two of how to sift through applicants for your next role.