Client 

• Strategic plan for interviewing and screening
• Regularly assess your interviewing and screening
• Deliver interview feedback to all applicants

Do you remember your first interview?

The fear? The excitement? The feeling that time has stopped?

Interviewing is a crucial part of the recruitment process.

Both candidate and employer get to find out what the other is really about.

Improving your interviewing and screening process is key to hiring and retaining the best cloud & IT infrastructure professionals which fit the culture and values of your business.

In order to ensure you make the right hire, you need to ensure your interviewing and screening plans are up-to-date, relevant and ultimately work for your business.

If need candidates for a cloud job role, you need your interviewing process to be robust.

Here at InfraView we know all about not only how IT solutions providers work, but also what candidates are looking for in today’s cloud jobs market.

If you’re in need of quick, personalised advice you can give us a call on 020 3617 1040 and one of our team can give their insight.

But for now, let’s learn more about what you need to know about interviewing and screening.

Strategic plan for interviewing and screening

Fail to plan, plan to fail.

Planning your interviewing and screening practices is crucial to return maximum return-on-investment.

Our Co-Founder Tim Davey tells us why you need a strategic interviewing and screening plan:

“I feel like I’ve been saying it about all our topics, but clearly interviewing and screening is a core part of any recruitment process.

You can have the best IT solution provider business in the world with the most attractive cloud job opportunities, but if you’re unable to select the best candidates from your interview process then it’s all in vain.

Alot of businesses don’t have a plan around screening and interviewing and instead choose to go with ‘gut feel’. This doesn’t allow you to be objective and often doesn’t sit well from a diversity & inclusion perspective.

So having a strategic plan allows you:

• to interview against core traits and capabilities for a role
• to compare and contrast candidates against set parameters
• to create a better process around diversity & inclusion
• to leverage recruitment technologies such as AI and automation to speed     up and improve the candidate experience
• to impress candidates and increase your chance of a hire

Have a think about your plan around interviewing & screening candidates and how your recruitment process fits with your strategic goals and objectives around hiring and retention.”

Regularly assess your interviewing and screening process

Once you’ve planned your process and implementing interview and screening practices, you’ll be gathering a lot of data through CVs, your database and other sources.

This data can help you to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your interviewing and screening process.

Our Co-Founder Tim Cazemage has some great insights into how you can achieve greater interview process ROI:

“The screening process is an obvious and crucial part of the cloud & IT infrastructure recruitment process.

It’s naturally a great opportunity for both parties to learn a little bit more about each other to ensure there’s a great match.

However, I believe you must strategise this part of the hiring process properly.

It must have a clearly defined process for you to enjoy the maximum outcome.

Planning will not only allow you to control as many variables as possible, but also allow you to monitor and make changes far easier and more efficiently.

You could achieve this through monitoring and marketing system, whether that be internally or your own personal one that you have adapted and created.

A level of measurable criteria that needs to be met can also help you to achieve your cloud recruitment goals. This could involve a simple scoring process, or a database-driven chart or graph to understand exactly where this candidate sits in terms of personality, character and of course level of cloud & IT infrastructure skills and experience.

I personally believe it’s imperative to keep all the data from your screening & interview process.

In any business, in any department, data should be collated and analysed. This is not only to understand if a candidate is at the right level, but also if your interviewing and screening process could be improved.

But what data should you be collecting?

Start with application-to-interview and interview-to-placement. This ratio is crucial to your recruitment process. How many applications are converted to interviews, and then how many of those interviews result in placements. The application:interview:placement ratio will show you how efficient your recruitment process is, and which sections can be improved.

How often are you assessing your interviewing and screening process?

Can this be improved?

I’m a strong believer that if we stay doing the same things over and over again, there is only one we will go. That way is backwards.”

Deliver feedback to all applicants

The interviews are over. You’ve got some great cloud & IT infrastructure candidates. But some didn’t quite make the grade.

Ensuring you give feedback to all of your applicants, both successful and unsuccessful, has multiple benefits for IT solution providers.

Will Martin offers his thoughts on how to deliver interview feedback:

“I appreciate that once you post a cloud job role on multiple job boards, on your company website, on LinkedIn etc., you are bound to receive a lot of applications.

You do not have to send a personalised message to each applicant, but if a candidate is unsuccessful you could have a generic communication that informs them that they have not been successful at this time. This enables candidates to close off that application and move onto other cloud job roles. In future they may be a great candidate for a new position in your business, so don’t leave a bad impression!

Once you’ve completed screening applicants and created your candidate shortlist, whether you’re working with an internal recruiter, HR or an external cloud & IT infrastructure recruitment specialist, your application process will have hopefully captured a great group of cloud talent. However, not all great candidates can be successful. This means delivering feedback.

There are three main reasons why you should give feedback to all candidates.

1. It’s just common courtesy

Someone has taken the time to update their CV, to speak to you, to communicate with your internal recruitment team or HR, to learn about the role, to learn about your business, to get excited about the opportunity. If they have taken the time and effort to do this, it’s just courteous to send a formal notification that they have been unsuccessful. You could also include some quick feedback on why they have been unsuccessful at this time, helping them further to close off this opportunity and move on.

2. It offers a great candidate experience

No one likes to receive bad news. However, if a notice of an unsuccessful application is delivered in a kind and considerate way, you will benefit from building rapport with the candidate. In future if a position does become available for which they would be a perfect fit, it will be far easier to approach that candidate again. 

3. Bad or no feedback can hurt company image

Candidates will be a lot quicker to react after a negative experience. If they hear your business’ name in conversation, they may be quick to let people know how you were perceived. This can hurt your company image.

So what’s the best way to deliver interview feedback?

In my experience, the best way to deliver interview feedback is over the phone.

Having a call with the candidate allows you to have a two-way conversation and give them the reasons behind the decision.

Delivering bad news is always difficult. But there are ways to deliver it nicely, which are caring and conscientious. The best way to do this is over the phone.

If you can’t get hold of the candidate, leave them a message. If they don’t come back reasonably quickly, send them an email outlining the reasons behind the unsuccessful application.

Give them the opportunity to ring in and make contact with you to receive a more detailed breakdown of why they were unsuccessful.

These methods keep your business in a good light, and will help to increase the effectiveness of your hiring and screening practices.”

Conclusion

The interviewing and screening process is a crucial part of hiring and retaining top cloud talent.

In order to increase its effectiveness and efficiency, you must plan, monitor and deliver feedback.

By planning your interviewing and screening process, you will lay the groundwork for better monitoring, higher quality hires and increases diversity & inclusion.

Through monitoring, you can see problem areas within your process where you can improve the experience for both hiring managers and candidates.

Once the interview process is over, delivering feedback to all candidates will ensure your company is seen in a good light and leave the door open to future cloud hires.

Need help today?

Give us a call on 020 3617 1040 or drop us an email at hello@infraview.co.uk.