To keep your staffing business going strong, you need to find the best possible members of two groups: clients and candidates. Clients, you often have to track down, but candidates tend to come to you, especially in these high-unemployment times. But how do you find the strongest candidates?
This is the fourth post in a seven-part series over the next few weeks sharing tips for finding the diamonds in the rough of your waiting rooms.
While employment history is often the focus of candidate reviews, skills are just as important—if not more so. As Dan Hedaya pointed out in Joe Vs. The Volcano, “I know he can get the job, but can he do the job?” A good resume will help a candidate get a job, but only skills will help them do the job.
And while employment histories can be fudged, skills can’t. So having a good skills testing program will help ensure you keep your candidate quality high and improve the consistency of the candidates you present to clients.
Of course, the skills required for each job can be as varied as the jobs themselves. Work with your clients to develop a hierarchy of skills (critical, important, optional) and set required levels of proficiency before you start reviewing candidates.
A lot of skills testing can be done online, but whenever possible, we advise having it done on your premises to ensure that the candidate isn’t getting any outside help. Even clicking a box that says “I swear I haven’t received any outside help” won’t deter someone who really, really wants a job.
How do you test for skills? Some skills testing services offer more than 1,000 different skills assessments; if your company uses these services, how many of the assessments do you use? Let us know in the comments!