If you are finding that you have a lot of unqualified applicants, the problem may not be the applicant pool. It could be that there is a disconnect between what your talent acquisition team understands the job to require and what the hiring manager needs for the role.
Here are 5 tips to get everyone on the same page.
- Translate the technical. If there are technical requirements for a job, make sure that what they actually mean is well understood. Ask for examples of what having that skill might look like on a resume. Ask if there are synonyms or other terms for the skills they are looking for.
- Rationalize requirements. Degrees can be an indicator of experience/knowledge, but they are not the only indicator. Clarify if having the right degree is a hard requirement, or if a candidate could demonstrate competence in a given area through other experiences.
- Don’t use proxies. When you aren’t clear about the technical requirements, it’s easy to fall back on proxies like prestigious universities or labs or previous employers as indicators of “quality”. However these don’t always translate into important skills for the job and can be misleading.
- Prioritize needs. Some things are easy to train for, or would require retraining regardless. Focus on skills or traits that you need the candidate to already know, that are hard or time consuming to train for, or that don't already exist within your team as your must haves.
- Constant Communication. Establish a process for ongoing feedback between the hiring manager and your talent acquisition and sourcing teams. If everyone is more clear about why certain candidates are rejected, they can use that information to refine their search and bring you better candidates in the future.
