Dress For Success

Here at RecruitAbility, we had a very enjoyable day yesterday when Claire Ellis from Mirror Image put two of our candidates through her 'Dress for Success' course on what to wear for an interview.  We were also joined by the 'Herts & Essex Observer' who will be doing a 3 piece feature on the candidates and how the course has helped them.   There are obvious do's and don'ts like make sure your shoes are clean etc but Claire taught the candidates how to read a job description/advert and how to show that you have the skills for the job at the interview  by how you're dressed and we believe that these hidden gems can be the difference between you being successful and unsuccessful at an interview.

We're looking forward to seeing how this course helps the candidates with their job hunting success and have more courses running on the 24th March 2011

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Employment Law

Do you think it's right that candidates can now take businesses to tribunal before they're in their employment or have even been interviewed?  With the new Equality Act which came into play in October 2010, if an employer advertises a job as looking for a 'minimum of 2 years experience' for example, a school or college leaver could take that organsiation to a tribunal for discrimination on the basis that it would be impossible for a school or college leaver to have 2 years experience and the company is therfore discriminating against candidates who are 16 or 18 years of age.  Is it right to protect candidates who might not be old enough to accrue enough experience for the role or do you think you're entitled to request a minimum amount of experience for a job?

The Key To Interviewing

With so many candidates on the job market at the moment, it’s easy to feel unenthused at the prospect of recruiting, especially if you’re a small business without the use of a full time HR Manager as the process can be very time consuming.  We have many clients that don’t consider themselves as good interviewers so how can you be sure that you’ve found the best candidate for the job and make sure you don’t fall into the ‘gut feeling’ trap rather than basing your results on actual evidence.

First of all, we always advise our clients to put together a job description/person specification and to use this to assess each candidate.  Prepare for each interview by thoroughly reading the CVs and highlight any areas that you would particularly like to question around beforehand .  It’s important  to make the interviewee feel at ease with a warm handshake and a friendly smile to help with any nerves -  giving candidates a good ‘grilling’ is all very well, but these tactics rarely show you the real personality and you could miss out on a suitable candidate as a result.  Use competency based questions, for example ‘give me an example of where you’ve had to use your initiative’ rather than ‘do you use your initiative?’ which is a leading question as there’s only so much information you can get from ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ answers!  By asking open ended questions you will invite more conversation which will help you to ascertain whether the person is the right fit for your organisation which, in some cases is as important as the skills and abilities to do the job.   If you really like someone you’re interviewing, it’s easy to concentrate on the good bits and gloss over the rest, but to ensure that you get the right candidate the first time round, it’s imperative to explore all avenues so that you can make an informed decision.  So if necessary,  keep questioning an area until you feel convinced either way.   

Don’t forget to spend time in the interview  to discuss  your  vacancy and company in detail after all, it’s no good offering the job to very good candidate if you haven’t spent the time promoting your role, so ensure they have plenty of opportunities to ask questions.  At the end of the interview, we never recommend offering a candidate the job there and then, especially if it’s a first interview.  Most of us need time to digest our thoughts and being too keen can sometimes come across as desperate  - which is never a good thing!  Even if you feel you’ve found the best candidate, never tell them that they’re a favourite, especially if you have other people to see as you can  build up people’s hopes unnecessarily.  It’s also imperative to inform the candidates that they weren’t successful because as a local employer,  you want to retain your good reputation.

 Finally, as well as good  interview techniques, there are other products on the market that can help you with your selection process including various testing software packages which help get underneath the best behaviour, which most of us are on when we’re at interview!