How to assess a candidate during his recruitment?

You need to recruit a new employee to grow your team and your production but you don't know how to do it. It can be stressful and time -consuming. At Marvin Recruiter , we want to make recruitment simple and effective!

In this article, we will decipher how to qualify and assess a candidate during your recruitment process, from maintenance to selection. It will thus be a question of detaching yourself from CV classics and cover letter in order to best identify your candidate and avoid recruitment errors .

The essentials:

• Any good candidate qualification begins with a clear and detailed post sheet .
• In order to assess the motivation of your candidate, study his non-verbal communication and his involvement during scenarios.
• To assess the technical skills of your candidate, see a maintenance grid with the required skills and experiences and do not hesitate to make him pass evaluation tests.

The qualification of a candidate begins before the interview

Recruitments can take time and ask you to put certain tasks aside time to find the rare pearl.

Before you embark on a recruitment process, make sure you have a smoothly established strategy in order to limit the waste of time and unnecessary interviews. Such a strategy is decided and takes place upstream.

It is based on a real assessment of the need for recruitment , the creation of a clear and detailed post sheet and the development of a specific recruitment process that will allow you to skim your potential candidates and keep only the best on each stage.

The need to justify recruitment on a pole and for specific tasks. This allows you to assess the shortfall if you do not recruit a person for a given position. You thus identify the missions to delegate and the expertise you are looking for .

From this exploration and validation phase will result in the drafts from a job sheet and the desired level of seniority . You shouldn't be satisfied with that.

In order to best filter your candidates upstream of the interviews, write a clear and detailed job description of the missions to be filled and the profile sought . This will prevent you from wasting time with profiles and talents that do not match your research.

In this post sheet, reveal:

• The usefulness of the position
• its status (Etam, executive ...)
• its position in the organization chart
• working conditions
• the presentation of the company
• Missions and responsibilities
• The presentation of the team
• Technical skills and human skills sought
• counterparts

On this subject, do not hesitate to compare your job description with similar business sheets.

Finally, concerning the recruitment process itself, it will be a question of defining your conductive lines : how you are going to recruit (headhunter firm, free/spontaneous applications, publication in the "quarries" section of your website ...) and what characteristics you will test at each stage of the process ...

Qualify your candidates even before the first interview

In order to best optimize your recruitments, the first steps are crucial. Indeed, benefiting from a and quantitative candidates is the cornerstone of an effective recruitment process. A well -done sourcing is a recruitment already half carried out.

For this, simple and quick tips can be set up. You should know that hunting candidates can take up to 50 % of your time. So that this time is as profitable as possible, you can rest on three recognized practices:

• Sweep your candidates effectively thanks to Boolean research . This allows you to only select profiles that really match your recruitment need. As such, Marvin allows you to an automatically click candidates
• Make a first matching of candidates thanks to an ATS like Marvin Recruit. Capitalizing on your candidate database is a monumental time saving. If your database is clean and qualitative, it will be all the more profitable. Marvin allows you to find qualified candidates in just a few clicks thanks to advanced research.
• Establish pre-entretian recruitment tests . Whether personality tests, psychotechnical tests or skills tests, they allow you to assess the specific skills and levels of expertise of your candidates. These evaluations make it possible to automatically sort out the potential candidates you want to recruit or not. According to an APEC study, 31 % of recruiters, all sectors combined use this type of situation.

At that time, here are three questions that you can ask yourself: 

1. What are my minimum requirements for a recruit to be considered as potentially acceptable?
2. What are the expertise and qualities that would pass an acceptable recruit at the level of an excellent employee?
3. What are the signs or “red flags” which would make a candidate correspond to neither the position nor to the company and how to identify them before an interview?

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Evaluate your candidates qualified step by step

Once a limited number of candidates selected, the next step is to assess second -rate professional skills human skills .

In order to optimize all your interviews as much as possible and get a good balance between time management and information comprehensive, press a maintenance grid . A maintenance grid is a frame that lists all the professional capacities and information sought for a specific position.

At a glance, you are able to say if a profile corresponds or not to a given position. The maintenance grid is the common thread of the analysis of your candidates throughout your exchanges.

The maintenance grid allows you to better structure your exchanges in order to be more efficient and to target important points and to communicate more easily with your employees.

Before going into detail, make sure you have built your maintenance grid. To do this, synchronize with your employees on the expectations and needs related to the position , on the rating system and on the frame of job interviews, depending on the position.

A maintenance grid is not fixed, it must be adapted to each type of position. 

Personality interviews 

During this stage, it is a question of ensuring that the potential candidate is indeed in accordance with the culture of the company and the values ​​shared by the team. Take advantage of these interviews to get to know him better and deepen his human qualities.

These " soft skills " are just as important as they contribute to the success of the missions and the proper dissemination of information within the team according to a study carried out by Zety. To these subjects, platforms exist as central test, innermetrix, performance or papi.

You can also question your candidate on the following points:

1. Describe a time when he/she has shown cooperation and conflict management
2. How does he behave/she faced with a radical change? (Change of office, change of manager, change of tool ...)
3. What is its greatest strength?

This involves assessing your ability to communicate , manage your emotions , make decisions and adapt .

The so -called “technical” interviews

The technical interviews are used to ensure the real qualification of the candidate for the position. It is a question of testing the technical skills required for defined missions. 

At this stage, prefer a candidate who knows his strengths and weaknesses and who is not afraid to be honest by assuming not to master a skill, earlier than a beautiful speaker who will only speak of his qualities.

Depending on the positions, you can carry out application exercises (technical tests), case studies or even real situation simulations in order to test the skills of one or a candidate.

At this stage, here are three questions that you can ask yourself:

• Does the candidate have gaps in skills? If so, is it due to the stress of the interview or a lack of knowledge? Could this lack be filled by training ?
• Did the candidate prove the skills and professional experience mentioned on his CV?
• Is it able to quickly and independently analyze the problem and restore a clear and concise response?

At this stage, analytical, technical and project management skills

Team interviews

Finally, one of the last main categories of interviews is that of meeting in the premises with the teams . At this stage, you are already normally reassured about technical skills and human skills of your potential recruits.

Be careful at this level. It is certainly important to recruit a person with values ​​in line with those of current employees, but you should not homogenize and smooth your team. Favor the diversity of opinions , journeys and interests within your team.

You can check these points by asking yourself questions like:

1. What added value will it bring to her team?
2. What is his way of collaborating with your colleagues?
3. What would his old superior say about his way of working and collaborating?

It is a question of estimating the integration of the candidate to your business and his good understanding with the rest of the team.

Make sure your candidate's motivation

Throughout your recruitment process, it is important to keep your candidate's motivation online

As such, non-verbal communication is your ally. It brings together all of the cms , gestures and postures during your exchanges. It can be quite simple to identify a lack of motivation or on the contrary a motivation for any test.

To do this, you can ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does the person are looking at you when he addresses you?
2. Does your candidate have an active attitude (right posture, leaning forward, taking notes ...)?
3. What motivates you to apply for our recruitment offer? (why change jobs, which motivates him daily, his main objective ...)

This last step minimizes the risks of poor hiring and a high turnover. Indeed, motivation is a key factor in the overall success of your team and your business.

Conclusion

You now have all the keys in hand to qualify and assess your candidates during all the stages of the recruitment process. In order to keep a sustainable and collaborative trace of your exchanges, do not forget to enter your maintenance grid and give notes to your exchanges and the skills tested. 

If you want to capitalize better and better assess your candidates, come and discover Marvin Recruiter software . Our goal is to divide your sourcing time by 2!