Think outside the square to attract the best talent

Sharon Davies Talent Propeller
10.07.2015 Sharon Davies, Talent Propeller photo shoot in Auckland. Mandatory Photo Credit ©Michael Bradley.

Taking a three-dimensional approach to recruitment – that considers past experience, interview presentation and skills and aptitude testing – will help employers ascertain if someone is a good fit.

Previous experience and education achievements listed plainly on a CV have long been used by recruitment teams as the core criteria to evaluate a candidate’s suitability for a role. Candidates are put into boxes based on that stated capability and can only get a shot at a job if they’ve held a similar position in the past.

By sticking to this cut-and-dried approach to recruiting, employers are missing out on a plethora of capable candidates. With talent already in short supply, taking the blinkers off to look beyond ‘past experience is a must’ may widen employers’ possible talent pool and help them identify hidden gems who would have been discounted on their CVs alone.

Put simply, you need to be thinking outside the square rather than checking boxes when it comes to getting the right person for a role.

Thinking laterally about the kind of attributes needed for the job will help you broaden your search. By thinking about the skills you need – impeccable customer service, a high standard of computer literacy – you may be able to look beyond the CV and find people who can bring those talents, even if their experience is not specifically aligned to the role you are trying to fill.

More recently, businesses have started to look beyond the piece of paper and give all applicants a chance to prove their worth through skills and aptitude testing in the early stages of the recruitment process.

In these cases, online tests take place before the interview. They can include a review of typing, data entry, spelling and grammar, customer service, sales, productivity, personality, IT skills and more. This helps businesses sort through the applicants and find the right talent based on a very real understanding of that person’s capabilities, instead of having blind faith in dot points on a CV.

Taking a three-dimensional approach to recruitment – that considers past experience, interview presentation and skills and aptitude testing – will help employers ascertain if someone is a good fit.

This strategy is ideal for tackling graduate candidates, who come with little real-world work experience, but can offer the right attitude and a good basis for the right skills for the job.

Employers are then opening their talent pools, but also cutting time spent on recruiting in half by exposing the things that need to be better explored about an individual, like further on-the-job training that might be required down the line.

While hiring the right person is a costly exercise, hiring the wrong one is even more expensive. By looking at what a candidate can do, employers will be satisfied that the person who gets the job, is the best man or woman for the work.

Sharon Davies, Founder and Managing Director, Talent Propeller