How to Make the Hiring Process Work for You

How to Make the Hiring Process Work for You

Knowledge can be a powerful, but applied knowledge is insurmountably more effective. So for job seekers looking for their next career opportunity, it's not just about understanding what happens during the job application process. Rather, it is about understanding the "why" and the "how" of background screening and assessment tools to use these procedures to maximize the possibility of a favorable outcome.

The first step is to understand the differences between background screening and pre-employment assessments because, surprise, they’re not the same thing!

Pre-employment assessments typically occur early on in the hiring process to act as filters for candidates who clearly would not function well in the available position or within the overall company culture.  Studies have shown that a multi-dimensional view of a candidate is most effective for appropriately predicting candidate success.  As such, pre-employment assessments seek a variety of information including whether or not the candidate has the necessary skills, if their personality and behavior indicates that they will actually do the job, and how successful they have been in the past. For example when looking for social media marketing jobs London competition can be fierce.

Consequently, the most important candidate act during the hiring process is to be honest and truthful.  Candidates can be sure that any skeletons in their closet will make their way out. But prospective employers are much more receptive to hearing a candidate’s side of the story if they haven’t had to find out about such circumstances on their own. Being open and candid from the get go is the best way to ensure a successful outcome for both parties.Remember that these tools are smart. Do not try to “game” the system by providing answers that only seem like what the company wants to hear.  Modern pre-employment assessment tests have been scientifically developed to detect such falsities and, consequently, doing so will often hurt the candidate more than if they’d answered honestly.

Background screening, on the other hand, refers to background and reference checking and is usually found near the end of the selection process – often as contingencies to an employment offer. Both tools are used to determine the validity of the information candidates have supplied about themselves.  Likewise, employers want to be certain that they aren’t just hiring productive candidates, but individuals who comply with ethical and moral standards.

Similarly, the references that a candidate supplies should be carefully considered.  If a reference fails to acknowledge any candidate shortcomings or areas for future development, employers will likely disregarded the reference altogether. Unfortunately, this can reflect poorly on the candidate.

Finally, don’t forget that the hiring process should act as a two-way street! The candidate is not the only one being interviewed. Candidates should use the screening process to determine if the firm is an appropriate fit for them.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

4 Recruiting Tips for Startups

4 Recruiting Tips for Startups

Starting a company and raising it to the levels where it can be recognized by others and compete effectively with similar companies is not an easy task. However,applying the right recruiting tips and hiring the right staff makes this easier to achieve.If you have a startup company, then the four 4 cool recruiting tips listed below will help you get the right staff for your new company.

1. Schedule the Interview Yourself

If you have a job vacancy in your startup company, many candidates are likely to show interest by applying for the post, either directly or through a recruiter. However, receiving a message or resume directly from the candidate or from a recruiter (for an interested candidate) is not a guarantee that they are going to follow-up. Instead, you have to take up the follow-up initiative.Schedule time to have a conversation with the candidate. When you are scheduling for this meeting, ensure that the time you select is appropriate for both you and the candidate, and, of course,inform the candidate of the scheduled time.This will help the candidate prepare effectively.

2. Pay Attention to Substance

Social media is one of the best ways you can get the right candidate for your company. For your company or business to grow, you need to increase its network, and social media networks have become effective tools in achieving this. However, Getting a candidate’s resume through social media networking alone is not enough. Take the time to see how the candidate is involved in the media and how active he/she is. Analyze the kind of discussions the candidate has and whether they are likely to be of great importance to your startup company. Remember that the social media tools alone are not valuable to your company; it is how these tools can be used to build and grow your company that matter most.

3. Choose the Best People First and Train Later

Startup businesses do not recruit people whom they are going to train;they prefer candidates who have the skills necessary to work for the company right away.It is therefore better to select ready-to-work candidates so that they can start delivering their services once they are employed. You can then train them later based on the specific requirements of your company.

4. Remember to Follow-up

Be sure to follow-up with a candidate once communication between you has started. You should never say anything that you do not mean. When you promise a candidate that you will get back to him/her in a week’s time, be sure to do so even if there is no advancement on the issue you discussed. Explain the situation as it is to the candidate so that he/she can decide what to do. Manage expectations; do not promise anything that is not feasible.

Hiring for a startup can be difficult. You donÕt have the luxury of picking bad candidates because your budget typically will not allow for waste. Use the above tips, be picky, and ensure your success.Do not keep the candidate expecting too much yet there is nothing being waited.



Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

5 Things to do After the Interview

5 Things to do After the Interview

Interview Over? There’s No Such Thing! Upon completing a nerve wracking interview for that dream job in Digital Design Jobs London, many applicants feel a huge weight lifted from their shoulders; they calm down, they relax and they stop sweating for the first time since the interview was arranged. However, what many hopefuls fail to realise is that the meeting, whether that be via telephone, video chat or face to face, is merely the beginning of the interview process.

How you as an applicant conducts yourself following the initial question and answer routine is almost as important as the interview itself. While first impressions are vital, they are not the be all and end all of decision making. Here are five ways a job seeker can continue to make a great impression on prospective employers even after the boardroom doors have closed.

1. Show Interest

Every hopeful who applies for a position should have a genuine interest in both the company and the role, so conveying this interest should not be too much of a stretch for the imagination.

Employers love to see that those they have shortlisted have a love for what they do, or what they hope to do. It confirms that they were right to select you. Don not leave the meeting without asking at least one question that makes the interviewer think, or without having a concrete idea of what is next. Will there be a second interview? When do they anticipate they will make a decision? When can you expect to hear from them? If the company uses social media, consider subscribing to their feeds and updates.

2. Follow Up With HR

Some people view this as neediness or “sucking up”, but dropping a quick line to the HR department need not be anything more than a confirmation of the next steps. If you have asked the vital questions at the end of your interview, you may wish to email (or write) to the employee who arranged your interview to confirm the interviewer has responses.

For example, send a short note that says you have been informed that the panel hope to come to a decision by Tuesday, and that you will be in touch in due course to see if there have been any developments. Of course, adding a thank you for their time and a line about how you are keen to work with them would not go amiss. Try not to contact your interviewer directly unless you have dealt with them exclusively.

3. Use Your Initiative

Throughout your interview you may have discussed some projects or coursework you have completed in the past, or solutions you have come up with for problems. You may also have chatted about existing issues within the company, or a project the teams are currently working on.

If you have any ideas at all that could benefit the company, make them known! Perhaps draw up a small plan or utilise other methods to get your thoughts down, and send them to your prospective employer with a note about how these ideas relate to discussions you had during your interview. It can be a great way to not only show what you are capable of, but also to demonstrate what you can contribute to the company if you were hired.

4. Initiate Contact

If your interviewer confirmed they should be informing applicants of the outcome on Tuesday, then there is absolutely no harm in giving the company a call on Tuesday afternoon to see what the current situation is.

While this shows you are still very keen on the role, it is important not to turn this into a form of harassment. If no decision has been made, keep your cool. Quite often, HR staff will get just as frustrated as you do when it comes to getting the board to make a decision; with busy schedules and differing opinions it can be like getting blood from a stone. Be polite and keep HR on your side. Confirm that you will call back in two days if you are not given a definitive answer.

5. Maintain a Good Relationship

If you are not chosen as the successful applicant on this occasion, do not cut off all ties with the company. In fact, make yourself a big presence. Get involved with any online discussions through social media, any workshops or events the company holds, or even suggest to your interviewer that you meet outside of the office to discuss feedback, thus creating a more social meeting.

Keeping in touch and showing how you can fit in can be very useful in opening doors and finding out about further opportunities within the company. Showing a maturity even after a rejection can have a very positive effect with employers.



Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

8 Useful Tips to Improve your CV

8 Useful Tips to Improve your CV 

A CV serves as an advertisement to market yourself in the job market. So, it needs to be developed in a very careful and professional way. A small mistake in this regard can get you in a lot of trouble. Here are some useful tips that can be used to make your CV an ideal one:

Consider a Broader Perspective

You should always remember that a potential employer who takes your CV at face value would merely be a fool. Make sure to keep your digital presence accurate, up to date and consistent with your CV. If you have a blog or website that you are actually proud of, mention it on the CV. If you have uploaded anything on a social media website that you would never want your potential employer to see, check and double check. Keep your privacy settings updated in order to avoid such risks. Google yourself and check what comes up.

Keep it Precise

Most of the potential employers only spend a few moments glancing over your CV, so it is better not to include too many things in it. It is ideal make it as precise as possible; one page is considered to be ideal in this regard.

Get All the Basics Right

Always list your experience in reverse order. Provide explanation for any gaps. Put all the dates in the same format. At a higher career level, you may not need to include all the beginning stuff like GCSE etc. Keep all the contact details accurate – employers often ask for references if they require them. Check your grammar and spellings and if you are not good at that, ask someone else to do it for you.

Prioritize the Achievements over Responsibilities

Don’t list a role unless it is likely to be very unfamiliar, there is no point in including something that relates to a job description in your CV. Instead, mention the things that you have achieved in terms of work quality, profitability and professional relationship. Mention your personal contribution instead of listing what the organization or team delivered.

Write a Personal Profile

Although, it is quite difficult to write a personal profile, but is also very effective at the same time. In order to make it work for you, avoid the clichés like “a team player who can work independently.” Also avoid the use of third person because it often sounds forced. If it is too uncomfortable for you, then just let your qualification and experience speak for themselves.

Try to Make Your Interests Interesting

If they don’t sound interesting, it’s better not to mention them. They would be interesting if they say something really important about your personality, are relevant to your potential employer, or are particularly memorable. Most people like going to cinema, eating out and travelling – not many people make their own clothes or play violin or trumpet.

 Think About its Appearance

Take some time to find the right typeface for your CV. Structure all the headings and sub headings in a well organized way. If you like any CV design, borrow it, or get a qualified designer to have a look at it – it’s a great investment. When you are done with all that save it as PDF in order to make sure that no one can change it in any way.

Seek Feedback

You should go through your CV with a critical eye (as a potential employer would), then ask some else to do the same for you.

Good Luck with your job hunting!


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

How to Hire the Right People Using These 3 Qualification Measures

How to Hire the Right People Using These 3 Qualification Measures

Google is a reputable employer, and receives millions of applications every year. Did you know that the firm’s recruiters only accept about a half of one percent of these applications? How do they do it? As a recruiter, you should know that it takes more than an impressive resume to qualify a job candidate for a position. This post discuses three qualification measures you should take to ensure that you land the right person for the job.

Be On the Lookout for Charmers

People have different personalities, and you should be able to categorize your candidates so that you can have a clear idea on how to handle them. The types of candidates you should be wary of are charmers. Charmers are candidates who exhibit excellent qualities on paper and have excellent communications skills. You know what you need for the position to be filled, the necessary qualifications and even experiences, but they will charm their ways into your hearts. You can even find yourself coming up with a non-existent position so that you do not leave them out of your firm.

To weed out charmers, don’t restrict your interview questions to simple yes and no answers. You should have several questions; including non-job related ones, which require deep and thoughtful answers from the candidates. By listening to and analyzing the answers, you will be able to identify charmers.

Craft a Good Job Advertisement

In general, job ads should be as thorough and as specific as possible especially with vacancies in education. However, you should be aware that a too specific advert can easily lock out some qualified candidates. Just ensure that your specifics are things that your applicants must have, for example, a pilot must have flight training. Though experience is good, what makes you think that the job description your candidate had in another firm was exactly like the position you are looking to fill? This kind of assumption can easily lock out qualified entry-level applicants who can easily be trained to do the job. After all, the ability to adapt to particular situations is more important than an experience of a specific number of years. Therefore, when questioning your candidates’ results, ensure you go a step further and inquire whether they gained something from their experiences. Don’t employ a candidate with an experience of ten years who seemed to have been sleeping through the period at the expense of another one with actionable results from an experience of 6 years.

Use Psychometric Testing

Psychometric testing (which involves tests for personality, motivation, educational  reasoning, abilities and even personality) is increasingly being used by many recruiters. Why do you think the adoption of Psychometric testing before candidate selection is rapidly gaining ground? This is because such tests have been proven to help find the best job candidates, is easy to use and does not cost that much amount of money. Did you know that only approximately 10% of your workforce is involved in most activities in your business? Using psychometric testing, you can ensure that this 10% is the best of the best. Don’t forgo this test if you wish to hire top performers for your company and enjoy increased productivity, which every recruiter desires.

There are other qualification measures you can adopt, but these are among the most important. Use them to hire only suitable candidates and reduce the time spent in hiring them.

Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

3 Ways How Your Company Training Program can Impact Your Recruiting Efforts

3 Ways How Your Company Training Program can Impact Your Recruiting Efforts

The internal training processes within each company tend to reflect the culture of the organization and offer numerous benefits to the hiring team, current workers, and potential employees. There are all sorts of useful training offerings including new employee training, continued programs for current staff, tuition reimbursement plans, and more.

Read on for three ways your company training program can positively effect your recruiting efforts and learn how to leverage these programs for the success of your business.

Hire the best job candidates

By offering training programs to incoming employees, applicants will rank your organization more highly in their search process. Providing on-the-job training and employee improvement opportunities can help you attract the best and the brightest. Candidates will view these programs as a benefit and you will likely see an increase in the number and quality of applications. This influx means the recruiting team has more options and can be more selective when it comes to the hiring process.

Transform employees into well-rounded members of your organization

For some companies, a new employee will stick out like a sore thumb. It takes time to learn the ropes and adapt to the culture of a new office. On-boarding programs for new employees can help ease that transition, and later, on-the-job training can help them better adjust to office norms. Additionally, various training programs can help existing employees learn skills outside their department to make them more useful to the company as a whole.

Retain current or new employees for a longer period of time

Training protocols can keep existing team members engaged and interested in the work, and help a company retain new hires for longer than they might otherwise. This can help an organization spend less on overhead. By offering enticing training programs, the hiring team can insource existing staff rather than spend time and money hiring externally. Look within your company, train up people to do jobs that would otherwise have been done by a new hire, and save thousands of dollars.

It can be tricky to attract top talent and keep them on board for years to come, but employees regularly acknowledge that when it comes to workplace satisfaction, they place a higher premium on things like flexibility, benefits, and the chance for advancement, than simply salary. Company training programs can have a significant impact on the number of applications you receive, the quality of the candidates, and the overall image of the business. Use this information to your advantage and offer engaging training within your organization to positively influence recruiting efforts.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

3 Tips for Finding Better Employees Through Your Company Blog

3 Tips for Finding Better Employees Through Your Company Blog

Company Blog

Many companies drum up a great deal of business using their blogs. While using your company blog in order to boost revenues and market share is a great way to do business in the internet era there are other ways to utilize your company’s blog. In addition to commerce you can also use your company blog to find suitable candidates to staff your company. This guide will give you 3 tips to help you find better employees through your company blog.

1. Create a page on your company blog specifically for potential job seekers

In order for potential recruits to even consider your company you must have a landing page that lists details related to potential jobs at your company. This landing page should be informative and easy to find and navigate. On this page you should list any available positions, what requirements you have for potential candidates that wish to apply at your company, and a method for the job seeker to contact you. The contact method can be by phone or email, or through the blog itself. This is the first step for finding awesome hires through your company blog.

2. Advertise your company blog on job websites like Craigslist and Monster.com

Potential employees must be able to find your company blog in order for you to effectively use it to find candidates for working at your company. In order to gain greater exposure for your company blog it is important that you post any relevant job listings on sites that job seekers frequent. Be sure to make the listings relevant to the categories on each site and make sure to post relevant information in each post like contact details, salary, requirements for the position, etc.

3. Use the right keywords on your blog to bring in great employees.

When people search for open job positions on the internet a large number of people use Google. One of the hallmarks of Google and other large search engines is the fact that they use keywords to determine the relevance of a particular post or website. If you have a position you need filled through your company blog make sure that the post has the correct keywords interspersed naturally throughout the page. For example if you wish to hire a computer engineer you should use keywords like computer engineering, computer engineer hire, computer engineer job and related keywords. The more relevant keywords that your ad or blog post contains the more relevant visitors you will receive, which will lead to better and more effective inbound applications.

Your company blog is a powerful tool for all kinds of business. Not only can it give your company much needed customer exposure, it can help you to build a great team of employees to service those customers. Compared to hiring someone to find new employees, or using a temp service finding employees through your blog not only benefits potential job seekers, it benefits your company by allowing you to reach people who need jobs directly rather than through a third party.


Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness

The 3 C’s for finding your Dream Job

The 3 C’s - Contacts, Credibility, and Competence

When searching for the job you want with the kind of money you think you deserve, you need to focus on the three C’s… Actually, the three C’s - contacts, credibility, and competence should remain a constant focus throughout your career.

Contacts

Firstly, the more contacts you have in any given marketplace, the more likely it is you will find the job you want. The more people you know and who know you, the more likely it is you will uncover that desired job opening.
This is why it is so important for you to network continually. Join associations. Ask people for referrals and references. Tell your friends, relatives and associates that you are in the market for a new job and build your online profile on social media sites liked LinkedIn and twitter. Nothing is more important than your circle of contacts.

If you are recent graduate or fairly new to the job scene, you may not have yet established a solid black book of contacts. If this is the case, you need to work with Recruiters to identify opportunities, make the introductions and assist/guide your job search.

Credibility

Second up is credibility. Where it’s all about reputation and character. Your credibility is the most important single quality in terms of getting recommendations and referrals from your contacts. 
Make sure that everything you do is consistent with the highest ethical standards. Make sure that you never say or do anything that could be misconstrued by anyone as anything other than excellent conduct and behaviour.
Remember, people will only conduct business with you if they are completely confident that they will not end up looking foolish as a result of something you may do or say.

Competence

Last up is competence. It really is how good you are and how good you have been in your previous roles (or academic life) that will determine, more than anything else, how good you can be at the job you are seeking. Next to your character, your level of competence will be the single most important factor in determining your success in your career, which is why you must be continually work to maintain and upgrade your levels of competence through personal study and career growth.


If you have and can demonstrate the three C’s, you'll find your dream job !


Drs. Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach CJ Coaching
CRO Akwa Wellness