4 steps to create a candidate profile
Hello. This month, a new stream of the IT-Recruiter course starts in Otus . We have timed a new useful translation to this launch, which we will share with you.
Your candidate profile is an internal document, which, in essence, is a list of qualities, characteristics or achievements that you want to see in the candidate. Creating a candidate profile is an extremely difficult process. It requires professional skills in drawing lines on a piece of paper. Are you still here The result should be an elegant four-column chart. Really, very professional, right?
Your columns should be arranged in order of importance, that is, the first column should contain “mandatory” qualities, and the last “absolutely undesirable” qualities.
In this section you will write down things that the candidate is simply obliged to know and be able to. If you are building a spaceship, it is probably very important that your candidate knows how to design and build this same spaceship.
In addition to skills, this section can and should also include experience and performance indicators from his past work. For example, you want to hire a seller from the street. A good point that can be added to this column would be “the presence of an indicative successful history of the introduction of new business development measures that have led to an increase in the company's productivity”. Such actions and past successes of a person should correspond to the size of the company for which you are looking for an employee.
The key to creating a section with the required qualities is to determine the true list of traits, talents or experience, without going beyond the scope of thinking and not trying to convince yourself and everyone around that the candidate should be able to and know all those 75 things that you indicated to successfully handle this post.
Do not forget! Each such mandatory quality should be clearly commensurate with expectations.
How does this help make a good list of required qualities?
Here is an example of several mandatory qualities for the position of an executive recruiter, a candidate for whom we recently searched:
The first thing you will notice in our example list above is the "measurability" of each criterion. They are all quantifiable, so they are easy to manage. So we can be sure for sure whether the candidate managed his work well while he was at work.
This section should describe the secondary qualities that your candidates should possess. It should be noted that the features in this column are subject to discussion, since they are no longer “mandatory,” that is, you can still consider the candidate, even if they do not have these qualities. Therefore, this column will be support for your required quality column.
Ideally, you can even add to this column everything that you expect from your candidate, and then create a column with the required qualities from it. This allows us to separate what is really important from what is also important, but not critical, that is, something that this position can do without.
For most posts that do not require a degree or a certain level of education, the availability of education can fall into this column. Many employers want their candidates to have a higher education, and for many positions this is necessary. And the fact that employers will not consider a candidate without a certain level of education is normal.
In rare cases, when someone comes with enough experience, he is satisfied with his salary and he respects the corporate culture, but does not have a certain level of education, and your company does not have a clear bureaucratic policy that would regulate such things, would you really miss this wonderful potential employee to be hired by your competitors? Gosh no. Hope not, anyway.
Separating columns with required and desirable qualities can be challenging. Here we are talking about the structure, since it is it that makes you think about what really matters, and what you just thought was necessary for your candidate, but refused to add this quality to the list of mandatory ones after a comparison.
Not sure how to call it right, but as you might have guessed, this column is for qualities that don't matter. The presence of this column may seem counterintuitive, but it is not. Take a look.
After choosing several things that you will confidently classify as mandatory and those that will simply be nice to see in the candidate, you can calmly identify those qualities that were previously important, but now you understand that this is not so.
When you are strict with yourself, and you allow only a few really important qualities and experience to decorate your columns “Required qualities” and “Desirable qualities”, you understand how many different qualities seemed necessary, but in reality this turned out to be wrong. This is an important exercise that will help you not only identify key qualities, but also restructure your goals regarding the determination of a candidate for this position. This exercise has one drawback. You will begin to notice how poorly written job descriptions!
In case you are not sure about the candidate, this section will include qualities that will not be the subject of negotiations for a job placement. For example, the position for which you are looking for a candidate involves driving a car, and the candidate has 25 fines for exceeding, 40 times he was seen driving while intoxicated and got into 2 accidents, a similar item can be included in this column, since such a candidate obviously can not count on this position. The same can be attributed to financiers or accountants who are responsible for calculating and paying salaries. If, when checking information about a candidate, it turns out that he had committed theft, had a bad credit history or had poor money management at his previous job, then this position is not for him, and you can include similar formulations in this section.
Unfortunately, these undesirable qualities cannot always be clearly stated. You can edit this section several times before finalizing the list. But this is good. This exercise is useful.
Once you have created a candidate profile, you can use it as a template to find the perfect candidate for an open position. Such a profile will be the basis for every candidate that you seek. In fact, it’s just a matter of determining what you want for dinner, that is, searching for “ingredients” from which, following the recipe, you can prepare it.
If it’s easier for you to perceive the information visually, you can familiarize yourself with our infographics of the candidate’s profile to refer to it later.
That's all. We are waiting for everyone at the free webinar , where we will discuss the entire sourcing cycle in 1.5 hours: from searching on unusual resources to establishing contact.
Create a candidate profile
Your candidate profile is an internal document, which, in essence, is a list of qualities, characteristics or achievements that you want to see in the candidate. Creating a candidate profile is an extremely difficult process. It requires professional skills in drawing lines on a piece of paper. Are you still here The result should be an elegant four-column chart. Really, very professional, right?
Your columns should be arranged in order of importance, that is, the first column should contain “mandatory” qualities, and the last “absolutely undesirable” qualities.
Mandatory qualities
In this section you will write down things that the candidate is simply obliged to know and be able to. If you are building a spaceship, it is probably very important that your candidate knows how to design and build this same spaceship.
In addition to skills, this section can and should also include experience and performance indicators from his past work. For example, you want to hire a seller from the street. A good point that can be added to this column would be “the presence of an indicative successful history of the introduction of new business development measures that have led to an increase in the company's productivity”. Such actions and past successes of a person should correspond to the size of the company for which you are looking for an employee.
The key to creating a section with the required qualities is to determine the true list of traits, talents or experience, without going beyond the scope of thinking and not trying to convince yourself and everyone around that the candidate should be able to and know all those 75 things that you indicated to successfully handle this post.
Do not forget! Each such mandatory quality should be clearly commensurate with expectations.
How does this help make a good list of required qualities?
Here is an example of several mandatory qualities for the position of an executive recruiter, a candidate for whom we recently searched:
- Admission of more than 15 candidates for positions per year;
- Filling out new applications for the position within 30-45 days;
- Taking "note" of one new job on staff recruitment or 5 new conditional jobs per month with the help of one-handed search or other business development efforts.
The first thing you will notice in our example list above is the "measurability" of each criterion. They are all quantifiable, so they are easy to manage. So we can be sure for sure whether the candidate managed his work well while he was at work.
Desired qualities
This section should describe the secondary qualities that your candidates should possess. It should be noted that the features in this column are subject to discussion, since they are no longer “mandatory,” that is, you can still consider the candidate, even if they do not have these qualities. Therefore, this column will be support for your required quality column.
Ideally, you can even add to this column everything that you expect from your candidate, and then create a column with the required qualities from it. This allows us to separate what is really important from what is also important, but not critical, that is, something that this position can do without.
For most posts that do not require a degree or a certain level of education, the availability of education can fall into this column. Many employers want their candidates to have a higher education, and for many positions this is necessary. And the fact that employers will not consider a candidate without a certain level of education is normal.
In rare cases, when someone comes with enough experience, he is satisfied with his salary and he respects the corporate culture, but does not have a certain level of education, and your company does not have a clear bureaucratic policy that would regulate such things, would you really miss this wonderful potential employee to be hired by your competitors? Gosh no. Hope not, anyway.
Separating columns with required and desirable qualities can be challenging. Here we are talking about the structure, since it is it that makes you think about what really matters, and what you just thought was necessary for your candidate, but refused to add this quality to the list of mandatory ones after a comparison.
Insignificant qualities
Not sure how to call it right, but as you might have guessed, this column is for qualities that don't matter. The presence of this column may seem counterintuitive, but it is not. Take a look.
After choosing several things that you will confidently classify as mandatory and those that will simply be nice to see in the candidate, you can calmly identify those qualities that were previously important, but now you understand that this is not so.
When you are strict with yourself, and you allow only a few really important qualities and experience to decorate your columns “Required qualities” and “Desirable qualities”, you understand how many different qualities seemed necessary, but in reality this turned out to be wrong. This is an important exercise that will help you not only identify key qualities, but also restructure your goals regarding the determination of a candidate for this position. This exercise has one drawback. You will begin to notice how poorly written job descriptions!
Undesirable qualities
In case you are not sure about the candidate, this section will include qualities that will not be the subject of negotiations for a job placement. For example, the position for which you are looking for a candidate involves driving a car, and the candidate has 25 fines for exceeding, 40 times he was seen driving while intoxicated and got into 2 accidents, a similar item can be included in this column, since such a candidate obviously can not count on this position. The same can be attributed to financiers or accountants who are responsible for calculating and paying salaries. If, when checking information about a candidate, it turns out that he had committed theft, had a bad credit history or had poor money management at his previous job, then this position is not for him, and you can include similar formulations in this section.
Unfortunately, these undesirable qualities cannot always be clearly stated. You can edit this section several times before finalizing the list. But this is good. This exercise is useful.
Once you have created a candidate profile, you can use it as a template to find the perfect candidate for an open position. Such a profile will be the basis for every candidate that you seek. In fact, it’s just a matter of determining what you want for dinner, that is, searching for “ingredients” from which, following the recipe, you can prepare it.
If it’s easier for you to perceive the information visually, you can familiarize yourself with our infographics of the candidate’s profile to refer to it later.
That's all. We are waiting for everyone at the free webinar , where we will discuss the entire sourcing cycle in 1.5 hours: from searching on unusual resources to establishing contact.
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