Has this happened to you? You get a resume of a really quality candidate that you’re excited to meet, and then the candidate comes in and you start to interview them, and after a while you think there’s a disconnect between what’s on the paper and the person you’re meeting. You’ve just spent an hour meeting with this candidate and it’s not the right person. Of course that happens to all of us all of the time. One easy way to get around this is to add a telephone screening to the front of your interview process.
You can let the applicant or the recruiter know you will screen all your candidates by telephone first with a quick 10 minute phone call. And I have the phone call go something like this:
A quick 1 minute introduction of myself, the company, the position.
Then I ask the candidate to introduce them selves.
And then tell me their strengths,
Their weaknesses
And why they applied for the job.
Within that time I’m not going to get a real deep understanding of the candidate. However what I will find is how their communication skills are, what they’re thinking about me and the position, what research they’ve done around the role, and if they are really interested or not. And if they are I can get a feel for that, and if they’re worth having a face to face meeting.
If you want to save yourself a lot of time and trouble, implement the one tip for your interview process; add a telephone interview at the front of your interview process.