Recruiter Tips – 3 Things Your Candidate Won't Tell You That You Need To Know

You are in a powerful and important position as a recruitment consultant. You might not always feel appreciated and yet you play a vital role in any countries economy!

Why? Because you match up candidates and clients that will hopefully start a long lasting and productive relationship. Everyone is happy. So much so that the candidate tells everyone about you and how good your recruitment company is and the client continues to use you for their placements and recommends you to other departments. Happy days! Before that happens there are some key things that you need to know that candidates won’t always tell you.

1. Whether they are a good fit

In order to keep billing consistently, you need to place the right candidate in the right position which requires more than box ticking and matching CVs.  Even if a candidate fits a job specification to a Tit doesn’t mean that they are perfect for the job.

Your candidate is at the interview for one reason – to get the job.  They will answer questions and use the ‘buzz words’ that are needed in order to look like the perfect fit for the job.  They won’t and arguably cannot tell you if they are a perfect fit for the company; you must use your expertise to ask questions and make professional judgments as to whether their personality, ethos and work ethic matches the culture of the company you are representing. In today’s social fuelled environment a value match between client and candidate is more important than ever.

2. The ‘how’ not the ‘why’

Even if questions are designed to scratch below the surface, candidates often get away with superficial responses where they typically say how they did something instead of explaining why.  In order to create an accurate profile, you must extract the why.

“Why did you plan for that in this way instead of another way” instead of,“how did you plan for this situation”, gives you an idea of how they think and more importantly, an insight into their professional performance without watching them actually do the job. Don’t laugh! …and companies want individuals that are thinkers as well as just doers!

3. Scratch below the surface

If you are attracting high calibre candidates, they will come prepared to the interview having conducted prior research.  This means that they will demonstrate their knowledge of the company and market but how well do they really know the industry?

Any intelligent candidate will be able to create a fully informed and experienced impression through sweeping statements that are vaguely supported by evidence but, in order to ensure that your candidate really knows their stuff, it is important to ask them questions that test their application of knowledge and experience rather than, asking questions that showcase it.

For example, “what industry trends do you predict in 6 months time” rather than “what is your opinion on the current market” will separate the wheat from the chaff because, it will highlight the candidates who can apply their professional insight into a forecast against the ones who are able to retain facts about current affairs.

To have a successful track record for placements, it is important to be able to conduct an interview that extracts more information than what a candidate’s CV includes.  You must use your intuition and professional judgment to make an accurate decision.  So remember, it is not always about what the candidate does say but about what the candidate doesn’t say.

Till next time,

Cheryl