How Does Thoroughly Qualifying Candidates Translate to Immense Benefits for Our Clients?
Recently, one of our clients asked me how we kick off the conversations in which we identify people who may represent good fits for their organization. The question caught me off guard, but it shouldn’t have. We’ve assisted this particular client for some time now with finding full-time employees who are the right fit for their teams both technically and culturally. As I began to describe our get-to-know-you process (in the recruiting world – “qualifying a candidate”), I found myself highlighting one concept at every step of the process…
Transparency.
To me, transparency has several relatives… honesty, clarity, simplicity, and more. These synonyms really started off a brainstorm for me, and I got hung up on a single thought: aren’t some of the best things in life laden with these concepts? From the never-ending marriage to the best friend you could always confide in to the project that’s finally been broken down into actionable tasks. Transparency is king, and it’s neat to see how that principle can guide a business and make such a positive impact on our clients, especially once we’ve been able to assist them with a successful search for the right talent.
It’s important to establish that each company has a unique hiring process and that each individual’s experience in that hiring process is unique. With variables such as technical expertise, industry experience, and internal references, every applicant arrives with a very different set of displayed characteristics. The question behind the question, however: what about the hidden components that oftentimes are equally important parts of a candidate’s makeup? I’m talking about the need to drop off and pick up the kids at daycare 20 minutes away from the office each day, or the desire for upward mobility into management within 5 years’ time, or the what components are part of someone’s total compensation package currently (hint: not just someone’s base salary).
It’s crucial to understand how often these unforeseen snags can drag down the final stages of a hiring process. The simplest way to beat these potential pains is investing in the get-to-know you process. We ask the difficult questions up front so that our clients can understand who they’re considering for an opening well in advance of our client making an offer of employment. We look at the total person – not just the technical skill set – and assess how they’ll fit in as an important piece to your company’s puzzle. With transparency as the guiding light, the candidate qualification process takes on new meaning. It’s our opportunity to learn as much information as possible that will allow us to paint the clearest picture as possible for our clients.
The benefits of investing in candidate qualification are numerous. For starters, a happier Human Resources team and hiring manager(s) should begin to be seen once they start to sort through exclusively qualified candidates, rather than job board fodder that can bog down applicant tracking systems. Stepping into the actual interview process, qualified candidates tend to withdraw from interviews less. They’re introduced to what to expect from the moment we begin a discussion with them. Qualified candidates also accept offers at a higher clip than non-qualified, due to the fact that all of their job change needs were diagnosed at the very first phone call. We take the pain out of the offer stage by shining light on all the snags that can bring offers to a screeching halt. And with transparency abounding, peripheral benefits include a more pleasant hiring experience, onboarding process, and transition for your new team member. In the end, what does all of this mean for you? Time & money saved while your business continues to do what it does best.
At JellTech, we value our local clients, and that’s why we aim at getting to know the whole person before passing along a resume to any hiring team. We pride ourselves on being the opposite of a plug-and-place firm. Rather, we focus on building lasting relationships with our local clients so that they know when JellTech provides them with the contact information for an interested job-seeker, they will be speaking with someone who we have thoroughly qualified as a fit. That’s the method that our firm has stood by for 15 years, and we’ll continue to do stand by it as we go forth into the future.
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