Too Many Qualified Candidates? Here Is How To Find The Right One
If you’re lucky enough to have multiple qualified candidates apply for your open job, you may think you’ve hit the jackpot - however, even at this 11th hour you need to carefully consider which figure on this shortlist will fit the bill.
Although you may see yourself looking at your candidate bank thinking “any of them would be a good hire”, you need to critically re-address your entire recruitment strategy, and make sure whatever offer you put in place is worthwhile, competitive and impossible to refuse - because you can be assured every quality candidate will be inundated with offers, will be in work (and subject to counteroffers) and may be using you as leverage for a better deal elsewhere. It may sound cynical, and it may sound paranoid, but you have to prepare for every eventuality.
As we’ve mentioned in other blogs, your communicative efforts with candidates pre- and post-interview are vital to engaging candidates throughout the recruitment process, and how you extend your employer brand beyond linear recruitment channels.
You need to lead with empathy, set realistic and achievable expectations and recruit with integrity - but when confronted with a selection of fantastic candidates it is tempting to put strategy aside and simply offer them all a job offer and see who comes back first.
We urge you, implore you, to not do this - if anything, you need to stick to your strategy more diligently. If your inbox is full of quality, they deserve a quality recruitment service.
You need to physicalize this by adapting your applicant management to take stock of the increase in candidate quality. This means adjusting everything from interview processes to communicative frequency and analysis to make sure whatever offer you do put in front of your chosen candidate has been done from a position of diligence and respect and, probably most importantly of all, the candidates you reject leave feeling respected, valued and encouraged to advocate for you.
Your network is smaller than you think and having numerous skilled candidates leave your recruitment process dissatisfied, disrespected and undervalued is incredibly damaging for your brand and your workforce.
But, there are ways to manage this! Here are our top 5 quality candidate management tactics to employ in the instance you’re stacked with great candidates.
Interview and interview (but don’t do too many)
It's easy to interview your quality candidates to death in an effort to whittle your applicants down, but doing so risks alienating all of them. The optimum number of interviews is 2-3, including skills tests.
Going over this shows your candidate you either don’t know what you’re looking for or your time wasting trying to see who quits first. Even if neither is true and you’re genuinely unsure of who you want to hire, can you afford to repeatedly ask your candidates to upend their lives to meet your schedule?
Analyze their working culture
Take extra care to analyze your applicant’s working culture and value proposition. If you have a selection of talent with similar skill sets, the difference for you will lie in how they match, value, and add to your working culture.
In a post-COVID world, how this manifests is objectively worlds apart from what made a “culture fit” in 2019 - this means analyzing how your candidates adapt and excel within hybrid working setups; how they motivate and build teams remotely; what they value now from an in-office presence; and how this position drives them on to advance their career.
You can afford to be specific, more specific, with a cultural assessment if you know your applicant base meets all the requirements of the role.
Discuss (candidly) why they want to work for you
We don’t encourage you to be combative, but a skilled candidate in any sector doesn’t seek a new career path for no reason - again, you can afford to be more specific in regards to understanding the motives for wanting to change employers.
From this information, you can make an accurate judgment on whether they would make a good fit for your company and you can predict whether or not this candidate will be subject to a counteroffer (and interested in accepting it).
For example: if a candidate is moving jobs because they were overlooked for a promotion, there could be elements of envy, frustration, and disappointment that are feeding their motive - but they may not be truly unhappy. A counteroffer could and probably will turn their head. On the other hand, if your candidate admits they have achieved everything they wanted in the role and are mapping their next career move and progression, you may feel more confident they’re moving for the right reasons.
Do some digging
By this, we mean to take extra care to seek accurate references and double-check your applicant credentials. If a candidate looks too good to be true, they probably are.
This is where social media makes all the difference - from LinkedIn to Instagram, you should use the public channels available to you to find out as much as possible about your candidate and encourage them to elaborate on inconsistencies or outright elaborations during your interview process. Everyone lies during their interview process, and you can afford to be detail-oriented with the best in class!
De-strata your interview process and involve your team
If you’re fortunate enough to have a shortlist of fantastic talent at decision-making time, we urge you to decentralize your applicant assessment and look to your wider team for input.
From a wider subjective viewpoint to group analysis, you’ll find the assessment process more equitable and, more importantly, you’ll involve co-workers in finding common ground in what you need. This not only adds valued and trusted opinions into the decision-making mix, but it also shows you trust your team. Not only is this incredibly positive for morale, but your team is also prepared for their new team member ahead of time.
Find a partner
Save time and money when you partner with a trusted recruiter, like Sloane Staffing. Our team will help weed through candidates, ensuring ha only the best of the best make it to the final stages of the process. Get in touch to learn more.
