1. Ask the right interview questions: You want to ask about experience, but you also want to make sure that you’re asking about the candidate themselves. Questions that reveal their values and personalities are important. Ask what’s important to them outside of work. Ask about how they’d react in certain scenarios involving common employee pitfalls like time management, deadlines, interpersonal team relationships, management, and more.
2. Reference the resume: If you want to make sure that someone is who they say they are, ask them questions from their resume. If they listed that they grew an accounting business by 200%, ask them what strategy and steps they took to do that. You want to make sure their story lines up with the facts they’ve given you.
3. Call references: Doing your due diligence is always smart. Asking for professional and personal references from every candidate – and actually following up with them over phone or email – can be another step in an already lengthy hiring process, but it can reveal potential problems along the way and is a worthwhile way of evaluating your recruit.
4. Do a background check: Not every business can or should do this, but many businesses find reasons they shouldn’t hire a candidate by using a 3^rd party to conduct a background check on an employee before officially hiring them. You may have a genius programming candidate who was also convicted of stealing from their first job, which they didn’t list on their resume. Background checks are becoming a more common way to give your hiring managers peace of mind.

Need help finding the right talent?

Finding the right candidates for your business is key to your success. We can help you vet the candidates interested in your open position and make sure you get matched with top talent every time. Call our staffing experts at Open Systems Inc today.

The post Looking Behind the Mask: How to Truly Evaluate Technical Professionals appeared first on Open Systems Inc..

Yes! Reference Checks Are Important.

As the one, last final step before presenting a job offer to a candidate, checking references shouldn’t be overlooked.

References checks offer additional insights about the candidate, other than what is discussed at the interview. This is an opportunity to corroborate prior responses, verify roles,  learn how they worked with others, and understand their career goals.

4 Things You can Learn from a Reference Check:

Corroborate  Prior Responses – It’s an unfortunate truth that people exaggerate and mislead during the interview process. During a reference check, now is the time to verify the candidate’s prior responses, such as a role as project leader, accomplishments, and questions on supervision.

Verify Roles  – This seems like common sense, but at Open Systems we have found that verifying job titles, responsibilities, and dates of employment is best done with a triple-check methodology.

✓ Check the resume, confirm with the candidate
✓ Check social media profiles
✓ Check with references

How they Worked with Others – Perspective matters when considering how the candidates works with others. The candidate will tell you how they got along with others. It is in your company’s best interest to ask the candidates manager and direct reports how they interacted with the candidate.

What are their career goals – Candidates have the answer to this question practiced to perfection. But when you ask a former colleague or supervisor this question about a candidate it’s not expected and you can find out if the candidate may be a short hire, instead of a long-term investment.

The Best Way to Conduct Reference Checks

If your company is waiting until just before the final offer to conduct a reference check, you are too late. If the candidate’s social profile or references have variations from the interview process you could be back at square one. Reference checks, social profile verification, skill verification and salary alignment need to occur prior to in-person interviews to ensure you have a quality candidate.

Moving Forward

Working with Open Systems for your professional recruitment needs will streamline your recruiting process, and save you time and money by ensuring only candidates with the skills and approved salary range are being considered. Let’s talk about how Open Systems can streamline your hiring process today.

The post 4 Important Things You Can Learn From Reference Checks, and the Best Way to Conduct Them. appeared first on Open Systems Inc..