How do you evaluate a candidate during recruitment?

You need to recruit a new employee to grow your team and your production, but you don't know how to go about it. It can be stressful and time-consuming. At Marvin Recruiterwe want to make recruiting simple and efficient!

In this article, we will decipher how qualify and evaluate a candidate during your recruitment process, from the interview to the selection. It will be a question of detaching oneself from the classic CV and cover letter in order to better define your candidate and to avoid recruitment errors.to avoid recruitment errors.

The bottom line:

• Every good candidate qualification starts with a clear and detailed job description.
• In order toevaluate your candidate'smotivation, study his or her non-verbal communication and involvement during situational exercises.
• To assess your candidate's technical skills , refer to an interview grid with the required skills and experience and do not hesitate to give them assessment tests. 

Qualifying a candidate begins before the interview

Recruiting can be time consum ing and may require you to put some tasks on hold while you find the right person.

Before embarking on a recruitment process, make sure you have a well thought-out strategy to limit wasted time and unnecessary interviews . Such a strategy is decided and implemented well in advance.

It is based on a real assessment of the recruitment need, the creation of a clear and detailed job description and the development of a precise recruitment process that will allow you to screen your potential candidates and keep only the best ones at each stage.

The need assessment allows you to justify recruiting for a specific division and for specific tasks. It allows you to evaluate the loss of earnings if you do not recruit a person for a given position. You can then identify the missions to be delegated and the expertise you are looking for.

From this exploration and validation phase will come the drafts of a job description and the desired seniority level. You must not be satisfied with this. 

In order to filter your candidates as well as possible before the interviews, write a clear and detailed job description of the missions to be filled and the profile sought. This will avoid wasting time with profiles and talents that do not correspond to your research.

In this job description, show:

• the usefulness of the position
• its status (ETAM, executive...)
• its position in the organization chart
• working conditions
• presentation of the company
• missions and responsibilities
• presentation of the team
• the technical and human skills required
• the counterparts

In this regard, don't hesitate to compare your job description with those of similar companies.

Finally, concerning the recruitment process itself, it will be necessary to define your guidelines: how you will recruit (headhunting firm, free/spontaneous applications, publication in the "careers" section of your website...) and what characteristics you will test at each stage of the process... 

Qualify your candidates even before the first interview

In order to optimize your recruitments, the first steps are crucial. Indeed, having a qualitative and quantitative batch of candidates is the cornerstone of an efficient recruitment process. A well done sourcing is a recruitment already half done.

To do this, there are quick and easy tips that can be implemented. It is important to know that candidate hunting can take up to 50% of your time. In order to make this time as profitable as possible, you can rely on three recognized practices: 

• Source your candidates efficiently with Boolean search. This allows you to select only the profiles that really correspond to your recruitment needs. As such, Marvin allows you to fill your candidate pool automatically in one click.
• Initial candidate matching with an ATS like Marvin Recruiter. Capitalizing on your candidate database is a monumental time-saver. And if your database is clean and of the highest quality, it's all the more profitable. Marvin's advanced search enables you to find qualified candidates in just a few clicks.
• Establish pre-interview recruitment tests. Personality tests, psychometric tests and skills tests allow you to assess the precise skills and expertise levels of your candidates. These assessments allow you to automatically sort out the potential candidates you want to recruit or not. According to an Apec study, 31% of recruiters in all sectors use this type of simulation.

At this point, here are three questions you can ask yourself: 

1. What are my minimum requirements for a recruit to be considered potentially acceptable? 
2. What are the skills and qualities that would elevate an acceptable recruit to the level of excellent employee?
3.  What are the signs or "red flags" that would make a candidate not a good fit for the position or the company and how can you spot them before an interview?

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Assessing your qualified candidates step by step

Once a limited number of candidates have been selected, the next step is to assess their second-level professional skills and people skills.

In order to optimize all your interviews and to obtain a good balance between time management and completeness of information, use an interview grid. An interview grid is a framework that lists all the professional skills and information required for a specific position.

At a glance, you can tell whether or not a profile is suitable for a given position. The interview grid is the guideline for the analysis of your candidates throughout your exchanges.

The interview grid allows you to better structure your exchanges in order to be more efficient and to target the important points and to communicate more easily with your collaborators.

Before going into detail, make sure you have built your interview grid. To do so, synchronize with your collaborators on the expectations and needs related to the position, on the scoring system and on the interview grid, depending on the position. 

An interview grid is not fixed, it must be adapted to each type of position. 

Personality interviews 

During this stage, the aim is to ensure that the potential candidate is in line with the company's culture and the values shared by the team. Take advantage of these interviews to get to know the candidate better and deepen his or her human qualities.

These"soft skills" are just as important as they contribute to the success of the missions and to the good distribution of information within the team according to a study conducted by Zety. In this respect, platforms exist such as Central test, Innermetrix, Performanse or PAPI.

You may also want to ask your candidate about the following:

1. Describe a time when he/she demonstrated cooperation and conflict management
2. How does he/she behave when faced with a radical change (change of office, change of manager, change of tool...)
3. What is its greatest strength?

The aim is to evaluate the ability to communicate, manage emotions, make decisions and adapt. 

The so-called "technical" interviews

Technical interviews are used to ensure that the candidate is truly qualified for the position. It is a question of testing the technical skills required for the defined missions. 

At this stage, prefer a candidate who knows his or her strengths and weaknesses and who is not afraid to be honest about not mastering a skill, rather than a smooth talker who will only talk about his or her qualities.

Depending on the position, you may conduct application exercises (technical tests), case studies or real-life simulations to test a candidate's abilities.

At this stage, here are three questions you can ask yourself:

• Does the candidate have any skill gaps? If so, is this due to the stress of the interview or a lack of knowledge? Could this gap be filled by training?
• Did the candidate prove the skills and work experience listed on their resume?
• Is he/she able toanalyze the problemquickly and independently and give a clear and concise answer?

At this stage, analytical, technical and project management skills are particularly analyzed.  

Team Interviews

Finally, one of the last major categories of interviews is the on-site meeting with the teams. At this stage, you are usually already reassured about the technical and human skills of your potential recruits.

Be careful here. It is certainly important to recruit a person with values in line with those of your current employees, but you should not homogenize and smooth out your team. Encourage diversity of opinions, backgrounds and interests within your team.

You can check these points by asking yourself questions like:

1. What value will he or she bring to the team?
2. How does she collaborate with her colleagues?
3. What would his former supervisor say about the way he works and collaborates?

It is a question of estimating the candidate's ability to integrate into your company and to get along with the rest of the team. 

Make sure your candidate is motivated

Throughout your recruitment process, it is important to keep in mind the evaluation of your candidate's motivation.

In this respect, non-verbal communication is your ally. It includes all behaviors, gestures and postures during your exchanges. It can be quite simple to identify a lack of motivation or on the contrary a strong motivation.

To do this, you can ask yourself the following questions:

1. Does the person look you in the eye when speaking to you?
2. Does your candidate have an active attitude (upright posture, leaning forward, taking notes...)?
3. What motivates you to apply for our recruitment offer? (why change position, what motivates him/her on a daily basis, his/her main objective...)

This last step minimizes the risk of poor hiring and high turnover. Indeed, motivation is a key factor in the overall success of your team and your company.

Conclusion

You now have all the keys in hand to qualify and evaluate your candidates during all stages of the recruitment process. In order to keep a lasting and collaborative record of your exchanges, don't forget to fill in your interview grid and to assign scores to your exchanges and the skills tested. 

If you want to better capitalize on and evaluate your candidates, come and discover the software Marvin Recruiter. Our aim is to divide your sourcing time by 2!