How to shortlist students in recruitment drive?

Companies have commenced their campus recruitment drives for 2019 and are in the process of hiring students who fared well in their assessments and interviews. As a hiring company, in a campus recruitment drive, you will meet students from different educational backgrounds and it would be difficult to identify the ones that suit your job profile best. For this purpose, you need to have appropriate shortlisting criteria in order to hire the top talent into your firm. In this article, we highlight a few steps to follow while shortlisting students in a campus recruitment drive.

5 simple steps to follow

Have a clear-cut shortlisting criteria: Candidates must be shortlisted based on some specific criteria such as grades, skills and knowledge in a particular field like computer coding, problem-solving, aptitude, etc. Whatever may be the job profile, having a clear-cut skill requirement for it is extremely necessary. Keeping an eye for additional skills is also a bonus for the recruiters. Whether a good programmer with amazing communication skills or an analytical person with good leadership quality, these additional skills can help both the individual and the company to grow collectively.  

Assessment tests to evaluate the right skill set: Assessment tests to evaluate the right skill set have to be created by the company to shortlist the best candidates and filter out the average performers. The assessment tests can be standard ones that evaluate thinking and problem solving ability, aptitude, language skills etc., or can be specific or customized ones that evaluate core knowledge and in-depth understanding of the subject matter.  

Understand the behavioural skills of the candidates: Interviewing candidates can give a good insight their behavioural skills since the interviewers are able to gauge the candidate’s interest from his her attitude in the round. This also explains about how interested the individual is about the job and whether they are genuinely willing to learn and grow. Students’ behaviour in an interview speaks volumes about how good or bad fit they can be for the company. Apart from the relevant skill set, interviewers also look for a positive attitude, self-sufficiency, and proactive participation, which are a part of behavioural skills. Candidates possessing all these qualities are a good fit for the company.

Set goals for every interview round: As a company, you might want to conduct several assessment and interview rounds before you shortlist the final candidates for your firm. Setting a clear-cut goal for each round along with the expected outcome is important for a successful campus drive. For instance, if an organization plans to hold 2-3 rounds of interviews, the panel must focus on evaluating different skills in each of these rounds and not just rely on assessing a single skill. Also, after every round, the panel should diligently maintain a proper feedback form or scorecard to help the make appropriate decisions.

Evaluate candidates based on their overall performance: Recruiters must pay keen attention to a candidate’s overall performance to understand whether they are a right fit for the job profile or not. For instance, a candidate performing very well in all assessment tests may not do that great in the interview and vice versa. Also, all the panel members should hold a detailed discussion together on the feedback and interview scores of each candidate and take their assessment test scores into account before making the final call.

Following these criteria for shortlisting candidates in the upcoming recruitment drives for 2019 will greatly benefit you in identifying the top talent and onboarding them into the firm. It will also help you in meeting your 2019 recruitment numbers.

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