Most people think of the hiring process as a demanding exercise that involves significant vetting and multiple interviews. It doesn’t have to be that way. Consider the approach techsifts of Marla Malcolm Beck. She is the CEO of the beauty retailer Bluemercury. Beck conducts seven to ten minute interviews in which she determines whether the applicant has the “skill, will and fit”.
Beck reviews resumes before interviews but limits the actual interview time to less than ten minutes. Any more would be a waste of her time as well as the applicant’s. Beck says Techjunkien that it only takes two minutes to figure out if the worker is skilled enough to handle the position’s demands. She takes a look at applicants’ past responsibilities and accomplishments and considers them along with their responses to questions about the impact that they’ve made at prior employers.
An interviewer can gauge a candidate’s will by asking about what they’d like to be doing in the next five to ten years. This will provide a glimpse at the applicant’s creativity and career aspirations. Those who are the hungriest will be willing to learn. The desire to learn is especially critical. It shows that the applicant can and will do perform the responsibilities of the job that he applied for.
Beck determines if the applicant is an appropriate fit for the position by examining the experiences listed on resumes and asking about work history. If an applicant demonstrates that he relished the chance to work at a smaller organization but has the dexterity to transition into a role at a larger company, he might be an appropriate fit for the current position. This type of applicant is also likely capable of eventually handling the demands required of another role if promoted in the future.
In a nutshell, if you make proper use of technology to sift through a pool of applicants and narrow the field, you can make fast hiring decisions. However, you’ll run into stumbling blocks if you fail to efficiently sift through applicants to find the best prospects. Be sure to embrace high tech human resources solutions like the software application known as the application tracking system, typically referred to as ATS. ATS empowers hiring managers to eliminate unqualified candidates in an expeditious manner. This technology allows you to sort through candidates by all different sorts of criteria so you don’t burn time looking through each resume or application with the manpower of your human resources department.
