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Part II of III

By Michael A. Holzschu

Everyone is looking for ways to pre qualify applicants before they actually setup an interview. There are all kinds of methods from manually reviewing applications to machine input and scoring of interviews to screen out unqualified applicants for the position. For most small to medium size companies, it is advisable for one person to do the initial screening of the applications and normally this is not the immediate supervisor of the position being interviewed for. Why you may ask? The immediate supervisor only has one concern, the position open in his/her immediate area. This leads to needless waste of money in advertising because the only focus is the immediate position. Accepting applications is to establish an applicant base that can be used to fill many positions in the company that may come open in the future. Secondly, the process of reviewing resumes and applications should be to make one determination only; could this person possibly do the job? Or could this person be a candidate for another position? Or is the person probably not qualified for any position in the company? Using this approach to qualifying applicants for the position is an absolute must. Your use of this set of steps will have far reaching effects on the selection process for your company. Your primary objective is filling the position that is open but you also have a group of candidates that quite possibly could fill future opening. Turn over in your staff is inevitable and broadening your methods of selection to this concept will save you time in the future.

Resume and Application Review:

The area of applications or resumes, is one of the aspects of qualifying candidates that is least looked at. Not that the resume is going to give you a lot of specific information about the candidate but it will provide some ideas as to their background, work habits, corporate cultural ideas and work environments. We each have knowledge of how our competitors run there business. If, for example, the company that the applicant is working for is a definite top down management style and little room is allowed for feedback or individual opinion about the projects and your company is team oriented; there may be some adjustment problems for the applicant. This should become an area explored in the interview. If your organization has moved to the Total Quality Management concepts and you have a career military person apply for a job, what do you think the results might be? Not that the person can't fit into the organization, just that you should be concerned about the possible fit problem. That is what the interview is about --- "How will and can the person fail in our Company". Most interviewers interview for success. You can find all of the success you want in the resume and during the interview. No applicant is ever going to tell you willingly about the negative failure aspects of their performance.

Let's go to the interview itself. Just what is an interview? We can define an interview as a meeting between two individuals, one of whom works for the company and one who is considering working for the company. The purpose of the interview is for both individuals to gather information about the other, so that an educated decision can be made about the possibility of having the applicant become a part of the company. Let's delve into this process. From getting people to apply for the job, to hiring an individual for the position that is open.

Hopefully, you are now being besieged by candidates. Depending upon your ad, the phone is ringing off the hook, you have a line of people waiting to fill out applications or the mail carrier is dropping off sacks of resumes. Where do you go from here? If you have had the individuals call and leave their names, you can start with a phone screen. If they have filled out applications or sent resumes you still have the choice of doing a phone screen before you do a regular interview. Time is the key element involved here.

Let's say you have 20 applicants for one position. If you just start to schedule interviews you are committing yourself to at least 20 hours of interviews. This is the minimum time involved. This includes the time that people are late, don't show, and the time between interviews. Plus you can not always fill each time on your schedule sheet perfectly and you have to call the individual to set up an interview any way. It becomes easy to see that you will have spent at least one and one-half hours of time on each candidate for a total of 30 hours by the time the interviews are completed.

Do you have that much time to devote to the interview process? Especially knowing that out of these twenty candidates that you may only find five or six? Or maybe none?

As a Branch Manager for a company in Chicago, I was faced with needing 15 new sales reps yesterday if not sooner. We placed ads in the local daily asking people to call a certain number if interested. At that point their name, phone number and the best time to call back were recorded. We had 200 people respond to the ad in three days. By Friday of that week, one other person and myself had returned all 200 calls and used a phone screen to eliminate those people that were not candidates from our perspective. From the original 200 people that had responded, we found 40 that had the basic qualifications that we needed. Interviews were set and the 15 positions were filled. Twelve of the fifteen people made it through the training and probationary period of twelve weeks. After 5 weeks on the job, the office had returned to meeting its sales goals.

Returning to our original twenty person example above, with the use of a Phone Screen you can reduce the time significantly. A typical phone screen takes about ten minutes, normally you can get five done in one hour. From the phone screen, you might find that five out of the twenty are candidates you want to talk to in an interview situation. Figuring four hours to do the phone screen and seven and one-half hours to interview the five candidates, your total time investment is now only twelve and one-half hours.

Much better than the original estimate of thirty hours!

PHONE SCREEN

With the form in front of you, the first few lines are self explanatory. Name, address, phone, position applied for, and date of call should all be filled out prior to making any "Phone Screen" calls. Be sure the call begins with identifying who you are and why you are calling. This is to put the person on the other end at ease since you have never talked to them before. Ask them if they are familiar with your company, as this can save you time if they are. If not, then you should have a prepared statement about what your company does and who your customer is. This should be done in one or two sentences only. Anything longer and the applicants attention will start waning.

The next sample statement or a similar statement should be used to set the rules for the phone interview.

"The reason for my call is for each of us to find out about the other and when we have finished that portion of the call, for each of us to decide if there is mutual interest to continue into the interview process. Is that OK with you?"

This statement sets the rules for the interview by phone. You have told the candidate what is going to happen and what the final outcome will be. Also you want to let them know that they must also make a decision at the conclusion of the "Phone Screen". It is in their best interest to pay attention to the questions being asked, and to ask those questions that they feel are important to them.

With the start of the questions, you want to find out how many of the required skills the individual has. You might also be able to determine if the applicant has any of the preferred skills. So your actual questions may vary from what is in the sample "Phone Screen". In some cases you may have specific equipment the candidate must run, or specific educational background that is necessary to perform the job. Designing the "Phone Screen" is quite easy when you have a good Position Statement to work from.

Taking all of this into account, you do not want your phone screen to become the interview itself. Your objective here is to gather enough information to make a decision as to whether the candidate is a viable one. Is this someone you want to talk to further? Does this person meet the criteria for the position? If the answers are yes, than it is time to schedule an interview. You will find a sample interview scheduling sheet in the Appendix of Sample Forms, at the end of this chapter and on the enclosed disk.

With the passage of the "Americans With Disability Act of 1990", you can not discriminate against anyone with a physical or mental disability if they meet the qualifications for the position. Under this law if the handicapped individual is the best qualified and you do not hire them because of their handicap, you are practicing discrimination and are open to a major lawsuit.

Now you are ready for the big day-Face to Face interviews.

PHYSICAL SETUP FOR THE INTERVIEW

Hopefully, you have filled the interview schedule sheet with prospective candidates for the opening that you have. It is time to run down a pre-interview checklist of things that you will need or should all ready have set up. The following list will make it easier for you to conduct the interview, without having to constantly search for material or information.

PHYSICAL ARRANGEMENT-Is the room set up for the interview: chairs arranged, lighting correct, phone messages being taken, desk cleaned, office cleaned, temperature set, etc.

HANDOUTS AND MATERIAL-What material do you have for the candidate to read before the interview, that you will be giving to them during the interview, and what

material can they take with them. Enough copies for each interview scheduled Copies of Position Statements and Performance Appraisals should be available.

RECEPTIONIST-Does this person have a schedule of who is coming in for an interview? Is this the time that the applicant is going to fill out an application?

INTERVIEW GUIDE-Do you have a copy ready for each applicant? (this is discussed in the following material)

SCHEDULE SHEET-Do you have a schedule sheet set up to schedule second interviews?

DELEGATION-Who is going to handle the crisis that always seem to happen during interviews, meetings, etc.

Some of these items may seem unimportant, be assured that all of these items are very important and necessary. The setting that you create for the interview, sets the tone for all future communications with the applicant whether they become an employee or not. Individuals that do not go to work for the company will remember a positive interview and quite often will tell other people about the positive experience that they had. The end result, is that you will have people inquiring about your firm on a regular basis. This will provide you with a potential list of candidates for the future, provided that you take the time to get some of the basic information for your files. Your applicant may even surface as an end user of your product or service. The interview is a form of advertising, and should be open and honest. Let's review our original list of the most common mistakes made in the interview process.

• The ground rules for the interview are not clearly understood by the candidate, consequently at the conclusion of the interview no decision is reached.
• The expectations of performance and the guidelines for firing are not discussed.
• The interviewer paints an overly rosy picture of the position and the company.
• The interviewer doesn't allow enough time for the interview.
• How the individual will compliment the members of the existing staff are not taken into account.
• The interviewer doesn't consider the individual and consequently is not conducted on a personal basis.
• Much of the time, the interview is conducted out of immediate need and the real candidate is never interviewed.

OK-LET'S NOT MAKE THESE MISTAKES!

It is time to meet your first candidate now breathlessly waiting in your lobby to meet you. How do they get to your office? Are you going out to get them, or is your receptionist bringing them to you? This depends upon how personal you want to be.

Part III will deal with the actual interview itself. Tips, techniques and areas that can be questioned in an interview. Plus subject areas that you can not ask about in an interview.

Michael A. Holzschu is a principal in the firm of Holzschu, Jordan Schiff & Associates, specializing in human resource issues such as employee handbooks, job descriptions, appraisal formats, training programs and quality programs. He can be reached at 248-476-6907 or by email at mholzschu@hjsa.com or visit the company website at hjsa.com.

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