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Spotting Resilience in Candidates When Hiring

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Looking for hard and soft skills when hiring is important. This includes seeking resilience in the best talent.

The increasing complexity of work environments requires employees to adapt quickly. They must effectively handle stressful situations to continue to move forward.

Uncovering resilience in candidates involves knowing what to look for during interviews. This helps clarify whether candidates have what it takes to be successful with your organization.

Implement these tips to find resilience in candidates during interviews.

Know What You Are Looking For

The ability to handle uncertainty plays a significant role in resilience. Resilient candidates can strategically prioritize, overcome obstacles, and continue to work toward their goals.

A candidate’s resume likely will not provide much insight into their level of resilience. However, investing a substantial amount of time with one company and receiving multiple promotions implies the candidate worked through issues and was rewarded appropriately.

Tailor Your Expectations for Resilience to the Role

Each position has unique challenges that require employees to be resilient. This impacts what you should expect from candidates during interviews.

For instance, decision-making and leadership roles require more resilience than entry-level positions. This is why your expectations need to be adjusted appropriately.

Ask Relevant Questions

The modern workplace is filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. As a result, you must use interviews to assess how candidates may react to challenges in the workplace.

Ask questions to determine how a candidate’s emotions are triggered and how they react to stressful situations. These questions may involve recent frustrations or failures candidates experienced and how the candidates responded.

For instance, you might request an example of when a candidate last got angry at work, what they were angry about, and how they responded. Look for an authentic answer to assess their resilience during challenging times.

Evaluate Authenticity in Interview Answers

Determine the candidate’s work in previous positions and what they took responsibility for. This includes whether they worked independently or collaborated.

Ask follow-up questions about each candidate’s work experience to uncover details about their accomplishments. You need to know how dedicated they were to resolving issues and the type of value they can to your organization.

Set Up a Role Play

Describe a workplace challenge relevant to the position, then ask each candidate how they would respond to it. Ask them to detail the different aspects they would consider, and they would approach the situation.

Role-playing lets you assess how each candidate would work through a real-life stressful situation. It also provides insight into their resilient nature.

Take notes on how each candidate evaluates, works through, and reacts to the situation. This helps determine how resilient they would be in the role.

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Making Good Impressions in the Recruiting Process

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The impressions you make throughout the recruiting process impact how candidates feel about working for your company. This affects whether current and future candidates decide to apply with or accept job offers from your organization.

Many candidates share their impressions of a company on Glassdoor or other employer review sites. This influences whether other job seekers decide to apply to your openings.

As a result, you must form positive impressions throughout your recruiting process. These tips can help.

Follow these guidelines to make positive impressions on candidates throughout the recruiting process.

Share Clear Job Descriptions

Use simple language to describe the job duties and responsibilities.

  • Choose gender-neutral language to encourage people of all genders to apply.
  • List the top three to five requirements to open up the role to more applicants.
  • Include the most important information first.
  • Use bullet points, active verbs, and short sentences to ease reading.
  • Share whether the role involves managing team members.

Streamline the Application Process

Make it simple to apply for a position.

  • Ensure your careers page is easily visible and navigable.
  • Provide short, clear application directions.
  • Let candidates apply without creating an account and logging in.
  • Offer LinkedIn or resume parsing.
  • Limit your application process to one page.
  • Make your application mobile-friendly.
  • Ensure your file size limits are generous.
  • Provide free-response spaces to copy and paste writing samples or URL links to work samples.
  • Email a confirmation for application submission.

Regularly Follow Up

Let candidates know whether they are advancing to the next step of your recruiting process.

  • Email an interview invitation or rejection as soon as possible.
  • Use a human email address to message candidates.
  • Respond to candidate questions, thank-you notes, and follow-ups.
  • Talk with candidates over the phone before asking them to complete a skills test or assignment.
  • Clarify the directions and timeline for the test or assignment.
  • Thank candidates for finishing the test or assignment.
  • Clarify the next steps in your recruiting timeline.
  • Provide hiring updates along the way.

Clarify Interview Expectations

Send candidates a calendar invitation with interview information.

  • Include how many interviewers are involved, their names, and whether they will be live or virtual.
  • Share how long the interview should be, where to park, and how to enter the building.

Conduct the Interviews

Begin each interview at the scheduled time.

  • Offer the candidate water or coffee.
  • Explain the interview process.
  • Maintain eye contact as often as possible.
  • Ask the same questions of applicants for the same job.
  • Take notes.
  • Thank the candidate for their time.
  • Let the candidate know when you will be in touch.

Follow Up

Let candidates know as soon as possible whether they are advancing in your recruiting process.

  • Include whether you will consider the non-selected candidates for future opportunities.
  • Provide a job offer if appropriate.
  • Send a candidate feedback survey.

Looking for Additional Advice?

Partner with RightStone for more help with your recruiting process. Find out more today.

Reducing Bias in the Hiring Process

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Biases in your hiring process impact the diversity of your workforce. These conscious or unconscious beliefs cause certain candidates to be hired rather than others who may be more successful in a role.

Your employees’ diversity impacts their creativity, innovation, and productivity. This affects your company’s bottom line, reputation, and competitive edge.

As a result, taking steps to reduce biases in hiring is in your best interest. The following suggestions can help.

Implement these tips to minimize bias in your hiring process.

Educate Your Hiring Team

Train your hiring team on unconscious biases. This includes unfairly treating a candidate because of their race, skin color, or national origin. It also involves bringing aboard a candidate because their background, beliefs, and interests are similar to the decision-makers’.

  • Identifying unconscious biases helps your hiring team understand how their perspectives impact hiring decisions and workforce diversity.
  • Include what to look for and what to avoid during interviews.
  • Hold your hiring team accountable for minimizing bias in their hiring decisions.

Update Your Job Descriptions

Your job descriptions need to be as inclusive as possible to increase diversity in your candidate pools.

  • Include gender-neutral language.
  • Use a clear job title, such as “Application Developer” or “Data Analyst,” to attract the right candidates.
  • List only the three to five necessary qualifications to perform the work to increase the number of females and people of color who apply.
  • Mention any accommodations that can be made for candidates with wheelchairs or special needs.
  • Use HR software to uncover other biases involving race, age, physical ability, or other protected classes.

Require Skill Tests

Testing for the necessary IT skills lets you compare candidates based on their performance rather than personal characteristics. This indicates whether a candidate would be successful with your company.

Conduct Structured Interviews

Ask the same questions in the same order for the candidates interviewing for a role. This provides an objective foundation to evaluate candidates.

  • Use a rubric to score the answers from 1 to 5.
  • Encourage your hiring team to take notes on each candidate’s answers.
  • Discuss your team’s findings to make a hiring decision.

Get Help with Hiring

Let RightStone help add IT professionals to your team. Reach out to us today.

Red Flags That Can Rise in the Hiring Process

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You can gather significant information about a candidate by reading their resume. You can learn even more by interviewing the candidate.

Talking with candidates helps determine whether they fit the qualifications for a role. It also can indicate whether they were completely honest about the information in their application.

Uncovering a red flag when reviewing resumes or interviewing candidates may indicate a hidden issue that could be cause for concern. You might want to learn additional information before deciding how to move forward.

If you uncover any of these red flags when hiring, you may want to reconsider hiring the candidate.

Changing Fields

A candidate regularly looking for work in different industries may be a red flag. The candidate might easily get bored and not remain engaged once they adapt to their new job. Or, they might be a poor performer who does not properly contribute to organizations.

You might want to pass over this candidate when scheduling interviews. They likely would not remain with your company long-term. You probably would need to restart the hiring process once the new hire leaves.

Employment Gaps

If a candidate has lengthy gaps between jobs on their resume, there may be cause for concern. The candidate may have trouble getting along with their managers or following company policies. This can indicate the inability to properly handle conflict, show empathy, or display other important traits for success in a work environment.

Talk with the candidate about their employment gaps. Perhaps the candidate had to take a break from the workforce to handle family or personal matters. Maybe they were downsized after a merger or laid off during the coronavirus pandemic.

Find out what the candidate did during their time away from the workforce. Perhaps they picked up valuable skills by taking a class, volunteering, or engaging in other professional development. These skills could benefit the candidate’s next employer.

Lack of Work Examples

Take note if a candidate cannot answer technical or behavioral interview questions with specific examples. They might lack the education, skills, or experience required for the role.

Ask follow-up questions to gather more information. Perhaps the candidate would need to develop certain skills to carry out the job duties and responsibilities.

Consider whether the candidate could undergo additional training to reach the desired level of performance in a reasonable amount of time. If not, you may want to move on to other candidates.

Want Help with Your Hiring Process?

Let RightStone assist with your IT hiring needs. Find out more today.

How to Focus on Diversity & Inclusion in Your Recruiting Efforts

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The more diverse and inclusive your company is, the more competitive it is. The blending of team members from different cultures, genders, and backgrounds provides greater innovation, problem-solving, and goal attainment than working with more homogenous team members. Your diverse team is better equipped to provide different viewpoints and develop unique ideas than a homogenous team. This elevates collaboration, engagement, morale, and retention. These are reasons why diversity and inclusion need to be priorities within your organization.

Implement these tips to make your recruitment process more diverse and inclusive.

Focus on Your Leadership Demographics

Analyze the leaders occupying the top roles in your organization. Determine whether they reflect the demographics of the communities you serve. Include what your leaders’ succession planning pipeline looks like. Think about whether this involves women and people of color. You want to hire and promote employees in these two groups to line roles and executive positions as much as possible.

The more women and people of color you have in revenue-generating and decision-making roles, the more your company will attract and retain diverse candidates. Offering employee resource programs and other sources of support for these groups increases your level of inclusivity.

Reduce Unconscious Biases

Train everyone involved in your hiring process to uncover and modify their hidden aversions to specific types of candidates. These biases mostly are shaped by individual experiences and typically result in wrong assumptions.

For instance, use gender-neutral language in your job descriptions. This includes the omission of words such as “supportive” or “aggressive.” The former tends to attract more female candidates, whereas the latter tends to attract more male candidates. Avoiding gendered words typically attracts a more balanced number of female and male applicants to your job openings.

Include in your job description only the necessary skills and qualifications for the role. Whereas women typically apply for a position they feel 100% qualified for, men typically apply for a job they feel 70% qualified for. Listing only the most important skills and qualifications increases the balance of female and male applicants for your position.

Eliminate the names, schools attended, and other personally identifying information on the resumes you receive. This causes your hiring team to focus on the skills, experience, and qualifications of your applicants when deciding who to interview. Women and people of color are more likely to be contacted and potentially hired by your organization, which increases diversity.

Emphasize Your Employee Resource Groups

Include throughout your recruitment process information about the resources you provide to support your employees. Details about your employee resource groups (ERGs) and other inclusivity programs show you care about your team members from all backgrounds. Knowing that all employees are valued members of your organization helps attract and retain diverse talent.

Want More Diverse IT Candidates?

RightStone has IT professionals of different backgrounds ready to fill your business needs. Contact us today.

Warning Signs Your Top Candidate Isn’t All They Say They Are

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Like many employers, you may be having difficulty hiring the best talent. As a result, you might feel inclined to hire your top candidate after reading their resume and scheduling an interview. However, you need to take the time to make sure the candidate is exactly as good as they say they are. Although they may seem like a great match on the surface, you need to uncover additional information to validate their claims.

Discover some steps you can take to determine whether your best candidate truly is the right one to add to your team.

Not Sharing Specific Contributions

Your top candidate should give concrete examples of their individual contributions and those of their team members to complete projects. You need this type of information to learn more about the candidate’s role in a project and how it fits with the team dynamics.

The candidate also should talk about other details relating to their current job or the job they want. Otherwise, they may lack the skills and qualifications needed to complete the work. Think twice about hiring this candidate.

Hesitation to Provide Work Samples

Your top candidate should be happy to show you examples of what they accomplished in previous roles. This demonstrates the value they can provide for your own organization.

If the candidate hesitates to participate in a technical interview, it may be because they lack the core skills necessary to carry out the job responsibilities. The candidate may not want to admit that they cannot complete a skills test within the allotted time. This likely is not the right candidate to hire.

Lack of Interest in Learning

Your top candidate should be eager to participate in ongoing learning and development opportunities. This lets them develop new skills and qualify for additional opportunities for career advancement.

A candidate who believes they already know all that they need to likely will be stagnant in a role. Disinterest in improving their abilities means a lack of growth for your organization. This is not a candidate you want to add to your team.

Not Asking Questions

Your top candidate should be asking questions throughout the interview. This shows they are engaged in the conversation and curious to know more about the position and company.  The more information the candidate receives, the better they can determine whether the job is a good match for them.

Not asking questions signals disinterest in the discussion, job, and organization. Since it is unlikely that every topic was covered during the interview, the candidate should want to know more about at least one issue that came up during the talk. You likely should not hire this candidate.

Want Help with Interviewing?

Work with RightStone to fill your hiring needs. Contact us today.

6 Ways to Attract Quality Applicants

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Like many employers, you may have open positions with few applicants. Or, the applicants you have may not be qualified for the roles. Because you cannot have these jobs remain open, you need to alter your approach to the recruitment process to get better results.

Implement these six tips to attract higher-quality candidates to your job openings.

1. Build Your Employer Brand

Enhance your company’s reputation as a great place to work. For instance, use your careers page to show your mission, vision, and values. Include employee photos, videos, stories, and testimonials. Also, include information about your benefits and opportunities for growth. Additionally, encourage your team members to share their stories on employer review sites. Showing what it is like to work for you can increase interest in applying with your company.

2. Encourage Employee Referrals

Emphasize the importance of your team members referring people they know to your organization. The referrals are likely to fit with company culture, stay productive, and remain long-term with your company. Be sure you reward your employees whose referrals stay for a set time.

3. Recruit from Customized Job Boards

Post your openings on job boards other than the usual ones. You should get more qualified candidates that convert to hires at a higher rate. These sources may include industry-specific job boards, local or community message boards, university job boards, and Craigslist.

4. Increase Your Salaries

Candidates want to receive competitive compensation for their time and talents. This is why offering salaries on the higher end of the range is important. Include the job title, years of experience, skills, qualifications, geographic location, and other relevant information when researching an appropriate salary to offer.

5. Optimize Your Application Process

Your application process needs to be fast and transparent. This includes easy submission of cover letters and resumes through your company website, ongoing notifications of application status, and details of what the next step is. It also involves email reminders of job interviews, chatbots to answer questions, and quick responses to candidate messages.

6. Make Fast Hiring Decisions

Your hiring decisions need to be made as quickly as possible. Because the best talent typically is off the market within 10 days, you must let them know soon after an interview whether they are chosen to advance in the process or receive a job offer. As a result, you need to talk with your hiring team to gather feedback and compare candidates to determine which should advance or be asked to join your team.

Need Help Filling Your IT Roles?

Work with a recruiter from RightStone to source and hire for your hard-to-fill IT positions. Reach out to us today.

Improve Communication During the Application Process

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Effective communication throughout your job application process is important. It shows respect and appreciation for your candidates and tracks the activity related to their applications. Regular communication also keeps you and the other staff members involved in the hiring process informed about the status of open roles. Plus, it reduces the number of phone calls about which stage candidates’ applications are at. These are reasons why you need to provide ongoing communication with all candidates.

Implement these tips to enhance communication throughout your application process.

1. Thank Candidates for Their Application

Send an automated, customized email to let each candidate know you received their application. For candidates who begin an application but do not submit it, send an email reminding them to finish it. This should increase the number of completed applications you receive.

2. Let Candidates Know Their Status

Keep each candidate informed about where they are in the application process. This may include “application reviewed,” “interview scheduled,” or “hired.” Candidates want to see that their applications are under real consideration. They also want to know whether they are moving forward in the process. Otherwise, the candidates are likely to apply for jobs elsewhere.

3. Notify Candidates Who Are No Longer Being Considered

Let a candidate know if they will not be contacted for an interview. You may want to send an email with a “not qualified” or “not selected” status to share your determination about their application. This provides resolution and lets the candidate know when they can reapply.

4. Schedule Job Interviews

Email each candidate you would like to interview. Include your online schedule manager to communicate the available times. The candidates and you can receive calendar reminders and reschedule if needed. This helps you keep track of your interviews.

5. Send Job Offer Letters

Use email to extend a written job offer to the candidates you choose. The software should be able to personalize and modify each contract and track and record the information. Then, you know the status of each new hire and can help them transition to employees.

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Is Temp-to-Staff Right for Your Company?

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A temp-to-staff work arrangement involves a role being filled for a set time with the possibility of a permanent job offer later. Whether a full-time job becomes available depends on the worker’s performance, budgets, economic conditions, and other variables that impact hiring decisions. This type of employment can provide a variety of advantages to your organization.

Find out how bringing aboard a temp-to-staff worker can benefit your company.

Evaluate a Potential Employee’s Performance

When you add a temp-to-staff worker to your team, you are able to see their work performance without making a long-term commitment. During the length of the assignment, you gain insight into the worker’s skills and comfort level with the work environment as they tackle your projects. You also see how well the worker blends with your team, coworkers, and company culture. Plus, you witness whether they show initiative, apply their training to their work, and find ways to provide additional value to the organization. This hands-on experience provides a realistic view of whether a permanent job offer should be extended.

Efficiently Use Company Resources

Hiring a temp-to-staff worker is a wise use of your company’s time and money. For instance, you can evaluate the worker’s performance during the trial period, which typically lasts 3 to 6 months. This equips you to make an informed decision about whether to offer full-time employment at the end of the contract period. You also avoid losing a significant amount of time and money, which happens when a bad hire joins your team. Plus, the temporary worker is likely to stay long-term if they have a permanent job.

Partner with a Staffing Agency

The best way to find a temp-to-staff worker is through a reputable staffing firm. The recruiters have the connections, skills, and experience necessary to evaluate candidates and ensure they are a good match for your business needs. The recruiter can negotiate a competitive salary, benefits package, and perks to help you attract top talent. Be sure to clarify what you are looking for in terms of knowledge, skills, experience, job duties, goals, and expectations.

Source the Best IT Talent

Find the temp-to-staff IT talent you need through RightStone. Connect with us today to learn more.

5 Tips for Interviewing a Candidate Older Than You

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Sitting down to an interview with someone older than you is not as uncommon as it sounds.

Whether you need to hire for a very senior role or you have an applicant who took a detour on your career path, there are many ways you could find yourself interviewing someone who started their career while you were still in school.

Although the initial realization may feel awkward, interviewing an older candidate than you doesn’t need to be different from any other interview. Here are five things to remember when you find yourself in this scenario.

Don’t Bring Up Your Age or Theirs

Age is just a number. So, please don’t feel the need to make light of your age or ask questions about theirs.

What’s important is their experience and whether they fit the bill for the job. Bringing up the age gap will just increase the awkwardness. Make it a point to leave the conversation at the door and focus only on their qualifications.

Do More Research Beforehand

Research the candidate’s background to better understand what their experience and skills bring to the team. Doing so will give you a chance to ask more in-depth questions, which caters well to candidates who are more experienced than you are.

Rely Heavily on Emotional Intelligence

For some people, returning to an entry-level or mid-career job is part of a big life change, such as returning to the workforce after years or decades of raising a family, overcoming an obstacle like an illness, or finally getting the chance to pursue their dreams.

Empathy and emotional intelligence will help the candidate feel more comfortable. And they will remember how you made them feel above all else.

Go for Common Ground

What experiences do they have that you also have? Finding a point that you can both relate to, whether it’s a course or certification or project, will help the candidate open up and create a more conversational interview style.

Consider Outsourcing the Process

If you want to hire to bring on a more senior position than you currently have at the company, then you might consider outsourcing the recruitment process. Recruiters with expertise in your field will forgo the awkwardness associated with age or experience and have a better eye for the kind of candidate you need.

Are you looking for a new senior role in IT? Get in touch to learn about the RightStone 360 process and how we place the right consultant with the perfect employer.