Resumes are essential for getting introduced to candidates through your career portal, but they should be the first step in learning more about interested candidates: not a stopping point.
There’s plenty of reasons why resumes don’t tell the whole story about candidates. Whether it’s lack of design skills, gaps in their work history, or behavioral characteristics, there’s more to the person than their resume.
Given that the global pandemic knocked out millions of jobs in 2020, it’s unreasonable to punish applicants for having gaps in their resume between March 2020 and now. Instead of only focusing on the positions listed on the paper, consider a behavioral approach to interviewing your candidates, focusing less on work history.
Even candidates with stellar accolades may not be the right fit for your team or company. This is why it is important to look at the behavioral side of potential employees. Qualification may not outweigh lack of teamwork skills or trustworthiness.
Amazon has a great method for interviewing their candidates. Instead of focusing on brain teasers designed to see how a candidate thinks, they focus on behavioral-based questioning to learn who their candidates are. Should you adopt this method, your interviewees should answer with the “STAR Method.” It stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
- The candidate should describe the situation they were in (work, school, volunteer, or any relevant event to help answer the question).
- They should then describe the task at hand.
- Here’s the important part: the candidate explains what actions they personally took to complete the action. Notice what they say they specifically did versus what they did in a team setting.
- Lastly, they should describe the result coming from their actions.
So, while resumes are still handy, try looking at them as an initial communication. Knowing who your candidate is, how they behave in a workplace, and what their goals are could be more key to hiring than the experience on their resume alone. There’s room to learn more about your candidates beyond what is submitted into your application portal.
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