Finding the right person for a job can be hard. Sometimes, you have too many good choices to pick from, and other times you just can’t find the right person amid hundreds you may review. While this may be the two scenarios you face, it’s a good idea to look at things another way; you don’t need to find the best candidate there is out there, and if you come across four or five possible candidates, you don’t need to spend too much time assessing which one is the best of the five. The approaches described here are applicable when you have less time on your hands.
Use Paper
One step in the process of searching for a suitable candidate out of tins of resumes is to use paper. Print out resumes you get for a particular post. Flip through them and put all those that interest you in one pile. The rest may be put in the recycle bin. The pile that has resumes with details that interest you can be placed in some sort of order that you may find easy to go through and access. This approach is easily manageable, efficient and quick.
Use Brief Job Descriptions Tactfully
You need not state exactly what you’re looking for in the job description you advertise. For example, if I am looking for a designer who has worked with the Adobe Suite, has 5 years experience working in the IT sector, I deliberately just say that I need a designer with some experience. You may get hundreds of resumes in response to such an advertisement, and although it may take a little more time to go through so many resumes, you’d have the luxury of choosing just the candidate you want.
Searching for Candidates without Resumes
One way of avoiding going through hundreds of resumes is to simply ask people who you know about possible candidates that they know about. If you get a candidate from a known source, such a reference can give you a better idea of the candidates competency level. Generally, it’s a good idea to get a lot of resumes the usual way i.e. through advertising, and you can always ask business contacts and friends for candidates they think might suit your job vacancy.
Looking out for the right candidate to fill a job vacancy can be a long process that you want to get through quickly. However, it’s a task that must be managed somehow when you need to get the right person. Finally, when you get someone to fill your vacancy, you will need to monitor their performance, and there is no better way to carry out performance management other than through a performance management system. For information on this, you can view our free demo here.
