Candidate Assessment

Assessing people is not just a case of buying the latest assessment tools; it is much more strategic than that.

Assessment can be difficult depending on the uniqueness of the job, the challenge of assessing intangible needs and the amount of time candidates and management have to concentrate on the project.

Our research suggests that there are 3 stages to candidate assessment, as follows:

1 – Evaluate the candidate

2 – Sell the position and the company

3 – Find agreement within the organisation of the appointment

Each of these stages can conflict with each other. For instance an over evaluation of the candidate may make them feel resentful about the company and feel that they were been judged too much.

If you over sell the position and your company, you  may look desperate, making it very hard to live up to the impression you give and it opens you up to the candidate driving a hard bargain.

Involving too many people in the organisation in deciding who is best for the company leaves you open to office politics influencing decisions, a reduction in candidate confidentiality, and increase the time it takes to make a decision for all.

The right interviewers

It is clear that it is more important to find the right interviewers than find the right assessment tools.

The process should follow a consistent sequence of steps and perhaps involve three or four people. This is usually  the candidates prospective manager, their manager and someone from HR. Never just leave it to HR.

Getting the wrong people involved in your process will increase the chances of hiring or indeed rejecting the wrong candidate.

Using the wrong interviewers is almost as bad as Googling “recruitment agency”, asking them to send you CVs and then choosing a candidate just on paper and the sales person’s script.

The best interviewers must  understand the skills and experience you are looking for in the position and are self confident enough to recognise and be encouraged by a candidate that appears to be better than themselves.

Interviewers need to be masters of self control and not jump in when the candidate is about to reveal something interesting. They need to be excellent listeners and good readers of body language.

Poor interviewers include:

• Those individuals that dislike working with strong, high potential colleagues
• People who recruit on the basis that the candidates are like themselves
• People who like the sound of their own voice
• Weak managers may strongly rate a weak candidate or define a strong candidate as unsuitable just because they are different.

Right number of interviewers

A maximum of three interviewers with the correct skills, motivation and experience is sufficient to find the right candidate and reduce the chances of loosing exception talent.

The right techniques

A simple structured interview and good reference checking will give you a reliable assessment of any candidate.

We would recommend a competency based interview. It does not need to be over complicated. Simply devise questions allowing the candidate to describe specific experiences that they will be facing in your role. Each candidate should  be asked the same questions and each role should have difference questions.

The interviewers job is to then probe to determine the candidates exact actions and reasoning for their actions at the time.

From the start of the process make it clear that hypothetical , vague statements and the word “We” are not allowed.

You allocate a set of marks to each question with the most important competencies weighted with more marks.  Agree a pass mark for the entire process and only consider the candidates that pass this mark.

One of my clients uses this system and it has proved to be full proof. 100% of candidates placed over 3 years are still with the company and doing well.

Post interview

Following the interview process, armed with the competency scores it is essential that the interviewers meet and conduct a focused and rigorous review of the evidence to isolate the idea candidates.

Conversations about overall impressions or how nice a candidate was should be discouraged.

Reference checks

Once you have your finalists you should conduct reference checks. We would recommend contacting a former boss, a peer and, if applicable, a former line report to assess the candidate’s leadership skills.

Ask specific questions and encourage them to talk frankly and in confidence. Stating that no one is perfect and honest replies will help the candidate integrate into the job will assist the referees to open up a little more.

A decent recruitment company or head hunter should be doing this as a matter of course because it is good practice in collating suitable candidates. We would advise that this process should be done by one of the interviewers so they can get a feel of the person.

If it is a senior appointment get us to meet with reference face to face.

Support

Once you have found 3 suitable candidates it is time for the final interview with key stake holders. It is vital these stakeholders are well briefed and it is not seen as a box ticking exercise.

Ultimately the eventual line manager should be the one that make the final decision as they will have to work with the candidate every day.

We have revealed what we believe is best practice,  suggesting using a small number well trained , experience and correctly motivate interviewers, the utilisation of a competence based interview process, use reference checking tool and finally include the top stakeholders in the recruitment process.

We really would appreciate your feedback and comments. gdixon@castcsi.co.uk 

Next time we will look at step 5 of the process – Closing the deal.