Practical Tips for Candidate Selection

Real-world experiences: the most common weak links in the candidate selection process…

When you make hiring decisions, you are also making decisions about the success of your company. This strategic interface can reveal a lot of weak points. Here are some of the most common stumbling blocks:

• No time: Candidate selection is a failure because of short-term action instead of long-term planning. HR needs that crop up “out of the blue” force you to rush your process, often resulting in a poorly thought-out hiring decision.
• No system: The new hire’s future supervisors, who have no formal training or expertise in any HR methodology, make a relatively spontaneous hiring decision after one or two short interviews.
• No image: : The company makes no conscious effort to build an employer image, so the most interesting candidate groups you’d like to attract have no idea you exist. The result: too few applications from people with substandard qualifications.
• No budget: : Instead of getting expert help in candidate management, the secretary or some other employee is hastily ordered to place a usually expensive ad somewhere and cull the resumes herself.
• No organization: : Without help in the form of targeted information technology, internal offices are often overwhelmed with the work associated with application processing. The know-how needed to set up HR-specific information architecture is lacking.

…and what you should pay close attention to during candidate selection.

• Interfaces are weak links in the chain: Take care to define goals and responsibilities precisely, and set up an orderly project management scheme to handle candidate selection.
• Only the best are good enough: The most effective human resource development work takes place during the candidate selection process. Any problems you create here can never be entirely undone later, no matter how good your targeted HR development offerings are.
• Develop a strategy: Current demographic trends will only exacerbate the shortage of qualified technical employees and create new problems due to an aging workforce. Take all of this into account early on in the candidate selection process.
• Take advantage of modern technology: Trends in e-recruiting such as online assessments and online applications will optimize the candidate selection process. For example, we at 3C work with the online platform www.personaler-online.de.
• Don’t delay another minute: : If your candidate selection processes are well timed and coordinated, you don’t need to invoke any unnecessary decision-making loops. Also, you’ll feel secure in the knowledge that you did everything right the first time.

A sound candidate selection system is a key strategic success factor for every company. We’d be glad to assist you in building and optimizing your own candidate selection system: give us a call at +49 89 17 95 36-0.