A resume is an exceedingly important thing to read and to understand before hiring someone, or even bringing them in for an interview. It is not useless. But when you only look at the CV, you can sometimes fail to see the person sitting in front of you. After all, they are not those actions on the page. They are the lessons learned from said actions and experiences, both good and bad. It could be that the most pressing and important lesson of their entire career came from an abject failure, but they are unlikely to have told you that in their application. That’s why performing DBS checks (employee background checks) on candidates is a must.
This means that it’s important to remember people are much more textured than we give them credit for. To truly understand someone, we would need to read thousands upon thousands of careful prose about their life, and even then we would only reach an approximation of why that person is the way they are, or how suitable they might be for your firm.
This means looking at all avenues is necessary, to get the clearest possible picture we can to this end.
Ask Them About Their Resume
Talk about the resume. Ask them about certain elements they have experienced or certain achievements they have accomplished. When you ask for further clarification like this, you not only get the facts of the document but how things occurred, and how the achievement was carried out. Perhaps they had to go directly against a manager in order to save a departmental process, or maybe something they claimed credit for on the resume was actually more of a team effort. Sometimes, they might have even lied on the resume, and this will be quite easy to see if you ask them for more detail about a certain event. A simple open question is all you need. This way, you can see how they think. On top of that, asking cultural fit interview questions can help you understand their philosophy on your business or office life, seeing how they operate and how suitable they might be.
Put Them Under Working Stress
It could be that you offer them a trial shift, or decide to socialize with them to some degree. Heading for a coffee after the interview to get more insight into their character can be important. For example, if they look perfect on paper but then act in a rude manner towards a waitress, you know there’s a personality flaw there that will be hard to overlook. You may even arrange a mock situation in which you assess their competence in an exercise. The ‘sell me this pen’ exercise is cliche at this point, but if this comes to mind you will be thinking along the right lines.
Speak To Their References
Not enough firms try and contact previous references, but it’s important to do so. Simply asking a previous manager how they were to handle can give you important insight. Perhaps they were a model employee. Perhaps they left on a whim without giving their two weeks notice. This can be a problem, and so it’s important to understand what you are working with here.
With these tips, we hope you can better hire the person and not the resume.
