Top 5 Ways to See Beyond A Resume
If you want to know whether a potential employee is a good fit for your business, look past their career history and focus on these things instead. See below for the five ways to know you are hiring the right employee.
1. Check Potential Candidates Social Media Activity
Not for the reasons you’d think. Many business owners would check this in safety for their team and business to get an idea or perception of the candidate, or even to see what they look like. But what are you really looking for? At the dawn of Facebook, the common wisdom was to effectively sanitize your social media of all personality when applying for jobs. Of course, the best hiring decisions these days are based just as much on how well a person would fit into the team, so use social media to check the culture fit.
2. Check Candidates Awareness and Networking
Most résumés produce a range of skills; however, they don’t specify how a person interacts with their peers and colleagues. Work today isn’t the deskbound slog it used to be. You need teams who are friendly, supportive and happy.
Nine out of 10 résumés scream, “Look at all the things I’ve done. I was excellent at all of them.” No one wants to work with a person like that. You know it, and, let’s be honest, the candidate probably knows it too. Find out if their networking with relevant personnel in the field is something they pride themselves upon.
Are they interested in the world? Are they passionate about certain topics? Are they bringing their network to bear and keeping themselves and others informed? Are they using it to learn, or just to tell other people their opinion? Are they happy to be an ambassador for you through their network, and is that what you want? These are subtle but incredibly useful indicators for an employer.
Also, it is important to remember that networking is more than turning up for business breakfasts or making friends with Janice in accounts. More people are becoming connected online, becoming aware and using platforms such as LinkedIn as a powerful networking tool.
3. The Importance of References
Often, references provided on a candidate’s CV will undeniably be good ones hence why they are there. But if a candidate has the strong network you’re looking for, it won’t be hard to give someone a quick call or send a LinkedIn message to find out what they’re really like. If you want to find out more about them, further investigate into their sources and try to go to people who they never thought you might ask: their third-to-last employer, or the leader of a church or social club they’ve mentioned as a brief bullet point. Ensure you have the relevant questions to ask the right people to get the answers you are looking for.
4. Get Out Your Metaphorical Truth Detector
The major drawback of a résumé is that it gives a lying candidate a solid foundation to build a fabricated career on. To ensure you get the best out of this, query what they’ve written and get them to explain a situation they’ve been in as well as any other potential questions. If you do think something looks too good to be true, then tell them you haven’t looked at their CV and ask them something really left field.
5. Test Candidates Creativity
Perhaps the worst thing about a CV is how tick-a-box it is. Listing skills, creativity and ideas is not the same as demonstrating them; it’s about "know-how," not "know of." The candidate you want will almost certainly be someone who relishes the chance to show you what they can do outside of their résumé.
As the employer you can go further: Give them tasks, ask them questions, bring them in to meet your team and see how they approach a certain problem. When you do make an offer, a résumé will be valuable in justifying it, but it should be supporting documentation, not the measure of a candidate.
If you do all the above, you’ll know you’ve made the right hire for your business, whatever their résumé says.
This blog was inspired by Entrepreneur- www-entrepreneur-com
To find out more about Staff Evaluations, visit our Staff Management Manual https://businessmanualsmadeeasy.com/products/staff-management-manual
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