The Maryland Chamber is partnering with Congressman John Sarbanes, the Maryland Bankers Association, the U.S. Small Business Administration and Anne Arundel Community College to present a small business lending event on July 19. The event will be held from 7:45 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Anne Arundel County Community College’s Cade Center for Fine Arts.
This is an outstanding opportunity to learn about small business loan products and SBA loan programs and to meet with national and community-based lenders and business counseling partners. Participating lenders include CitiBank, Suntrust, M&T Bank, Bank of Glen Burnie, Sandy Spring Bank, Essex Bank, BankAnnapolis, Hamilton Federal Bank, Severn Savings Bank, Arundel Federal Savings Bank and more.
The event is free. Register online or contact Kristen Solis at (410) 269-0642, (301) 261-2858 or ksolis@mdchamber.org.
So far, our series of posts on the hiring process has covered writing good job descriptions, finding innovative ways to identify candidates, screening applicants and interviewing prospective employees.
Now that you’ve chosen a final candidate and preparing to make an offer, it is important to consider conducting background screening and a drug test. HR Anew President & CEO Deborah Stallings said that this is critically important for small businesses.
“For many small businesses this is a step that is skipped, and it is very, very important. Making a bad hiring decision can be much more costly for a small business than a large corporation. It is important to protect yourself, and get as much information on a candidate before extending an offer of employment to them,” she said.
There are several free resources, as well as paid services that can be used to conduct background checks. A simple Google search of a candidate’s name can bring up additional information about a candidate.
Drug testing is also something employers should consider.
“Drug testing is something a lot of small businesses do not conduct and a lot of candidates know this and they seek out employment with small businesses for that reason,” Stallings said. According to the U.S. Department of Labor alcoholism and drug abuse have a profoundly negative affect on the workplace in terms of decreased productivity and increased accidents, absenteeism, turnover and medical costs.
It is important to protect yourself and your business and to evaluate your potential new employee before extending an offer to them. Here are some resources for conducting background checks and drug testing, from the Maryland Department of Labor and Licensing.
Interviewing a candidate is one of the most important steps in selecting a new employee. The encounter with the candidate can give you a sense of how they will conduct themselves in your workplace, and often it is apparent very quickly whether the candidate is the right fit for the position.
If you’ve narrowed down resumes to several final candidates, starting with a brief phone interview may be best to screen applicants. This can give you a sense of their professionalism and preparedness, as well as their phone-style if this is an important factor for the position.
Once in-person interviews are set, prepare questions ahead of time, as well as criteria by which to score candidates.
“It is important to develop scoring systems based on the job descriptions and specifications,” Deborah Stallings, President & CEO of HR Anew, said. The scores can be based on personal appearance and conduct, actual responses to questions and the manner in which they are answered (for example: you’ll most likely want simple yes and no questions answered briefly, not for the candidate to go into a long dissertation or concrete examples given when asked about specific situations the candidate has experienced). It is also a good idea to have others interview a candidate as well, since they may gain insight that you missed in your interview.
When preparing interview questions, it is important to be aware of what is legal to ask and what is not. Illegal interview questions include any questions related to a candidates age, race, ethnicity or color, gender, country of national origin or birthplace, religion, disability, marital or family status or pregnancy. Visit www.eeoc.gov for more information on this. To be safe, keep interview questions focused on behaviors, skills and experience needed to perform the job, even if the discussion becomes more relaxed.
There are different techniques to use when interviewing to learn more about a candidate. Stallings said that there are four interview question styles that can be used:
Open ended – What are your five-year goals? Would you help me understand a certain aspect of your resume?
Probing – How did you resolve a particular situation? Why did you leave your last position?
Closed ended – These are ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ questions. Did you find the location easy to reach? Are you willing to relocate? When can you begin?
Behavioral – Tell me about a situation in the past where you had to manage a conflict. This is where you’re trying to get the person to tell you about situations that help you to assess what their behaviors are at work.
Using a combination of these styles may help you gain additional insight about your candidate.
For more information about interviewing techniques and questions, visit www.hranew.com.
Now that you’ve done your recruitment and posted your job ads, it’s time to start sorting through the applications you receive. Reports have said that due to the current job market, employers are flooded with resumes from potential applicants. Keeping this in mind, it is important to narrow your applicant pool to the top candidates, which will help make the time you spend contacting and interviewing candidates be more productive.
Here are a few tips from HR Anew President and CEO Deborah Stallings on what to look for when reviewing resumes and cover letters:
- Demonstrated achievement: Look for specific examples of goals that were accomplished during the candidate’s time with past employers.
- Contributions to the mission, effectiveness, and/or profitability of past employers.
- Patterns of stability and career direction. Stallings said that some candidates demonstrate a pattern of staying with past employers for six months, a year, or a year and a half. “The recruitment and hiring process is very expensive. If this pattern shows, it is likely it will be the same case with you. That is an important thing to pay attention to,” she said. Stallings suggested making a rule on a minimum amount of time an applicant should have worked with a past employer.
- Lengthy descriptions of education.
- Gaps in employment history- If an applicant has been unemployed for some time, look for what they have been doing in that time to keep their skills fresh, whether they have been volunteering, interning, etc.
- Too much personal information.
- Overabundance of qualifiers, such as “had exposure to” or “knowledge of.”
- Sloppy resume: Look out for typos and grammatical errors. This may indicate a lack of attention to detail, as well as reflect negatively on the candidate’s seriousness about the position.
An additional note on reviewing resumes is that a resume is not a legal document, Stallings said, allowing the applicant to write things that may not be true. An employment application that requires the applicant’s signature, however, is a legal document and binds the applicant to what they’ve written.
When reviewing an employment application, make sure the applicant has completed it in its entirety.
“Sometimes an applicant will write ‘see resume’ in sections of an application. You should have the expectation that applicants will complete each section of the application,” Stallings said. “This gives you the opportunity to compare what they’ve written on their resume and application and determine whether they have been honest with you about their qualifications.”
Stay tuned for the next entries in our hiring series about conducting background checks and drug screenings, as well as the how to interview someone and the legality of your interview questions.
