>Upon starting the assessment, I was informed that I would need approximately 50 minutes to complete the task.< I find it curious that an employer would ask someone to invest 50 minutes of their time before the first interview.

>I later determined that it would take the company about 40 minutes of my time to determine that I was not psychologically qualified for them.< More like 40 seconds.

>Of course, I got no return on my time.< It all depends. If the assessment prevented them from offering you a job in which you would not find job success, perhaps they saved you from making a bad career decision. Quitting a new job or getting fired from a new job is hardly a good career move.

>… hotshots are not standing in line to get a chance to interview with your company.< Employers that hire for talent find it takes about 3 to 5 qualified to be hired job applicants to fill each position with a new hire who'll become a successful employee. Hot shots are the right people to hire about 20% of the time so they are not critical to hiring successful employees.

>Those people who excel at what they do (i.e. the best of the best) are enjoying it immensely.< Do you find it interesting that the 'best of the best' were at one time without experience? Hiring for talent allows hiring managers to identify their future
'best of the best' before they have experience.

>What does this add up to? It adds up to exactly what employers are trying so desperately to avoid: hiring bottom feeders.< Actually, employers are trying to hire successful employees and by doing so they avoid hiring the 'bottom feeders.'

>I have a news flash for those of you who are not convinced: resumes are filled with embellishments, distortions, and in many cases, outright lies.< Which is one reason why resumes are insufficient for selecting successful employees.

>When it comes to assessments, no matter how good the tool is that’s being used, people can still lie their way past it.< A good assessment is hard to fake. If you are making the argument that we test no one because some good liars get through, you are offering bad business advice. It is better to screen out the bad liars and hire the good liars than it is to hire both the bad liars and the good liars.

>He brags about how he carries synthetic urine in his car in the event that he has to provide a sample.< That speaks to teh efficacy of using cheek swabs instead of a urine test.

>He figured out a way to beat the system.< Until they use a new drug screening method without notice such as cheek swabs or hair samples.

>… bottom feeders will figure out a way to beat a system; it’s part of how they get a job.<

They get hired because too many hiring manager make their selection decisions based on criteria unrelated to job success, such as; the interview, GPA, Alma Mater, references, etc.

Re: the datasheet- the take I get from top recruiters is that the datasheet can give a recruiter a handly discussion structure while actually on the phone with a candidate, with the second option being the candidate filling it out (or finishing it off) themselves if a mutual session is not possible.

Re: Assessing the CEO- if a potential employee came to us and said he/she wanted to interview us first, not only would we be happy to oblige, but we would be impressed with the person’s confidence and assertiveness.

If you want to ‘finish the job’ and get the people we source for you out of their comfort zones, heed this advice. Lose the red-tape rules and regulations and get facey-face with these people.

Maureen Sharib
Telephone Names Sourcer

If you are like me and trying to find the best candidates, there is a lot of time involved, and as important as time is to me, I also know that a worthwhile investment of that time is important. Why would I ask a candidate to fill out the information or take the assessment if after that first phone conversation it turns out they are not a good fit anyway? Why create an excuse to say no and waste their time? (Which if you think you are fooling them, you aren’t by the way) If you already know it is a ‘no go’, just state the fact of the issue and move on or ask for referrals! Recruiters are very much salespeople in their own right, so just as much as we can persuade them we are the right fit, we can also persuade them otherwise and offer suggestions and refer them to other recruiters looking for the same candidates, so they at least have a pleasant experience, even if a no is not that pleasant anyway.

Screen first: fill out assessments later. Assessments will only go so far to tell you about the candidate. Gut feelings are still important in recruiting and it is that gut feeling that has propelled my career to where it is today, irregardless of the assessment, etc.

Excellent perspective on the candidate experience.

One of the most exciting changes I see in recruiting today is a general shift in perceiving job seekers as customers rather than as transactions to be processed in a system. To be sure, it is still a small shift in awareness ? but a very powerful one.

Recruiting can learn a lot from our friends in Marketing, specifically as methods relate to taking incremental steps toward building strong, loyal relationships with customers. Seth Godin, who spoke last month at the ERE conference in Florida, was an early pioneer of Internet marketing methods; the phrase ?permission marketing? has become a common one in business circles since the release of his book in 1999 under that same name.

The premise of permission marketing is quite simple: turn strangers into friends, and friends into customers. The litmus test for this is also simple: does every marketing effort create a learning relationship with the customer? Does it invite that person to start communicating with you?

The beauty of correlating this concept with recruiting is almost a no-brainer. We get clear about the combination of skills and abilities that fit within the hiring environment, and then we design every recruiting effort to engage a candidate (the ?stranger?) in a dialogue over time that turns them eventually into a hire (the ?customer?). A bonus is that they may in fact become actual customers of the business ? but that is food for another article.

The beauty of Permission Recruiting is also in the outcome: it places the company in a position that I like to call ?Right of First Refusal.? This means that regardless of the candidate?s relevance for hire in a specific requisition, you have provided an experience that gives your company the right to say ?no thanks? before the candidate does. In fact, the candidate?s experience is so good that you turned them into a friend – and friends become good referral sources in the recruiting realm. It is a circular argument.

The challenge of Permission Recruiting is that it commits us to behaviors that provide results over time. It is not a band aid approach to hiring, as it requires discipline and planning. In pure relationship terms, it is the difference between going steady and playing the field. If you want variety, the transaction method works just fine; however, if you seek a long term relationship with another human being, you must first define what you are looking for and then be willing to invest the time and energy required to obtain the results.

The job market has changed. People with strong resumes and hard-to-find skills aren’t filling out forms anymore. The best of them never were.