"Hire This, Not That!" Blog

As companies try to find the quickest, easiest way to find new talent, the candidate experience is often overlooked. A candidate’s experience seeking, applying, and interviewing for a job is a reflection of that company’s image and its culture. The better the candidate experience, the better the talent will be. To ensure a strong candidate experience, make the application process easy, validate candidates and provide some sort of closure.

Keep your initial application process relatively short. An application should be concise, clear and devoid of redundant paperwork. It should take less than ten minutes to complete. In the beginning of the application, let applicants know how long the process will take.

The US job market is in a state of heavy transition, and constant fluctuation. High unemployment rates combined with tight margins and high turnover leaves many employers looking to optimize their hiring process. Rather than rely on time intensive interviews to cull the best candidates from a big stack of resumes, many employers are turning to entrance tests to provide an initial evaluation of potential new hires. While this might seem an efficient way to weed out unfit candidates, the legal consequences can pose a bigger risk than their time saving rewards.

Recently, CVS Caremark has come under legal scrutiny for a test they've been using on potential employees. The test seeks to prune applicants that CVS deems unfit for employment. The CVS test asks applicants to either agree or disagree with statements like 'People do a lot of things that make you angry' and 'Many people cannot be trusted.' While CVS believes that these are legitimate questions for potential hires, the Rhode Island ACLU disagreed, and in a complaint to the state Commission for Human Rights claimed that the test is discriminatory against employees with mental disabilities. CVS and the ACLU reached a settlement, and CVS agreed to remove the problematic questions.

The tech community is in a good position, generally speaking. Since people are the primary resource, the tech industry doesn't require a huge investment to quickly rebound from a difficult economic period (at least not in the way that manufacturing does, for example). While the dot com boom eviscerated so many businesses in the 1990s, there is still a huge demand and a thriving need for technology services and products. People are still a necessary component of a successful tech company, despite the fact that companies are more fiscally conservative than in times past. Here are a few tips to help you find the most valuable IT candidate:  

1. Understand the Job: When hiring, carefully prioritize what you put in the position description. What your company needed in the past may not match the current need, and it may not be what you need a year from now. Don't limit yourself with skill sets you've required before unless they're still relevant. Be specific, and consider who will be drawn in by the job description.

In my last blog, I discussed the “Temp-to-Perm” hiring model that has been a pervasive way for companies to add talent. Now the real question: Is the temp-to-perm model here to stay?

One of the biggest concerns to technologists that are passively looking for their next role is the abundance of companies (typically Fortune 1000’s) that want to hire people on a temp-to-perm basis. For those that do not know, temp-to-perm (AKA contract-to-hire) is a hiring method that allows companies to hire the candidate as a contractor with the right to convert to a permanent employee after a pre-determined period, typically six months. This staffing method started before the recession, but became a much more common method of hiring following the downsizing and budget cuts that came with the economic downturn.

Let’s look at a few rationales for hiring entities using a temp-to-perm strategy:

1)     Large organizations have a difficult time “firing” employees that are underperforming or are “divisive figures.” Firing an employee for cause requires extensive documentation and even with the paperwork in place, can still result in a frivolous lawsuit. Temp-to-perm hiring allows employers to make better permanent hiring decisions based on actual performance. Companies are now hiring candidates that are proven to be “good or better” at what they do.