Hiring Step #4: Career History Form and Topgrading Snapshot, page 98.
- Resumes are too often vague and include a lot of fluff, so it is difficult to differentiate between A Player candidates and Non-As.
- Topgraders use the Topgrading Career History Form to get honest and complete information, and can instantly understand a candidate’s total career by looking at their Topgrading Snapshot.
- Combined, the Topgrading Career History Form and Topgrading Snapshot solve the major hiring problems of dishonest (in resumes), incomplete information (in resumes and application forms), verifiability of what candidates say (TORC), and speed to sort through candidate information.
Screening from Resumes is “Garbage In, Garbage Out”
- Companies mis-hire far too many people because popular culture considers it okay to fake resumes and interviews.
- I created the Topgrading Career History Form so that clients would get more thorough and valuable information and be better able to screen candidates preinterview.
- The Topgrading Career History Form is far more than an application form with TORC in the instructions.
- It requests all the information you and I wish resumes routinely included:
- Full compensation history
- True reasons for leaving jobs
- Likes and dislikes in jobs
- Honest estimates of boss ratings of overall performance
- Honest self-ratings of competencies
- A self-appraisal
- It causes C Players to drop out instantly.
- A Players will eagerly complete the form and look forward to interviews and arranging reference calls.
- The smart “one-two” punch is to use ATSs to cut the number of resumes, but then to use the Topgrading Career History Form to cut the stack to only sharp, honest candidates.
How Companies Use the Topgrading Career History Form and the Topgrading Snapshot
- Topgrading does not talk with any candidate without having their complete Career History Form.
- Do not waste your time studying fictitious resumes; only review resumes of candidates with impressive, revealing, and honest Career History Forms.
- When candidates go to the Career section of your website, they are invited to complete the Career History Form online.
- “Thank you for responding to our ad for [job]. We take pride in hiring the best. To move to the next step in the hiring process, please complete our application form by clicking [here].”
Topgrading Snapshot: Instant Insight Into Candidates
- The Topgrading Career History Form scares C Players away and attracts A Players, and it enables you to only interview the best candidates. There is only one problem clients have asked us to solve, and the Topgrading Snapshot solves it. The problem is time!
- Everyone is so busy that no one seems to have a full day to screen resumes/Career History Forms for one job.
- For years clients have said it would be great if we could devise some way to screen completed Career History Forms faster, but not do it superficially.
- In response, we created the Topgrading Snapshot, the picture of the most important and revealing parts of the Career History Form. With it you can honestly, accurately, and validly screen candidates in and out in only seconds.
- The Topgrading Snapshot is a one-page picture (graphic image) distilling the most vital data elements from the completed Career History Form.
- What to say to a candidate: “By taking the time to complete the Career History Form, you’ll give our interviewers a lot of valuable information about you, so all of the interviews will go smoother and your time will be more productive.”
Picture This…
- You run an ad for a position and receive 30 resumes.
- Your HR Professional sends an email to all applicants requesting they complete the Career History Form.
- The TORC “Truth Serum” immediately scared away 10 candidates – the weakest ones.
- The other 20 candidates completed the Career History Form.
- You and your HR Professional receive 20 completed Career History Forms and 20 Topgrading Snapshots.
- In just 15 minutes of looking at 20 Topgrading Snapshots, you cut the 20 candidates to 4.
- You then study the Career History Form of those 4 candidates and select 3 for phone interviews.
- You invite 2 candidates in for in-person interviews.
Topgrading Snapshot Example
- Years go across the bottom.
- This candidate only had two employers
- He has been with his current employer since 1997 – not a job hopper.
- Compensation is on the vertical axis.
- His compensation has been moving higher across his career – a mark of a high performer.
- You can see from his current compensation whether Erik is in about the right compensation range for the job being filled.
- The Topgrading Snapshot also shows the reasons why a candidate left an employer.
- Erik has left two employers and both were his choice – often the case for A Players.
- Finally, the Career History Form requests boss ratings.
- Erik says that his first boss would give a Very Good overall performance rating.
- But all three bosses in the past 15 years would rate his performance as Excellent – indicating A Player status.
- Companies report that they first look to see if the person’s current compensation is “in the ballpark,” and if not, rejection takes a couple of seconds.
- Then they look for dark green boss ratings and reasons for leaving – and if they see a lot of red and blue, that’s not indicative of a top candidate. Green boss ratings are Very Good and Excellent, and green for Reasons for Leaving means it was 100% their initiative.
