Best Practices for Staffing Project Leaders: Narrowing Initial Field

This series will provide in-depth coverage of each of the steps in the staffing process.

This post covers step three: Review/compare/select for follow-up.

Once you have collected an initial field of resumes, you begin screening resumes.

Be sure to use candidates’ past results to validate skills. You can create a skills-versus-results matrix by setting up columns of necessary skills and filling in rows of results. This matrix can be used as a scoring model for objectively comparing candidates. These skills should be separated out by technical skills, leadership abilities, cultural fit, and disposition.

If you are engaging with a staffing firm they should walk you through each candidate’s resume and make comparisons. The staffing firm should be guiding you through the process and be there to answer any questions you may have regarding the candidate. Their job is to take the burden of the heavy lifting off of you.

You should have a gap analysis for candidate skills against necessary skills to short-list qualified candidates. This will further enable you to fine-tune requirements based on short-comings of the first round of resumes.

Respect for the candidates is paramount throughout this process. Quality project leaders are not commodities. Be crisp and timely with scheduling and running each rounds of interviews. A misstep on your part risks losing a great leader. The best candidates will be considering competing opportunities. There is a very high intangible value in building a rapport with candidates. If you are not respectful of candidate’s time, then the candidate may go out into the field and spread negativity about the organization, which can have long-term serious impact on the reputation or your organization. For example, many candidates frequent websites like GlassDoor that provide information on employers in a social media format.

If working with a staffing firm, feedback should be provided to them in a timely fashion as well.

Click here to continue to the next steps: Prepare and Conduct candidate interview.

Or to go back to an earlier step, click on the appropriate post: Communicate process and define requirements, Initiate Search.

You can access our full Staffing white paper here.