Sifting (not Drifting) Through a Sea of Applicants

In today's workforce shortage, you will have all kinds of applicants applying for all kinds of jobs, just to see if they get one call. Applicants using the shotgun method leave hiring managers with a sea of resumes to sift through and a lot of wasted time if you decide to meet them all in person. A pre-interview telephone screen may be your best bet is weeding out the - well, weeds - leaving you with a bed of roses from which to choose. What do you need to do?

Like anything else you do before you do it - Prepare. Think about the job you are trying to fill. Identify what skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKAs) the new hire must have. Who is your highest performer or best at the position? Try to model your next candidates after this person. Figure out a list of questions will reveal the most about a candidate and use this template for each call. For instance: "Tell me a little about yourself and your work history?" "What specifically interests you about this job?" can provide some interesting insight over the telephone. Some other questions may be: "What would your supervisor say about you?" "What kind of work environment brings out your best performance?" Knowing what kinds of answers you are looking for will make the use of the questions more of a hiring tool, than a guide.

After you have your SKAs and questions identified - it's time to sift, or weed, whichever you prefer. Search through your applications and identify the candidates that have your required SKAs and measure them. Create a grid to make notes about the candidates that measure the SKAs you are looking for; for example, how many years of experience in..., education, etc. Remember, there is no need to call every applicant - even if you are in a time crunch. It is better to not have a candidate than to hire the WRONG candidate (aka: a warm body). You can justify this to whomever you are trying to serve by explaining that you want to employ the best in order to serve them better.

So, you have identified your top ten candidates (if you have that many) to make a 10 - 20 minute phone call to. What is amazing about the telephone is the amount of additional information, conversational clues, that are revealed because you are not able to see your applicant and nor can they see you. Use this to your advantage. Having a face-to-face interview provides both parties with non-verbal clues and many times the decision about a person/business is made based upon appearance or the office environment. Have you ever heard the saying "He who speaks first loses"? It means listen. Ask an open-ended question or intentionally take pauses so that the applicant fills the silence and reveals more about themselves without you drawing it out of them. It will happen. People like to talk about themselves more often than not. Spend the majority of your time listening and not talking. Listen carefully and ask thoughtful follow-up questions to identify "deal breakers" or other red flags. Be careful not to rule out a candidate because they don't speak perfectly - unless the position requires incredible conversational skills. At the same time, use the phone interview as a tool to eliminate candidates.

Use this telephone interview to review what the applicant listed. Make notes of any changes in story or things that seem fishy. Let your candidates know that you will be contacting their past employers and references listed on the application; and that any education or credentials will be verified. It is possible to eliminate even more people just in this step alone if there were any mistruths listed. Sadly, some people feel that they must stretch the truth on applications or in other ways, forgetting that they will be found out. It happens - don't take it personally, but if you find out a lie - that's a big red flag!

Once you identify the candidates that you wish to keep you can move onto face-to-face interview. Even though your telephone screen eliminated some candidates it is possible for some oddballs to slip through your sifter. Don't worry about it - you will know it when they come into the office. Telephone screening isn't error proof, but you can use it to your advantage. Interviews are expensive and you can mitigate costs by using a telephone pre-screen to sift out keeper candidates.