Why How You Deal With Hiring Candidates Matters

There is nothing more exciting then realizing that your small business has grown to the point of needing to hire more staff. Yet, nothing can dampen that enthusiasm quicker than having to deal with hiring candidates. Collecting resumés and combing through details on the pages until they blur into one blobbed mess is discouraging and time consuming. It can leave one feeling less than hospitable when it comes to greeting hiring candidate #57 for the one job you have open.   If you think going through the process of hiring is difficult, consider the people that have dutifully filled out the application and submitted their resumé for what probably seems like the 1,000th time to them. Both sides can feel a little worn out when it comes to the misery-go-round of the hiring process. How you handle the people and the situations during your hiring process are well within your control, and may in fact cost you more than a good candidate if you don’t have the right attitude.  

Setting The Right Expectations For You And Your Hiring Candidate Will Make All The Difference

  You have narrowed your large stack of resumés down to about a dozen that you’d like to phone screen before ask them to come in to meet with you face-to-face. Needing to phone screen hiring candidates can feel like a monotonous, repetitive exercise in uncomfortable futility if you are not prepared with good questions. You also need to set the right expectations for the call and what comes next. You can make yourself and the person on the other end of the phone feel a whole lot better about the call and your company if you sound confident and prepared to speak. Here are a few suggestions to set the tone and get off on the right foot with your candidate.  

• Introduce yourself first: name, position and company.
• Explain how you got their resumé. Your position is unlikely to be the only submission they have out right now.
• Let them know how long you intend to speak for. Ex. 15 minutes, no more.
• Have your list of questions written out ahead of time and leave room on the page for you to write in their response and any notes that you want to reference later about their responses.
• After you are finished with your questions, ask them if they have any.
• Tell them what comes next, even if that means they didn’t pass the phone screen.
• Thank them for their time and tell them when they should expect to hear from you by.
• Attach your question sheet to their resumé to refer to later.

  Letting your hiring candidates know what is going on makes them feel valued as people. This goes a long way in getting a sense for how they can expect to be treated as an employee. Hiring candidates who feel forgotten about or who are treated like a commodity do not get a good feeling about what it is like to be an employee at your company. You want your candidates to stay excited and interested. The most important thing they can garner from their interactions with you is a feeling of trust. Work hard to ensure they feel that way.  

Why An Extra Long Hiring Process Is Unfair To You Or The Hiring Candidate

There are some key positions that take several interviews to discern the correct candidate for the job but it shouldn’t be that way for every position that you have. Subjecting prospective employees to 4 or 5 interviews for an entry-level or even mid-tier management position is unfair and time consuming for you both. It also shows a great level of indecisiveness. Is this the feeling you want your hiring candidate to have about your leadership skills and/or your company?   Many times when there are too many steps in the hiring process such as this it is because there either isn’t a formulated hiring process or strategy in the first place or because the hiring manager is not confident in their hiring decisions. Know what your process is going in. Understand that your ability to make a decision in a reasonable time frame (no more than 3 interviews, which includes the phone screen) may mean your ability to attract and keep talent interested.  

Timing Is Everything With Hiring Candidates; Respect Theirs And Yours

One of the easiest ways you can manage the time spent trying to get through the hiring process is being as upfront with hiring candidates as possible. If they aren’t making it to the next round you need to let them know. It might feel like you are letting someone down easy by being non-committal until they go away but you are really just disrespecting their time and yours. A few minutes worth of an uncomfortable conversation of, “I am sorry. We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates…” frees them up and you to pursue other opportunities.   Today’s hiring candidates can become your future clients. You never know when a hiring candidate that you’ve interviewed before may interact with a client of yours or could converse with someone that is interested in doing business with you. How you conduct yourself with hiring candidates from the beginning may make more of an impact than you think. If nothing else, the human element needs to be considered. First impressions are lasting ones and bad first impressions stick with people for a long time.  

How PEOs Help With The Hiring Process

Did you know that PEOs help their clients find the right candidates for their open positions? Yes, it’s true. Many PEOs will screen resumés, candidates and even find temporary workers for open positions until you find the right person for the job. A PEO can do so much more than just provide benefits for your employees. A PEO can be as full-service as you want them to if you select the right one for your needs. Talk to us today about what a PEO can do for you.