First of all, let me start start my first article by saying how exciting I am to have joined Skillmeter. I am a true believer that we will succeed in what we set out to do: help recruiters manage sensibly the candidates' skills while reducing the time needed for the hiring process altogether.

I’m super happy to welcome Adrian, who joined Skillmeter team as Operations Manager.

Nowadays Hiring Professionals have an additional weapon to screen candidates. We are talking about social media as a recruitment tool. It would be unwise not to take advantage of this powerful opportunity which is free, even though a bit time consuming. However, a study conducted by Reppler has shown that 5 % don’t use social networking sites to screen prospective employees.

I’m super excited to announce that now Skillmeter officially includes BambooHR integration.

So now, with a BambooHR account you can:

• Assign a test to an employee defined in BambooHR
• Have the employee take the test in Skillmeter.com
• Employee test results are uploaded to BambooHR as PDF documents in "Skillmeter Results" folder
• Employee test results are also available in Skillmeter

There are many discussions among HR Professionals regarding the effectiveness of selecting talent using video resumes. Many consider it on the one hand as an additional  marketing tool, on the other hand they are convinced that it will never be able to replace a traditional CV and the opportunity to meet a person face to face. However, in an annual employer survey conducted by Vault Inc. it showed that 89 % of employers would watch a video resume if it were submitted to them. In comparison to that, only 17 % have actually viewed a video resume so far. The main reason why employers (52 %) would welcome video resumes is the opportunity to see a candidate’s professional presentation and demeanor. 

Apart from having good communication skills, being a good team player is another very important skill that most employers are looking for. Having great team players on board can give a company the crucial competitive edge. How can you spot the real team player? 

If you are responsible for hiring, it would be wise to do some reference checks. In this case make sure that you have the candidates’ permission to do so. You can either do it on your own or you can contact a company that will check references for you and provide you with a report. 

In my previous blog post I mentioned five strategies as to how an interviewer can find out to what extent a job candidate is motivated. In this blog post I would like to give you some further ideas. 

Nowadays the business world is highly competitive and there is no shortage of talent for various job roles. The question is: How much does a CV really reveal about a job candidate’s level of motivation? A Hiring Manager would have to meet or talk to the jobseeker in order to find out. I would like to share some of the strategies that you can apply when faced with this challenge.

Did you know that according to a CareerBuilder article “Job postings with video icons are viewed 12 % more than postings without video? On average, CareerBuilder customers receive a 34 % greater application rate when they add video to their job postings.”