No matter what size your employee headcount is or what industry you operate within, the modern workplace is very much a team environment. Looking at resumes to try and find the right new team members can tell us about work experience and education, but not much about them as a person or how well they will fit into our current teams.
There are methods that smart hiring managers or business owners can use to help gain a comprehensive understanding of job candidates beyond the resume. Below we will help you understand the tools that some savvy business leaders use to make hiring decisions based on more than just resume bullet points.
Some positions may require a higher level of assertiveness, specificity, or team cohesion mentality than others. We’ve all heard the refrain about “too many cooks in the kitchen” and know that a team or room filled with A-type personalities can be disastrous in the wrong environment. The right personality type for your sales or business development team may be the wrong one for HR or accounts receivable.
To help hiring decisions be made with factors beyond what is listed on a resume, some leaders choose to implement a DISC assessment tool to help gain a clearer picture of job applicants. This personality tool helps to measure interpersonal behavior that is often used in workplace settings, based on the 4 basic personality types of Drive, Influence, Support, and Clarity.
The DISC assessment outlines both a primary and subtype personality assessment, as many will have one primary personality type but also elements of another that are not as pronounced. The test consists of 38 questions and only takes about 5 minutes for candidates to take.
To use the DISC Assessment as a business, credits (that do not expire) for the number of candidates that you expect to test can be purchased. The per unit cost decreases with larger credit packages:
The DISC Assessment can be accessed through the Truity company website link below:
Truity Personality Tests for Business.
While some positions may allow for new hires to learn on the job and not require any specific skills to perform, others may require a certain level of proficiency as a starting point. There are people out there who follow the “fake it until you make it” approach, where they possibly will fudge or outright fabricate their skills or experience on resumes, even when technical proficiency is a requirement for a position.
Even Big Tech and Silicon Valley are not immune to this issue. A rash of problems have occurred over the past several years with people being hired for technical and skilled positions who didn’t know what they were doing and caused issues across multiple companies.
The job board website Indeed seems to have found one solution to this problem, allowing companies to require basic skills tests for candidates who apply for positions that require specific proficiencies. The job board company sends applicants an email with a link to an online skills test after they apply, and gives the applicants a window in which they must complete the test. This structures it in a way that doesn’t allow them to go and “cram” to pretend they have the skills.
A more low-tech solution to this issue can be delivered by asking situational questions during a job interview.
“If you were doing X and Y problem occurred, what would be your first step? How would you solve the problem?”
This approach may also allow you to see firsthand how well the candidate deals with problems in real time, and understand their pathways to finding solutions. This is a good way to allow some visibility into how candidates think on their feet and respond to problems in real time.
While the hiring process should be conducted in as timely of a manner as possible, it should not be rushed in order to fill a seat. On the one hand, any competitive top talent has likely applied to multiple positions, and you don’t want your process to be so slow that you lose the best to your competitors who may be more agile.
On the other hand, rushing the hiring process may lead to hiring the wrong people, personality types, or missing something that leads to hiring someone who looked great on paper but was the wrong choice in practice. Some companies will have candidates meet with multiple people within the company on the same day as part of their hiring process.
Financial expert Dave Ramsey suggests that employers meet the spouse or significant other of candidates during the interview process when and if possible. While most only know Ramsey as the “pay down your debt” guy, his company Ramsey Solutions is headquartered on 47 acres of land in Tennessee with a 150,000-square-foot office building and employs nearly 600 people, so he can claim to know a thing or two about hiring.
This can be especially prudent when making hiring decisions for managers or executives but may be difficult when hiring younger workers who may not be focused on marriage or family quite yet. This can be a great way to discover several important aspects of your candidate beyond what a resume or work experience can tell you.
Pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s was replete with the phrase, “It’s not personal, it’s just business,” but that take on where we spend our time hasn’t held up in this generation. In reality, any time that an employee spends at work or even doing work at home is time they aren’t with or focused on their family - so it is extremely personal for some.
The US military has a phrase that is strongly drilled into the heads of its Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs), the backbone of the military that deals with most of the personnel issues: “If mamma isn’t happy, Joe isn’t happy.” This is why the military puts so much focus on the Family Readiness Groups (FRG) in many units, to ensure that the family life is secure and has enough support so that the soldier can focus on their job when needed.
Meeting the significant other or spouse of your candidates can help you understand a lot about the level of support they have or offer at home. This can be directly correlated to whether they will be able to focus while at work. It may even tell you more about how well they will fit into your team dynamic than interviews with the candidate alone could.
A resume only gives bullet points and a basic background of someone’s education and experience. By using the tips outlined in this article, employers can look beyond the resume to find the best candidate for their needs.
