"13% of contracts are broken before the end of the trial period."
Are you a recruiter or business owner? Recruiting new candidates is always an issue. If there is a casting error, you will have wasted time and money. How to effectively recruit new talent? How do you search for committed candidates when you are a positive impact organization? What recruiting process should you put in place to identify the right candidates for the job? Here are 10 ways to select the best candidate for your impact organization.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Prepare the selection in advance
#1 Create a recruitment scorecard
The scorecard or recruitment evaluation grid (LINK TO BE CHANGED) is a tool favored by recruiters to build your job descriptions, facilitate sourcing, prepare and conduct your interviews and ensure the follow-up of the recruitment process. That's all it takes!
Who would you like to see apply for your position? What technical skills should your candidate have? What training is required? What soft skills are preferred? What characteristics are necessary for a profile to fit your organization and/or team? You can involve a manager and/or an employee to clearly define your recruitment objectives. The answers to these questions constitute your selection criteria for candidates, which you can then integrate into the scorecard.
At makesense, for example, we have created a scorecard in 3 categories:
- Hard skills
- Soft skills
- The most motivational ones.
👉 Here is an exemple of scorecard
#2 Specify the technical criteria
Here are some examples of criteria:
- degrees and certifications
- work experience
- spelling and grammar
- foreign languages
- web skills
- financial skills
- marketing skills
- writing skills
- graphic skills
- Big Data skills
- negotiation
- project management...
#3 Define soft skills
To give you some ideas, here are the soft skills most requested by recruiters on jobs_that_makesense :
- proactivity
- entrepreneurial spirit
- emotional intelligence
- autonomy
- team spirit
# 4 Other criteria to consider
- availability
- salary expectations
- proximity to home
- openness to telecommuting
- the adequacy with the values, the corporate culture: for SSE structures, committed organizations, the sharing of certain values, of the corporate culture is often an important criterion.
#5 Draw up a job description
The job description is a recruitment tool that sets out your needs in black and white. To remain consistent, this is the time to include the criteria that you have previously listed in your evaluation grid.
To attract the best profiles, we give you some advice in this article on how to write it well.
#6 Broadcast your offers to the right place
Once you have drawn up your job profile using your scorecard, and then built the job description, it's time to distribute it! But not just anywhere. Depending on your industry, your commitment or the type of profile you are looking for, there are different recruitment channels. At jobs_that_makesense we specialize in positive impact and ecological and social transition. We therefore attract citizens and candidates who are interested in these issues and want to make a difference in their work.
Managing applications
The offer is posted, you have received many CVs and cover letters! Now what do you do with them? Which candidates are a perfect match for the position? Which ones are less suitable, or not at all?
#7 Sourcing candidates directly
Among the applications received, sourcing the profiles that meet the criteria previously set is an important step in the selection process. If you have drawn up your scorecard, you can for example check the boxes of those who correspond or not.
Beyond the offer, you can also do your own sourcing, by going headhunting on LinkedIn or on CV databases. On jobs_that_makesense in your recruiter space, you have for example access to a large database of CVs of hired profiles.
#8 Centralize the management of applications with an ATS
Among the recruitment solutions, there is also the ATS (applicant tracking system), an application management software, which allows you to track and manage the steps of the application process. Who has been contacted? Who was called for a phone interview? For whom has the hiring process been completed? Who are our favorites, our nugget candidates?
- The ATS of jobs_that_makesense also allows you to :
- create an internal CV library by gathering the CVs of interesting profiles that you have sourced.
- automate actions such as sending messages (email, SMS...) to respond to different candidates.
- synchronize applications received on different platforms. If you have a PRO profile with us and on Welcome To the Jungle, you will be able to redirect candidates to gather applications on a single platform.
Good news, you don't need any specific skills to use an ATS. And we say that, we say nothing, but the ATS of jobs_that_makesense is very easy to use ;)
Pre-screen candidates
#9 Doing a first interview remotely
Why remote? Among your list of nuggets, it will allow you to clarify with the candidates that they are still available, interested in the position, that they have fully understood your missions and challenges and are aware of the conditions of the job. You can choose between a phone call or a video interview. At makesense, we schedule an initial 30-minute interview with all of our prospective candidates to ensure that available, motivated candidates who have made inquiries about our association are included in the recruitment process.
#10 Don't be afraid of atypical profiles
People in professional reconversion, multi-potential, having worked in a non-virtuous sector, candidates over 45 years old... Don't be afraid of atypical backgrounds and personalities! On the contrary, "out of the box" backgrounds can be a real asset for your organization.
=> For example, a professional who has worked for 25 years in project management in a large bank may be able to manage a SSE team and have a rigorous approach that brings structure to your way of working.
=> A former rh in the fossil industries may have good reasons to join you
Meet the candidates
When in doubt, there is no doubt!
#11 The face-to-face interview
Scorecard in hand, this is the time to go into more detail on each of the criteria that are important to you, by asking questions to the candidates. The grid gives you a guideline for conducting the interview, but it is recommended that you have written a framework of questions beforehand. After the first interview, if you have included some notes, you can also expand on them during the interview.
#12 Reference interviews
Once you have gone through the interview process, conducting reference interviews is the ultimate step to avoid a recruitment mistake.
WHY?
No one is in a better position than the former manager to give you feedback
HOW TO CONDUCT THEM?
→ Ask the candidate for contact information
→ Check the profile on Linkedin
→ Call (15 mins)
→ Announce that you are recruiting but do not specify the missions, let the manager tell the story: strengths/weaknesses, points of vigilance, what missions he/she worked on, etc.
⚠️ They should always be put in perspective with the position and your own work culture!
#13 Meeting the team
One of the reasons why candidates leave at the end of their probationary period or shortly after being hired is the agreement with the team.
2 or 3 candidates are close to the position to be filled? Plan a meeting between each of them and the team they are going to join or the whole team if you are a small structure. Offering candidates an immersion in your premises is also part of the recruitment techniques that allow you to evaluate their ability to project themselves in your work environment.
The balance sheet
#14 Choosing the final candidate
When it comes to making a decision on the recruitment of a final candidate, review the candidates you met during the different stages of the recruitment process. Always equipped with your scorecard, you will be able to make your choice in a rational and objective way. Beyond the scorecard, your intuitions and feelings also count: When there is a doubt, there is no doubt!