Thanks to technology, the way we hire has evolved to include a lot of tools to help us get to know every candidate we meet as best we can before extending a job offer. Gone are the days where a cover letter, resume, and interview were the only tools available. While they are helpful and the foundation for the hiring process, adding in tools like a phone screening process, personality or skills assessment, and background check (after an offer is extended) can be very beneficial.
The OG’s of Hiring: Resume, Cover Letter, Interview
Adopting some current slang, the OGs or “Original Gangsters” of the hiring process, as I mentioned above, are the resume, cover letter, and interview. The resume and interview remain critical elements of the hiring process today, but the cover letter is arguably a thing of the past. There are many reasons for this, one being the way candidates apply for open jobs.
Applying to open positions on Indeed, Career Builder, LinkedIn, and other similar websites is as simple as a few clicks of the mouse. Job seekers are often applying to dozens of jobs at a time, and similarly, companies are looking to sort through applications as quickly as possible. In today’s fast-paced work environment, hiring managers often don’t have time to read through cover letters. They simply want to scan a resume and know whether the candidate is qualified, or not.
According to a 2017 CNBC article, at that time less than half of applicants were submitting cover letters, and less than 25% of recruiters were even looking at them.
While cover letters are passé, hiring managers should always been on the lookout for solid resumes looking for elements like qualifications, tenure at previous jobs, education, and so on. A proper interview process is also important. How many interviews will candidates go through? And with whom? Having a structure in place, as well as questions you’ll ask of candidates, will help streamline the entire hiring process.
The NKOTB of Hiring: Personality/ Skills Assessments & Background Checks
At Wylander, each serious candidate is asked to complete a DISC assessment. This is a behavior assessment tool that centers around four different personality traits: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). There are no right or wrong answers to this assessment, but the results pretty clearly outline if someone’s personality and behavior are well-suited for the job for which they are being considered. For example, you would want someone in a leadership role to show more D, while a salesperson might showcase more I.
We will get more into this in a future Dear Kristy column, but we can say these assessments have proved very valuable when making hiring decisions, especially when companies are on the fence about a candidate. While assessments like this should never be the only deciding factor in the hiring process, carefully reading through the results can shed a lot of light on who a candidate really is and see beyond just who them present themselves as during the interview. We look at our DISC assessments of each candidate as one part of the basket when making a hiring decision. Other parts include: resume, phone screenings, face-to-face interviews, references checks and background checks.
And worth a quick mention, background checks are also a critical part of hiring specifically in the restoration industry. However, due to varying laws from state to state, we recommend waiting to process a background check until after a job offer is presented to a candidate. The offer should just stipulate that it is contingent upon positive results from the background check. Due to varying criteria from insurance carriers and TPAs, it is also important to be sure you use a background check process that is accepted by everyone.
Do you have a hiring related question for Kristy? Shoot her an email and she may answer it in a future blog! kristy@wylander.com.
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