Keeping Those Candidates on the Line

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Always Follow Up, applying for a job, Candidates, dallas temp jobs, interview process, job duties, job search dfw, rockwall jobs, trend personnel services

by Stephen Bruce | BLR

This crucial moment can play out in so many different ways, and most of that is up to you. Consider these Do’s and Don’ts.

DO:

• Clearly introduce who you are, and be sure to include the name of your company.
• State your purpose for calling.
• By all means, flatter your candidates. Let them know you have specially picked them from a large pool of candidates. After all of your sourcing and preparation, this is very true!
• Take your time and add a few short pauses here and there. Candidates should feel in control of the conversation and have enough time to think. If they didn’t expect a call from you, they might be on-guard or suspicious. A little space in a conversation can put them at ease.

DON’T:

• Do not offer them an interview for the same day, or even the next day, even if you really want that position filled quickly. Give your candidate time to do some research. Besides, rushing the process makes you seem desperate.
• Never forget to explain in detail how the interview process works. Let them know what time and where they will be meeting, and with whom they will be meeting. Make sure to give them time to write it down, and if there are any other steps involved, let them know. Give them clear, easy steps to follow. This helps eliminate uncertainty.
• Never misrepresent your company or the position. If candidates ask about the company, use clear terms to describe it. Also, make sure to tell them the job duties in accurate, straightforward terms. The candidate should arrive at the interview ready to talk about the actual job you want them to fill. If their interview doesn’t match the initial phone call, you are likely to lose the candidate.
• Do not answer any questions about pay during the initial phone call. Sometimes a candidate will want to talk pay up front. Unless you work for a company where positions come with fixed pay, it’s best if you don’t mention any numbers at this time. At this point, your guess might not align with what they could see down the road in an offer. Experts agree that failure to be honest about pay can cost many companies good candidates.

Always Follow Up

So, you’ve made the call and hopefully you have an interview scheduled. The candidate knows what he or she is supposed to do, and when. So why would you follow up? This business practice is polite and it helps put the candidate at ease. Just shoot the person a quick e-mail shortly after you talk summarizing what you talked about. Send another e-mail the day before or early the day of the interview confirming the time and location. Make sure the candidate knows that he or she can contact you with any questions. In fact, some form of communication should take place at each step of the entire process. Employees expect this, and when it doesn’t happen, they feel adrift.

What if you decide not to go with that candidate? What if someone else gets hired before the interview? If this ends up being the case, you should still send a note gently letting the person know what has transpired. It may be hard to give someone bad news, but it is worse not to contact them at all. Studies have shown that people who are cold-shouldered by companies at any point during the interview process will often bad-mouth the company to their friends and family, as well as on social media. You may not see it directly, but a bad reputation gets around, and it may cost you in ways you didn’t anticipate.

http://trendpersonnel.com/en/news/item/149-keeping-those-candidates-on-the-line

10 Tips to Help You Hire Right

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applying for a job, carrollton jobs, Good candidates, interview process, locating professionals, recruiting tips, recruitment process, rockwall jobs, trend personnel dallas, trend personnel services

by Vanessa Merit Nornberg | Inc.

Hiring is the Achilles heel of all small companies. Good candidates are hard to find, and the recruiting process always seems to take more time than planned.

Here’s what they are:

1. Allow six months for the recruitment process. Hiring when you have a start date in mind that is just around the corner causes you to accept candidates you would have otherwise passed over. Give yourself three months to search for and screen applicants, one month so a new hire can give notice to her current employer, and at least two months to train a new person.
2. Write a job post that accurately describes your company. Believe it or not, you don’t want to emphasize the qualities you need in a candidate in a job description. You want to tell a prospective candidate about what makes your company a different or special place to work, to insure you get interest from people who are the right cultural fit. It’s far less expensive to teach skills than attitude to a new recruit.
3. Make the interview process several steps. Candidates who want any job–and not necessarily the job you are hiring for–rarely take the time to apply if they know they have to go above and beyond a one-click submisssion just to get looked at.
4. Handle at least one part of the recruiting process yourself. Whether it be screening resumes, doing phone interviews, or conducting the first interview. The earlier you get involved in the recruiting the better the chances you have of finding the right candidate (and weeding out the others!). No one knows your company’s needs better than you.
5. Identify the five most important qualities for the positiong you’re filling. Create interview questions that measure these five qualities to allow you to determine if a candidate possesses them or not.
6. Do more than ask questions when you interview. Set up opportunities to observe how an applicant handles herself in situations similar to the ones she will be asked to handle if she’s hired. For example, if she will be organizing data for your company, give her data to classify, and pay attention to the way she does it. Does her approach match how you do things at your company? Does she follow a logic you can understand?
7. Bring others in on your recruiting process. Make sure strong candidates are evaluated by at least two members of your team in addition to you. Instincts are important in picking the right candidate, but sometimes you end up on the fence. Having someone to talk about the candidate with can help you get clarity when it matters.
8. Create a training program. Make sure your training program truly reflects the tasks a hire will be called upon to do. And then formalize it so the new hire can understand where she is at in the training process at all times.
9. Reevaluate both what you teach a new hire and what he retains on a regular basis. Never be afraid to slow down the training process, teach a concept again, shift gears, or add new modules as you go. The idea is not to train fast, but to train right. Taking the time to do it once and thoroughly will shield your customers from errors, and your company from lost loyalty.
10. Be honest with yourself throughout the training process. If you make a hiring mistake, don’t waste precious time and money hoping it will eventually turn out okay. It won’t. Let the candidate go immediately. It is better to have no help at all than to have the wrong help.

Recruiting the right team can seem daunting, but it is also extremely exciting. Taking the time to make the best hire rather than just any hire is a chance to expand your team’s competencies, grow your customer base, and take your company to a new level. Hopefully these 10 tricks will help you.

http://trendpersonnel.com/en/news/item/138-10-tips-to-help-you-hire-right

5 Most Important Interview Questions You’re Not Asking

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applicant interview behavior, dallas staffing agency, dfw jobs, follow-up questions, important interview questions, interview process, Interview Questions to ask, now hiring dallas, trend personnel, trend staffing, trendhr

by Chris Ceplenski

The 5 most important questions are actually variations on common interview themes. The tweaks are important, however, because they completely change the information solicited from the applicant.

Here are the 5 most important interview questions you’re probably not asking:

1. Tell me about your very first paying job.

The standard question is: ‘Tell me about your last job.’ What does every single person have an absolute canned answer for? Their last job. Asking instead about their first job lets you begin to see what type of person you’re interviewing. Ask follow-up questions that establish where they progressed, which will tell you their capacity to take on additional responsibilities. Ask them what they learned along the way.

2. Tell me about the achievements in your life you are most proud of and the obstacles or problems you had to overcome to achieve them.

Give the applicant time to think about what they want to say. In fact, throughout the interview process, let silence work for you. Don’t help them answer the questions. What you’re looking for with this question is to see how they solve problems. See how they overcome issues.

3. Tell me about your last performance appraisal.

It doesn’t matter the outcome, just ask about it and ask how they felt about it and whether they got a copy of it. (If yes, they could bring it – it may be more useful to you than a reference!)

4. On a scale of 1-10, how would you rank yourself as a [job title]? Why did you give yourself that number?

It doesn’t matter what the number is, unless they say they’re a 10. If they do, you may consider highlighting that even the best professionals can always learn more. If they still insist they are a 10, consider not hiring them—if you hire them, they may not be the type of person who is inclined to learn.

The second part is the more important part of the question—to see what rationale they give behind the chosen number. It will tell you a lot about that person and their ability level. Ask probing questions if appropriate. Follow up by asking what it would take to move up to the next number. This lets them explain what they need to do better or what they want to learn next. In interviews, many interviewers ask about strengths and weaknesses, but this question format avoids a canned response. It also allows someone to explain what they can do better without actually asking them about weaknesses.

5. What one question would you like to ask me? Of all the questions you could have asked, why did you choose that one?

This question does not have to be the last one you have, but it’s important to ask it at some point. The second half is more important than the question they chose. In fact, don’t answer their initial question—follow up with the second half of it first to see why they want to know. This lets you see what the applicant finds important.

If you’re looking to really find out who the person is – the behavior, the skills, the capacity – these five questions will get to the core of the individual.

http://trendpersonnel.com/index.php/en/news/item/114-5-most-important-interview-questions-you-re-not-asking