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When hiring from a large applicant pool, it can be easy to breeze through the vetting process and bring candidates to the next round based solely on their resumes. While this may save you time in the short run, cutting corners can have its consequences. Between the time and money spent on advertising the job, facilitating the hiring process, and onboarding and training a new employee, the costs of hiring the wrong fit can really add up. A bad hire’s impact can also trickle down to the rest of your team—leading to low morale and engagement, lost productivity, and increased turnover.
To ensure you’re choosing the right candidates, your vetting process should go beyond the resume. This will help ensure your new hire has the right qualifications, experience, and personality to thrive in the role and fit in with your team.
The vetting process should start before you even begin the interview process. This is where the job description can make all the difference. A generic description that appeals to a broad audience might attract too many of the wrong candidates—leading you with an overwhelming number of applications to sort through. By providing a full picture of the role, including highlighting the right requirements, team dynamic, and overall company culture, you’ll start to appeal to a more targeted set of candidates. Better yet, candidates who are excited to work for you! Read also: How To Write A Job Description That Gets Noticed
A great way to vet candidates is to add a skills assessment to your hiring process. This will help you weed out the candidates that don’t have the right foundational skills or personality traits for the role. This skills assessment should take place before the interview process to help ensure everyone you meet after this point is a target fit for the role. Keep in mind that a pre-screening test should relate to the skillset needed for the role, and most importantly, not take up too much of the applicant’s time.
Video interviews are not only a great way to pre-screen candidates, but to also streamline your entire hiring process! They can be more effective at weeding out candidates because they allow you to assess body language and have a more natural conversation. Since they can be recorded and make scheduling easier, they also invite more people into the hiring process at once. This can give decision makers more of a say about who moves forward in earlier interview rounds. Read also: Hiring? Tips For Hosting A Successful Video Interview
During the interview process, it’s important to ask the right questions to get a better feel for their skills and personality. While your questions may differ based on the specific of the role and your team, here are some general themes to consider:
Read also: 6 Interview Questions To Ask Candidates During The Hiring Process
After you interview your top candidates, it will be time to start thinking about who you want to extend an offer to. During this final stage of the vetting process, it’s important to wrap up any final details by reaching out to references, conducting background checks, and verifying certifications. Just remember that you need to remain objective during this stage. Don’t ask for any personal information or opinions!
If you don’t have the time or resources to create a comprehensive vetting process, you may want to work with a recruitment firm. Prior to being submitted to the client, every candidate is pre-screened by at least one recruiter. This typically involves a skills assessment to ensure they are qualified for the role, and then an initial interview to evaluate their personality and other factors that could determine their fit.
Interested in working with a recruiter to help improve your vetting process? Contact us today to see where we can help!
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