Basic tips for Capturing a Candidate’s Basic Information

The Placement Partner system was designed and created to help you manage every aspect of your recruitment desk.  One vital aspect is your candidate database.  Below are some basic tips to help you capture a candidate’s basic information quickly and carefully and if you have always wondered what the reason’s are behind some of our guidelines, read the “What’s the reason?” after each tip.

1. For best results, it is recommended that the candidate’s basic page is completed by the consultant who interviewed the candidate.  What’s the reason? This is because some of the information required, is subjective and if you have not met the candidate, you may not be able to enter this information accurately.                                                                                           
2. All bold fields are compulsory fields and must be completed.  All other fields are optional. What’s the reason? Bold fields help you to create a comprehensive, quality record that can be compared to other candidate’s records.  In other words, we help you to fill in the important information on each and every candidate so that you don’t have any ‘holes’ in a candidate’s record.
3. Many of the options available on the system can be customised by your Super User.  If the option you are looking for is not available on any of the drop down menu’s; ask you Super User to add this option for you. What’s the reason for only the Super User being able to do this? This is simply to prevent options being duplicated and also to make sure your system remains a quality system.  If the adding of options is un-co-ordinated, you can just imagine the chaos that could ensue!
4. To select more than one option, hold down the CTRL key and select the relevant options. What’s the reason? This simply allows you to select multiple options when more than one option is relevant on a candidate’s record.
5. Where a candidate is disabled, tick the Disabled tick box and explain the disability in the Notes box at the bottom of the page.  What’s the reason?  Disabled candidates are sought after in our country and being aware of a candidate’s type of disability is essential when considering them for particular positions.
6. The Residential Area can be used to indicate either where your candidate lives or where your candidate is willing to work.  The information provided here is useful for searching purposes. What’s the reason?  More often than not, it will be useful to know if a candidate is willing to work in a certain area rather than where they live.  You are always able to see where a candidate lives by looking at their address in the address box.  Placement Partner must ‘work’ for you, so decide which works best for you when capturing the Residential area.
7. Ensure you have a minimum of two contact Telephone numbers for all candidates and if possible, an email address.   You can capture additional email addresses, by separating them with a semi-colon. Use the Other box for any additional contact numbers or details. What’s the reason?  It goes without saying if you have no way of contacting your candidate, they are of no value to you.  We have tried to cater for any and every contact detail type.  The more contact details you have, the better!
8. Ref No.  This is an optional field which can be used for your company’s internal reference number of the candidate or for the unique Placement Partner generated reference number.  If this feature is activated on your system, you will have the option to generate a unique reference number, once only, by clicking on the generate Ref No button.  What’s the reason?  Reference numbers can be very helpful for matching paperwork to the on-line system.
9. The Sector and Job Functions fields are the most important pieces of information on your candidate’s record. Select these fields carefully and remember you may select more than one sector and job function/s if required.  (Should there be Sectors and Job Functions that you need to add to Placement Partner, please contact your Super User who can add them to the system.) What’s the reason? Classifying your candidate correctly according to their sector and job function means that you will have a better chance of placing them!  All your searches start by searching on Sector and Job function so classifying them correctly means you will be able to match them to vacancies quickly and correctly.
10. The Key competencies field is used to specify key words which uniquely identify candidates by specifying their area of expertise and/or strong personal attributes. It is very important that you keep these key competencies to a maximum of a few key words. What’s the reason? Key competencies are a great field to search on and are very helpful when refining your searches.

The Placement Partner Team is always available to help you.  If you are ever unsure about something on the system, even if it is something about the ‘basics’, please give us a call or send us an email. We will be glad to help!

Getting to grips with Job Requirement Search Types 

You may have noticed that we added the option to select the type of search you would like to do when searching job requirements.  You can either search ANY of the selected fields or ALL of the selected fields.  This has been added to the system to help you especially when you are searching for candidate’s who may fall into more than one job sector or fill more than one job function. The search types mean you can specify whether you would like the system to return search results that match ANY of your criteria or ALL of your criteria.

Lets look at the example above: If I were to search for candidates in my database in the ’Admin, Office & Support’ sector who have filled the job function of both ‘Call Centre Supervisor’ and ‘Call Centre Team Leader’, then I would select the search type as match ALL. However if I wear to search for candidates in my database who have either filled the job function of ‘Call Centre Supervisor’ or ‘Call Centre Team Leader’, I would select match ANY.

The default option is to match ANY of your selected fields, so remember to change the search type if you would like your search to return candidates matching ALL your criteria.

If we can be of ANY further assistance to you, please give us a ring at the office, we would love to help you with ALL of your queries!

Warm regards,

The Placement Partner Team