Topgrading

Brad’s recent Topgrading Tips dealt with the subject of the deceptiveness of resumes; nearly every resume that comes through the Human Resources Department portrays an A player, making it extremely difficult to figure out who you should talk to and who does not measure up.  If you are only screening candidates using resumes, you are interacting with too many mediocre candidates on the phone and face-to-face.  Your candidate pool is watered down, and getting those mediocre candidates in front of hiring managers will result in your organization experiencing too many mishires because they (hiring managers) will often choose the “least bad” candidate.

 

The Topgrading Career History Form cuts through the fluff and exaggerations included in most resumes, acting like a sieve to catch mediocre candidates and allowing the high performers through to the remainder of the selection process.  All of that additional information you get from the CHF highlights “red flags,” so interviewers know where to dig deeper before meeting with a candidate, resulting in better information at each stage of the selection process.  Even if interviewers are not skilled Topgrading Interviewers, using the Topgrading Career History Form will significantly increase the probability of hiring an A player because there will be fewer non-A players in the pool of candidates they are choosing from.

 

I recently spoke with Danielle Robinson, Topgrading Director at K&N Management, a great Topgrading company that consistently achieves better than 80% success in hiring.  She said, “I love the Topgrading Career History Form.  It weeds out people wo are not willing to put in the time filling out the form (which usually takes about an hour).  I know if the person is going to fit our company and culture before even talking to them, and when I do talk with them, the screening interview is shorter because I don’t have to fish for information.”

 

So, if you are new to Topgrading and want to know where to start, we strongly suggest starting to use the Topgrading Career History Form now.  If you have been using other Topgrading Tools such as Job Scorecards and the Tandem Topgrading Interview and have been somewhat frustrated because you are wasting time with mediocre candidates, the Topgrading Career History Form will almost certainly turboboost your hiring success rate.