Overwhelmed by Applicants

Count yourself lucky if you plan to hire in this economy. But, with thousands of Americans looking for jobs, you may soon be inundated with applications. And that can be a double-edged sword for a busy business owner.

“On one side you’ll have lots of good candidates to choose from,” says Marni Hockenberg, principal of Hockenberg Search, a hiring agency based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. “But on the other side, it takes a lot of work to find the best one for your company.”

Posting a job listing, reviewing resumes, and conducting interviews all take time and divert your attention from other important tasks. But speeding up the process can result in hiring mistakes, Hockenberg says, and that can cost you thousands of dollars.

Hire the right person for your company and avoid costly blunders with Hockenberg’s expert advice.

Set hiring criteria. Before you add someone to your team, decide on a list of qualifications the new hire must meet. “When you build a house, you need a blueprint,” Hockenberg says. “The same goes for hiring: If you don’t know exactly what you want, you won’t get it.”

Hockenberg suggests starting your list with specific skills the new employee will need, such as math skills, technology know-how or creative abilities. From there, decide how much industry experience or educational background is necessary and which personality traits will best fit the culture of your company.

Once you’ve decided criteria, run it by everyone involved in the hiring process. “You’ll need everyone in agreement before you move forward,” Hockenberg says. “If someone plans to go down a different path with the new employee, that could derail the entire hiring process.”

Carefully construct the job listing. You’ll attract the right job-seekers and weed out the wrong ones by spending time upfront writing a compelling job listing.

Hockenberg suggests thinking of your ad as a marketing piece that’ll sell the position to an applicant. At the beginning of the ad, include information about what’s in it for the candidate. “What growth opportunities are there? What incentives are available?” she says. Then list your top five hiring criteria so candidates can see for themselves if they qualify. Follow that with a few interesting facts about your company and a link to your website for more information.

Use your hiring criteria to narrow the field. On your first sweep through resumes, compare the applicant to your top five hiring criteria. If there’s not a match, set that resume aside. Continue moving farther down your list of criteria with each round of resume reviews.

When you’ve slimmed your pile, you can start conducting phone screenings. “These shouldn’t take longer than 20 minutes each,” Hockenberg says. She uses the phone interviews to ask one of the most important hiring questions: What are your salary and compensation expectations? “If there’s not a match, there’s no sense in continuing,” she says.

Some employers like to include the salary in an ad to help screen and thin out the number of potential applicants. Others prefer to discuss pay only in face-to-face interviews with the most serious of candidates.

During the phone screening, Hockenberg also tries to determine what the candidate is looking for in a position and get an idea of his or her personality. By again comparing that information to the hiring criteria, she selects candidates for in-person interviews.

Also, experts warn against ignoring unemployed candidates as less desirable than employed applicants. In this economy, many highly skilled workers have been laid off through no fault of their own.

Avoid hiring on likeability alone. “A candidate will come in and the employer will feel a personal connection with him,” Hockenberg says. But that doesn’t matter if the person’s skills and experience don’t match the hiring criteria.

Try asking everyone the same questions in an in-person interview. “This makes it easy to compare apples to apples,” Hockenberg says. And keep a list of your hiring criteria in front of you, placing a checkmark by each qualification the interviewee meets.

When you’ve completed the interviews, look for the applicant with the most checkmarks. “If he matches your qualifications and you get along well with him, then he should be your top priority,” Hockenberg says.

Use an expert. Consider how much time you have to give to the hiring process. If you can’t devote substantial attention to hiring a new employee, you may be better off outsourcing the entire hiring process to a personnel agency. Often, it’s more cost effective for an occupied business owner.

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