Mastering the basics

Here’s what you probably know already: Basically, job candidates submit only two types of résumés:

• Chronological, where all work-related information appears in a timeline sequence
• Functional, where the information appears in various categories (skills, achievements, qualifications, and so on)

Some applicants use a combination of the two formats, presenting a capsule of what they believe are their most important qualifications and accomplishments, together with a chronological work history.

Before diving into that pile of résumés, consider the following observations:

• No job applicant intentionally includes unflattering information in their own résumé.
• Many résumés are professionally prepared, designed to create a winning impression.
• Résumé evaluation is tedious, no matter what. You may need to sift through the stack several times.
• If you don’t do any résumé evaluation at all (or delegate it to the wrong person), you’re likely to miss that diamond in the rough — that ideal employee who unfortunately has poor résumé-drafting skills.

Reading between the lines

Now that more and more people are using outside specialists or software applications to prepare their résumés, getting an accurate picture of a candidate’s strengths simply by reading their résumé is more difficult than ever. Even so, here are some of the résumé characteristics that generally (although not always) describe a candidate worth interviewing:

• Outcomes: The more detailed the candidate is in their description of what they accomplished in previous jobs, the more reliable (as a rule) the information is.
• A history of growth: The applicant’s work history should show a progression and growth. But don’t go by job titles alone; look at what the candidate actually did and what skills they acquired. Assess how important the work was to the company involved.
• A strong, well-written cover letter: Some applicants don’t send cover letters with their résumés. A savvy job seeker (in other words, someone you may want to have on your team) will still manage to prepare and send the modern equivalent of a cover letter, perhaps in the body of an email message. Someone who takes the time and effort to do this shows a sincere interest in your firm.

Watching out for red flags

Résumé writing is a good example of the law of unintended consequences. Sometimes what’s not in a résumé or what’s done through carelessness or a mistake can reveal quite a bit about a candidate. Here are some things to watch out for:

• Sloppy overall appearance: This is a fairly reliable sign that the candidate is lacking in professionalism and/or business experience.
• Cookie cutter résumé: A résumé that looks like it’s not specific to the position can be considered a red flag. This may mean that the person isn’t necessarily interested in working for your company, but rather just wants a job. If you’re looking to hire people who are passionate about what they do, considering a résumé that hasn’t been adapted for the specific position may be the wrong way to go.
• Static career pattern: A sequence of jobs that doesn’t include increasing responsibility may indicate a problem — the person wasn’t deemed fit for a promotion or demonstrated a lack of ambition. That said, sometimes solid performers who enjoy just doing their job and don’t necessarily have a career progression history still can add tremendous value as part of your team. Don’t reject a résumé on this criterion alone. It’s something to review and assess but not judge.
• Typos and misspellings: Generally speaking, typos in cover letters and résumés may signify carelessness or a cavalier attitude. Although not all jobs require candidates to have strong spelling skills, most do call for attention to detail. Not proofreading a résumé (or not having someone else do it) may be a sign that a candidate isn’t conscientious.
• Vaguely worded job summaries: Perhaps the applicant didn’t quite understand what their job was. Or perhaps the job responsibilities didn’t match the title. Before you go any further, you probably want to find out what a “coordinator of special projects” actually does. You want to see job summaries that indicate how crucial the job is to the company’s success.
• Failure to quantify accomplishments: Sometimes candidates give you a huge list of skills but don’t describe how they used them in their previous positions. This is an issue because it may mean they have never actually demonstrated this skill in a professional setting, which doesn’t answer the question of why they would be a good fit for this job. A good rule of thumb is that the more descriptive someone is in their résumé, the more likely it is that they are telling the truth about their accomplishments. Plus, this detail gives you something to talk about when you connect with the candidate.

Historically, unexplained chronological gaps in the resume have been considered a red flag, but they’re increasingly considered acceptable and can be a source of unintended bias. Breaks in employment history occur for a variety of reasons. Before jumping to conclusions, seek to understand.

Considering a candidate’s online persona

Résumés aren’t your only source of insight into prospective job candidates. Social media profiles are another tool you can use in the pre-screening process. In the world of social media, many organizations use information they discover online about candidates in the recruiting process. All candidates should assume that their online persona can be seen by anybody, including prospective employers. If someone has a social media account containing a lot of vulgarity or inappropriate content, they may not be a fit for your culture. It’s not unreasonable to search candidates online when looking for a new employee, so if you see anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, particularly if it isn’t aligned with your organization’s values, consider that as part of your search process, but it’s important to exercise caution when doing so. Using information discovered on social media can introduce legal risk and unintended bias.

Employers have increasingly turned to general online searches to find out about an applicant’s digital persona and interests. Although that can be as straightforward as a general search, employers also can see who applicants’ Facebook friends are or the content that candidates are engaged in on Instagram, TikTok, and other social media.

That may seem like a fertile way to discover more about potential candidates, but there are serious caveats for the companies and HR personnel doing this sleuthing. For one thing, the anonymity of the Internet can prove anything but reliable — anyone can post pretty much anything about you, regardless of whether it’s accurate or completely contrived. There’s no guarantee that the information you uncover is accurate or insightful.

Separately, legal risks abound. When you start exploring a candidate beyond the information contained in their résumé or professional profile or bio, you risk legal claims like invasion of privacy and discrimination, or even Fair Credit Reporting Act and similar state law violations. If you want to incorporate web-based searches of applicants into your overall evaluation procedures, work with a lawyer to develop lawful policies, procedures, and guidelines for the gathering and use of Internet-based information. Weigh the benefits and disadvantages as follows.

Following are some benefits of searching for applicants online:

• You may get a sense of their professionalism and/or maturity.
• The information you find may help you get an interview together and ask relevant and specific questions instead of general ones.
• You may encounter extensive information about their background, experience, and personal life.

On the flip side, disadvantages include the following:

• It can be considered an invasion of privacy, which can bring about legal issues for the company.
• If the candidate is part of a protected class such as a certain religion or disabled, you might run into issues should you choose not to hire them, even if the choice is based only on lack of experience, skill, or education.
• The information gained may not be reliable, considering it’s public and anyone can add photos or data about the candidate to their social media profile.
• There are people in the world with the same name. Information found may be about someone else with the same name.
• There are various states within the United States that can prosecute those who Google candidates without their consent.

If you do choose to search online for candidate information, it’s a good idea to enlighten the applicants on your intentions. That way, if you discover anything online that’s considered questionable or you’re in a state where this act could be punishable by law, you won’t have any issues and they have the opportunity to be forthcoming with the data, in person, rather than allow you to find it online.

The online tools include a Sample Résumés document. You can see an example of a well-written résumé, as well as one that should give you reason to pause.

Using some criteria to make decisions

No matter who does the evaluating — an HR specialist, a line manager, or a business owner — the process should include a set of hard criteria to use as the basis for decisions. Otherwise, there’s a good chance you’ll end up making choices based on factors that may have no bearing on desired work performance, such as courses taken at a university you admire or a particularly impressive skill that would be virtually useless in tackling the responsibilities of your job opening.

You need to keep in mind the following three questions at all times:

• What are the outcomes for success in this position? These should track with the outcomes noted in the position success profile, as long as it’s current, targeted, and carefully thought through (see Chapter 5).
• What are the special requirements of your organization, such as certifications or special education? If you own a public accounting firm, for example, you would most likely only consider applicants with a valid certified public accountant (CPA) credential.
• What qualifications and attributes are critical to success in this particular position? Think of the key qualities of your best people (see Chapter 5). If your business depends on a high level of innovation and creativity, for instance, some people will possess greater strengths in this area than others. Identify those attributes, competencies, and/or values that you feel will best support success in this position. Look for these attributes in prospective employees.

If you haven’t answered these three questions, you’re not ready to start the candidate evaluation process.

Evaluating résumés, step-by-step

Here’s an overview of the candidate evaluation process:

1. Scan applications or résumés first for basic qualifications.

   If you do a good job of communicating the job’s qualifications to your recruiter or in the posting (based on the position success profile), you shouldn’t get too many replies or résumés from unqualified candidates. Keep in mind, however, that some applicants apply to virtually any job opening, regardless of whether they’re qualified. Their attitude is, “Hey, you never know.” For example, if you’re seeking to hire a medical technician who will be working on equipment that requires a license, and your job posting expressly says that such a license is required, eliminate applicants whose applications or résumés don’t indicate they have that license.

2. Evaluate résumés based on your hiring criteria.

   After you eliminate unqualified candidates, you can focus on more specific hiring criteria, such as solid organizational skills, leadership experience, or a good driving record. Here again, your task is considerably easier if you do a thorough job of identifying these requirements at the time you put together the job description. But no matter how much time you spent identifying criteria, don’t rush this step. Some résumés clearly reflect the skills and experience you’re looking for; others may come close but just don’t do the trick.

   Begin the résumé evaluation process by setting a high standard (for example, the résumé must meet a certain high percentage of the criteria). But if your reject pile is growing, and you haven’t cleared anyone, you may need to review your criteria to see where you may be able to be more flexible.

3. Set up a process to flag and identify top candidates.

   At this point, you probably want to separate the wheat from the chaff, which means establishing a separate file for every applicant who passes the initial evaluation process. If you’re using an ATS, the system will automatically do this for you, but if not, create a simple manual process to identify top candidates.

4. Extend an invitation.

   Your next move depends on how many applicants remain. If you have only a few, you may want to invite them to participate in a video interview (which is becoming much more the norm versus in-person interviews). (See the section “Pre-Screening: Narrowing Your List,” later in this chapter.)

I discuss the importance of simplifying the online application (refer to the section, “Simplifying the Online Job Application Process,” earlier in this chapter). While focused, the online application still can be effective as an evaluation tool. Some application forms are weighted, meaning that you give each element in the form a certain value, putting more emphasis or weight on qualifications you feel may more heavily influence later performance on the job. In other words, weighting the application questions can help you figure out how likely a person with a certain type of experience or skill is to be the right employee for this particular job.

Weighing the evaluation criteria

The trick, of course, is figuring out how to weigh the criteria. The basic idea is to determine how accurately a specific criterion may predict superior job performance. The problem, however, is that no one has developed any sort of weighting scale flexible enough to cover everything that can affect job performance. Educational levels, for example, may closely link to success in a certain job in a company filled with people with advanced degrees. In that case, you would assign it a higher weighting value relative to other criteria. But education credentials may not be as important in a company focused on tasks that don’t require advanced degrees. And if you assign values to work experience, licenses held, and so on, you have to be careful that the criteria you’re using relate to actual job performance. Again, if you don’t really need the skill, you shouldn’t list it as a criterion.

Is the entire process scientific? Hardly. But a weighted system can weed out obviously unqualified employees and give you at least a preliminary idea of who the top candidates are for the job.

One way to add validity to a weighted application is to do your own tracking. Score applicants for a while and then recheck the scores of those you hire. You’re looking for relationships between good performance and objective qualifications. The criteria used in an interview to assess how well an applicant may fit a job should be the same criteria used for the performance evaluation of the person in that job. If you can determine the attributes and qualifications that make successful employees, you may find that you can structure a weighted application form that indicates when these qualities are present in a candidate. This procedure is useful if you do a lot of hiring; if you hire only a few people a year, on the other hand, you may just create more work for yourself.

For those candidates who don’t make it past your initial evaluation, the online tools include respectful language for rejecting candidates.

Finding the right test for your situation

Assessments and tests are tools meant to measure specific aspects or qualities of applicants’ skills, knowledge, experience, intellect, or — more controversially — personality or natural style. Identify what you want to know about a candidate and then choose the appropriate assessment.

Selecting the right test for your situation probably won’t be a problem because choices abound. Dozens of commercial test publishers collectively produce thousands of tests. Employment tests come in all shapes and sizes. The following sections provide a rundown of what they are, what they do, and how to use them.

Avoiding the common challenges with pre-employment assessment

When considering the use of pre-employment assessment, consider the following:

• Before adopting or implementing any employee selection testing, get legal advice. As mentioned earlier, pre-employment testing implicates numerous federal and state law regulations.
• Establish what traits or information the test is designed to evaluate and make sure that a relationship exists between these traits and the hiring criteria.
• Carefully check the credentials and reputation of any test vendor. Ask to see validation data.
• If you use a test, double-check that the test isn’t biased either in its objective criteria or unintentionally by disproportionately impacting a protected group.
• Verify that the test is certified by an established, reputable group and validated in accordance with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures from the EEOC.
• Talk to colleagues, associates, and people in other companies who use testing. Ask whether their testing has been successful.

A final word of advice on testing: Remember that your company is ultimately responsible for any testing/assessment that you conduct. Given that this is a legally complex area, consult with an attorney before implementing a hiring test of any kind. Also, be sure to carefully manage the data you collect through these tests. Limit the number of people with access to this information to the fewest possible in order to protect the confidentiality of the candidates you test.

For more on pre-employment evaluation measures, see Chapter 9.

Recognizing where to pre-screen

The most common technique is a pre-screening interview that typically takes place over the phone or through a video conference. This technique provides an easy way to break the ice and get to know the candidate without the time and challenge of getting to the workplace. It helps to save time for both the employer and the candidate. A pre-screening interview is conducted to understand the candidate’s qualifications in more detail. These interviews are generally short and are meant to determine whether the candidate is to go further in the hiring process.

A pre-screening interview should answer some of the questions recruiters may have about the candidate’s experience and education. Some of the questions may address previous experience in a job, why they are interested in this job, and how their skills fit with the job responsibilities. You may want to ask about how the candidate would handle scenarios specific to the job.

When thinking about whether to do a phone or a video interview, consider the following.

Figuring out which method is better

Consider leveraging both the phone and video interview methods during your recruitment process. One strategy could be to use the phone interview for an initial 15- to 30-minute phone screen between a recruiter and a candidate. Next would be a video interview with the hiring manager and the candidate. Finally, you could opt to bring the candidate into the workplace (if possible) to meet the rest of the team, take them on a tour for an inside look, or finish the hiring process with one last video interview.

However, I recommend shortening your hiring process as much as you can to streamline it. The longer your process is, the more likely you are to lose candidates. Choosing between phone and video interviews, or a combination of both, may depend on the amount of time and resources that are available to you and your recruiting team.

See the Sample Pre-Screening Questions for Hiring Managers online for a list of questions to ask.

Estimate how long you’ll need to effectively conduct a telephone interview with job applicants. It typically can take from 15 to 30 minutes — 15 minutes for a basic preliminary evaluation, 30 minutes if you want to ask deeper questions for a more comprehensive evaluation and assessment. The key is to be consistent with your questions so you can fairly compare job hopefuls.

If the candidate isn’t available and you need to leave a message or you’re texting or emailing them, suggest a time frame (such as in the morning or between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.) when they should return your call the next day. This request can be a good test of initiative — candidates who fail to return the call or who don’t make a reasonable effort to contact you to make alternative arrangements demonstrate either a lack of interest or halfhearted commitment.