Banishing Glazed Eyes
My name is Kendra, and you'll have to pardon me if I seem a little short of time. Because, well, that's exactly the situation I'm in right now. It's a good problem to have, though. Our company has just wrapped up a major contract with a new customer, and we're making a fairly substantial expansion of our workforce. So how does that affect me? A lot. I'm the Hiring Manager.
Our expansion has been reported in the press, and so there's no shortage of those interested in applying. During past expansions, we were literally overwhelmed with throngs of people who wanted to be hired. My assistant and I would interview people non-stop, from the first thing in the morning until late at night. Our eyes would begin to glaze over, and eventually Applicant A would become indistinguishable from Applicant B. Time has proven that we didn't always select our new hires as effectively as we'd have liked.
But today, we have a "secret weapon," which turns the late hours and glazed eyeballs into relics of the past. It's called Sysdine.
Taming the Pool
We decided to give our applicants the choice of applying online through our website, or through a kiosk in the local mall, or through a bank of PCs set up in our lobby. They all fill out an application pack which we set up through Sysdine. This application process captures biographical information, it surveys and analyzes their attitudes, and it tests for their skills and expectations. The applicants -- and Sysdine -- do all the work up to that point.
Throughout the day, Sysdine shows me the latest arrivals into our Applicant Pool. And I can categorize, prioritize, and dissect our Applicant Pool in just about any way, shape, or form.
For example, in the work we'll be doing for our new customer, an orientation toward product quality is especially important. I can view our Applicant Pool sorted by the quality orientation of the applicants, as measured by Sysdine's Attitude Survey. The stronger candidates are shown first, followed by the moderate and weak groups. From information such as this, I'm able to determine the applicants who should receive the highest priority for further consideration and interviewing.
Dashboard Illumination
Once I've identified who my highest-priority candidates are, I'll select one by clicking on his or her name. And that brings up Sysdine Sysdine's Applicant Dashboard for that person. I can only describe the Dashboard as a sight to behold. There's lots of information here, organized to be quickly and easily digested. And to obtain the detail behind any particular piece of that information, all I have to do is click on it.
Here's how it works. For the new customer, our workers will continually need to be reading instructions from written work orders. Therefore, reading skills are a very important factor in the hiring decisions we're making. Let's say the Dashboard is showing me a candidate who appears strong in virtually every area except for a less-than-stellar performance in reading skills. By clicking on "Reading Skills," I can see exactly which questions the applicant got right and which ones were wrong. I can then determine whether the weaknesses shown here offset the strengths shown elsewhere.
I can get this additional level of detail wherever I need it, simply by clicking on an item of information to drill down further. I can do this for any of the areas analyzed by the Attitude Survey, and for the applicant's own performance expectations, and for behavior indicators, and for skills testing results.
Pick of the Crop
I'm now ready to begin the final phase of making my hiring decisions. Sysdine has helped me to identify the group of candidates I'm most interested in. For each of them, I'll now use the Dashboard to help check out references, backgrounds, and personal histories. Certain background checks, such as the National Sex Offender Registry, are important requirements in my company. Sysdine helps me to carry them out and to document the results.
As I do this, I'll decide precisely which applicants to move forward with, by scheduling them for an interview. And when they come in for the interview, I'll be well-prepared. Sysdine's Interview Guidance provides me with a comprehensive and prioritized set of suggested questions to ask. Some of these are standardized questions which my company requires to be asked on every interview. Others are the result of Sysdine's analysis of the applicant's attitude patterns, and the responses to behavioral-related questions.
As I interview each person, I'll classify them with a "Hiring Recommendation" of Strong, Moderate, or Weak. There are a couple of applicants to whom I'll assign a Hiring Recommendation of "Later," because, although they appear promising, they are not available to start work within the timeframe we're in need of right now. We'll reconsider them at a later date.
Sysdine will then be able to show me the entire Applicant Pool ranked by my own Hiring Recommendations. And from this, we can complete the final step of the hiring process: Selecting the folks who are going to become a part of our team.
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