Have you ever sat through a job interview only to feel like the applicant gave you perfectly scripted rehearsed comments? Sometimes job interviews don’t help you to get to know an applicant on a more personal level.
Here are a few ways to get to know your job applicants better, which will enable you to hire the best candidates.
Contact Their References
First, take advantage of the references that they’ve provided you in their application. Make sure that you contact those references and ask them about the applicant. You can ask them about their work ethic, their experience, and even their personality and individual traits.
Contacting your applicants’ references can help you to get a more complete picture of what they look like in a work environment. If your applicants haven’t provided you with references, chances are that expectation wasn’t communicated in your job posting. You can make that a requirement, which will help you to get to know your job applicants better.
Use Social Media
Next, you can get to know your job applicants better by using social media to learn more about them. Nowadays, most people utilize social media in either a personal or professional sense.
Viewing the social media accounts of your potential hires can help you to better understand their personality, interests, and background. It could also reveal possible concerns that you might have about an individual. This has become a successful practice for many employers. Half of employers screen applicants’ social media profiles before hiring them.
Do Team Interviews
Finally, doing team interviews can help you to get to know an applicant better. When an applicant is interviewing with their potential employer or HR manager, their answers might be very formal, practiced, and scripted. However, if you can interview an applicant with the team that they’ll potentially be working with, you’ll likely see more of their personality and experience. Speaking to other people that are familiar with their industry will reveal a lot about their personal strengths and weaknesses, which is valuable information as you’re trying to decide if they’re a good fit for your current position. Make sure that you discuss the experience with your team after the interview to receive their feedback and thoughts on the candidate as well.
So if you feel like you’re in an interviewing slump and need to improve your processes, remember this article. You can get to know your job candidates better by contacting their references, using social media, and doing team interviews. This can help you to find the best possible candidates for your job opening.
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