From Fortune 500 companies to the mom-and-pop shops on the corner, every hiring manager could use some help now and then. That’s why Top Applicant is introducing our Employer’s Ask blog series. Our platform draws from decades of combined experience managing corporations and small businesses alike. For our first guide, let’s dive into how to prepare for an interview.
The Resume
Top Applicant makes it easy to read resumes and keep them all organized. Gone are the days of sifting through stacks of resumes. Instead, our platform allows you to quickly see new resumes as they come in and even view candidates that haven’t applied yet! After you’ve read through the resume, you can favorite your top choices to organize which candidates you’d like to take a closer look at and if you’d like to invite any other potential applicants.
What Our Experts Look For
To decide how to prepare for an interview, it’s best to determine what you’re looking for in a candidate. At Top Applicant, we help every job seeker put their best foot forward. Here’s what our hiring experts look for when reviewing resumes.
1. Character
First and foremost, if the candidate doesn’t feel like a good fit for your company culture, there’s a good chance they’re not. A character interview can reveal how the applicant describes their roles, education, and experience. Look for positive, active phrasing.
2. Qualifications
We believe that everyone has the capacity to have a great career. However, if someone doesn’t have the right qualifications, it can be hard to figure out how to prepare for an interview with them. If an applicant doesn’t meet all our requirements, but meets some of them and displays extraordinary character, our hiring managers may discuss helping them meet our qualifications in an interview. We don’t believe in counting anyone out, so consider pitching additional roles that may meet your needs and suit the candidate better.
3. Timeline
Our hot take on resumes is that gaps are okay if there’s a good reason behind them. Hiring managers traditionally don’t like gaps in education or employment. But let’s get real: How many jobs have you had? We’ve all had to take time to craft our careers or change careers altogether. Don’t stress out about how to prepare for an interview for someone with gaps in their resume. Just ask about them in the interview, or read their cover letter and attempt to understand their situation better.
Cover Letter
One of the most crucial tools we use to determine how to prepare for an interview is the cover letter. Obvious things to read for are things like plagiarism and discrepancies. However, not all hiring managers are communication specialists, so these are the top three things our specialists recommend looking for in a cover letter.
What To Read For
The best way to understand how to prepare for an interview is to let the cover letter show what’s important to the candidate. If the job description and the cover letter don’t match, our platform makes it easy to communicate with candidates and ask any pre-screening questions. This ensures that any concerns can be addressed if you think the applicant has potential even if their cover letter isn’t the best.
1. To the Point
If you’re like our hiring managers, you don’t have time to learn every applicant’s life story. So, when deciding how to prepare for an interview, move on if you can’t find what you’re looking for with a quick skim. If you’d like to go back and read more about a candidate, just favorite the applicant in our applicant tracking system and read more when you have time.
2. Positivity
When determining how to prepare for an interview, a cover letter is the best way to understand how a candidate views themselves. If they use positive phrases and back them up with clear and proven examples, then you’ve found your next top applicant. However, if they’re just throwing in buzzwords in an attempt to impress you, we suggest moving on if you don’t believe a candidate is genuine.
3. Truth Builds Trust
If a candidate can’t be truthful in their cover letter, what do you think they’ll be like in your company? When vetting a cover letter, carefully read for potential plagiarism, templates, and embellishments between the resume and the cover letter. As you become more experienced with how to prepare for an interview, you may find yourself asking, “Do I trust what this person says?” If you have any doubts, we suggest focusing on trustworthy candidates regardless of what their resume says.
Features Only on Top Applicant
Now that we’ve shared what our experts look for, let’s take a look at what hiring managers love about our platform. To create our totally unique hiring platform, we built every feature from the ground up by putting communication above all. This not only helps employers decide how to prepare for an interview, but it also allows applicants to make the best first impression possible by taking the application process beyond the page.
Modern Profiles
It’s simple. Top Applicant makes it easy to understand each other. While other job search platforms cater to either applicants or employers more, we level the playing field by making profiles for employers just as easy to read as potential employees. The profiles for businesses and job seekers are simple, organized, and clear. This allows everyone that uses our platform to know how to prepare for an interview on both sides of the hiring process.
For Companies
We give employers on Top Applicant the capability to be completely unique. Company profiles on our platform are built to give businesses a personality in addition to common features. For everything from company descriptions, and overviews, to connectivity with candidates, Top Applicant takes everything one step further.
Companies are able to use our platform to prescreen candidates as well as find job seekers that may be a great fit. Our matchmaking system allows companies to connect with candidates that match job requirements even if they haven’t applied. This helps both companies and candidates get a good idea of how to prepare for an interview.
For Candidates
As your company considers candidates, it’s important to understand how they use our platform as well. Our resume builder makes it easy for every job seeker to create free, modern, professional resumes. To build this, our developers took out everything companies and candidates hate about the hiring process and created a user experience centered around communication.
This approach helps to give our users a clear idea of how to prepare for an interview and so much more. Companies can conduct efficient interviews. Candidates can also answer prescreening questions in their profile, link social media to make the vetting processes easier, and even link videos to their profile to put a face to a name!
Video Integration
One of the most unique aspects of Top Applicant is our video integration capability. On the surface, it sounds complicated, but as long as you can follow a Youtube or Vimeo link, it’s really quite simple. When determining how to prepare for an interview, our video integration feature can help you put your best foot forward, which is why companies and candidates alike love this feature.
For Companies
Companies can utilize video to both attract candidates and find the right fit even before the first interview. While most applications don’t currently include videos, companies are beginning to realize the power of video as they look to hire more effectively and efficiently. By including a brief overview of your company and possibly a prescreened interview, your hiring managers will know how to prepare for an interview without having to sift through thousands of applications, resumes, and cover letters.
For Candidates
Video integration eliminates the chore of breaking the ice for candidates as well. Job seekers are able to include links from Youtube and Vimeo to share highlights of their work, answer any prescreening questions, and provide a brief overview of themselves. This allows everyone to know how to prepare for an interview without having to go through the awkward initial pleasantries over and over again.
Applicant Tracking
One of the most powerful tools hiring managers love using on Top Applicant is our tracking system. This system allows every employer to understand the data behind their hiring process. Employers can use this applicant tracking system to further organize their applicant pool, communicate more effectively with candidates, and track their hiring progress to evolve their process for greater efficiency. The world’s not slowing down any time soon, so Top Applicant makes streamlining every aspect of your hiring process as simple as interpreting data.
Find Your Next Top Applicant Faster
Filling your next position has never been easier. What are you waiting for? Check out all of our features that make finding the best employees easier, or sign up to start hiring on the modern platform that modern companies need!
