[caption id="attachment_23589" align="alignright" width="266"] Ambro at freedigitalphotos.net[/caption]
So, you've decided to recruit, you've posted a fantastic job advert online and the responses quickly came flooding in. What next?
CV assessment time... SNORE.
The great CV-trawl is, without a doubt the most tiresome part of the recruitment process, particularly if you've received a high volume of applications.
If only there was a way (or three) to speed up the process and get it over with - right? Good news - there is!
Having some experience in the area (we’ve seen thousands of CVs in our time) myself and Mark (head of our permanent recruitment division) have put together a quick-fire video with everything you really need to know about speeding up CV assessment!
Watch and Learn...
Takeaway 1: Be Organised.
- Use outlook and create sub-folders for each position.
- Divide each sub-folder into YES, NO and MAYBE.
- Do the same thing with your postal responses!
Takeaway 2: Be Ruthless.
- Set yourself some killer essential criteria, like location, education and experience.
- Put anyone that doesn't make the cut in your no pile (or folder).
- Benchmark the remaining candidates against your desirable criteria.
- Put together a checklist to make both of these tasks easier.
- Be clinical, mark them out of ten and cut candidates who don't make the grade.
Takeaway 3: Be Focused.
- Don't allow yourself to get distracted midway through a CV.
- Tell other people not to disturb you (you can even buy signs to ward co-workers off.)
- Turn your phone off, you'll get tempted to use it.
- Give yourself 2 minutes per CV. Make it personal challenge it you have to.
Summary
CV assessment takes time, effort and costs money, in fact, that's one of the major reasons why hiring managers are turning to agencies again.
Everyone's so busy, they don't have time to spend on the great CV trawl - and that's when mistakes happen - mistakes that could cost up to £10,000 (and that's without taking into consideration the cost of the brand new hire too!)
To work out your own (true) costs, it's worth reading our recent blog: 4 Recruitment Metrics Every Company Needs To Measure.
Recruiter Pro Tip. When you've scrutinised all of your CVs, cover letters and/or application forms, we recommend completing a telephone interview (for more info, click here). This will give you an opportunity to ask some more casual questions, to check that there's not anything really wrong (like they're a liar) and assess their personality. Then, you can go on to inviting your top candidates to interview.
If you feel like you could do with some more hints and tips about attracting, assessing and then interviewing your candidates, click here to sign up to our recruitment tips blog or head over to our YouTube channel to watch more helpful videos.
We'll send over a weekly email revealing the best ways (old and new) to speed up your recruitment process and find the perfect new employee for your business.
