Skill Matches and the Hiring Process: Identifying Top Talent
Posted on Wed, Oct 19, 2011 @ 02:51 PM
A main part of the employee selection process involves matching the requirements of your open position to the skills of job applicants. This is essential to hiring A players and creating a superior staff. In a recent survey, more than one third of interviewed CFOs said the top factor leading to a failed hire, aside from performance issues, is a poor skills match.
To find the right employee from the start, you need to have a strong process in place to first identify and then qualify strong candidates while filtering out undesirable individuals. With so many applicants applying for open positions, this can be a difficult task. However, it is integral to find the best candidate based on his or her abilities, skills and knowledge required for the position.
Even though the employee selection process may appear to be pretty straightforward, there are some challenges that you may run into. For instance, your company may find that they are unable to identify qualified candidates for the particular job at hand. According to CareerBuilder’s 2011 Mid Year Job Forecast report, more than 36 percent of Human Resource managers reported that they have positions for which they can’t find qualified candidates.
Working with a staffing agency can help hiring managers indentify candidates with the appropriate skills. Staffing agencies keep a large database of resumes and search this database to assess and identify candidates. They use multiple resources such as referrals, social media sites, job boards and advertisements to gain exposure to the largest number of candidates available. However, it is not simply enough to judge a candidate based on his or her resume. Staffing agencies have a well developed process in place for interviewing and determining candidate’s soft skills. For example, The Daniel Group has a 360 degree review during the hiring process where three people interview each candidate with a score card to quantify a possible client to candidate match. Score cards are industry, teamwork and culture specific. Additionally, both professional and personal reference checks, as well as an outreach to individuals that aren’t provided by an applicant, are conducted to ensure a candidate is suitable.
Your company’s hiring decisions are integral to the future success of your business, so it’s important that you make the right choices when hiring on a new employee. Working with a trusted staffing and recruiting firm will help ensure that you have selected the most qualified A player with the right skills.