Hiring Needs Objectivity (II) – Phone Screens

You’ve reviewed a few resumes and made some notes, picked a few good candidates, and cleared the decks for ample time to talk with a quiet place to concentrate and be an effective communicator. Now it’s time to get this person on the phone.

OMG! What the heck is going to happen?! What to expect? How to be sure this effort is going to be effective and not waste time – for you and the candidate? And as the first person to make contact with these candidates, are you reasonably confident that you can recognize, record, and rank the “best of the best” during the phone screening process?

The most important thing to remember is that each phone screen is your opportunity to confirm that a candidate possesses the key attributes you discovered during the resume review process. Hopefully you have been able to develop a list of the most important attributes this new person will need to perform their tasks. For the sake of discussion, without getting career-specific, let me propose the most likely top ten key attributes related to team work that are required for any team to be successful:

• Promoting
• Collaborating
• Innovating
• Producing
• Leading
• Organizing
• Mentoring
• Inspecting
• Correcting
• Maintaining

These are in addition to, and sometimes more important than, any career-specific attributes required to get the job done.

It is unrealistic to expect any candidate possesses all ten wrapped up with a pretty bow. However, for a team to be successful, each one of these attributes must be present – regardless of the tasks needing to be accomplished. And more importantly, none of these attributes are specific to any one career field, such as software engineering or genetic research. These key attributes are important in sales, marketing, support, shipping, or field work.

When people are working together toward a common goal, these attributes are important. Sometimes, depending on the project or task at hand, only a few are being utilized at any one time. Your job prior to the phone screening process is to assess whether or not all ten are present in your current team. If not, ensure that the gap can be filled immediately by the candidate under review. And you need to stay on point and focused during the phone screen to successfully fill the gap – or worse, gaps!

But, how many times during a phone screen do you find yourself … wandering off … discussing more pleasant subjects not at all germane to your primary objective: fill that attribute gap? Countless tools provide an opportunity to guide the phone screener using questions tailored for a specific career or technology choice. However, very few are targeting these ten key attributes we have listed above. Well, except in the case where you are spending tons of cash and lots of time making the tool you bought work the way you want! Shouldn’t this just work outta the box?!

The tool you use may provide feedback on our list of attributes, and maybe even more than these ten, yet how laborious was it to get through the whole questionnaire? Do you sense any immediate benefit once you’ve completed the phone screen? Do you have to build the questionnaire content yourself to ensure you stay on track and on message? Wouldn’t it be nice if the tool you used to review someone’s resume proceeded directly to the phone screening process? Wouldn’t it be nice if the tool kept it simple, objective, high level (with just enough specificity), and provided clear transitions between candidate workflow check points – all the while supporting accountability?

I keep tellin’ ya, stay with me here, Staff IT Right© really does know your pain …