What's in a title?

... you may need to look deeper!

By Adele Williams

 

When recruiting, are you influenced by the candidate’s job titles? Or do you focus on the components of each role, the skills and competencies developed?

Frequently, Hiring Managers decline to interview a candidate based on the job titles listed in their CV. However, once the experiences and skills developed in those roles are explained to them, they agreed that the candidate actually fitted their needs to a ‘T’.

More than once, the candidate they first rejected is the person they chose to employ. After that candidate is hired, the Hiring Manager has thanked me for my persistence.

Read between the lines

When you focus only on the Job Title you may be tempted by the wrong person and risk missing the best candidate for the role.

Why does this happen?

1. Many candidates do a poor job of setting out their resume and/or describing their responsibilities. After all, resume writing is not the skill you are hiring them for so don’t assess them solely on their ability to complete this task.

    

2. Candidates get stuck with titles from past employers which do not describe their real duties. Often they are too honest to change them.

    

3. Many recruiters do a poor job of reading between the lines and rely too heavily on the candidate’s ability to present their best profile.

    

4. If a candidate had a seemingly lower title in a larger organisation, they may well be suited to the role in a smaller organisation where job titles are often more impressive.

 

Meet with the candidate or speak with them on the phone. It is better to waste 20 minutes now than risk missing a great hire. If they have the wrong title but the right experience, you can proceed with confidence.

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Adele Williams is a Senior Consultant in Dixon Appointments' Recruitment Team. For further information, contact Adele at awilliams@dixonappointments.com.au  or call 03 9629 9999.