Southwest Airlines is known for hiring great people. One of the ways they ensure they’re hiring the best people is by getting insights from team members during the interview process.  More specifically, Southwest Airlines has their candidates fly to Dallas for an interview, but what the candidates don’t know is that the boarding pass they use has a special code on it that flags them so flight attendants and people who work the gates will know that they are being interviewed. Employees get to see the candidates when they’re in a more natural state, as opposed to the buttoned-up person who shows up to the interview. They all give feedback on how the candidates acted, giving the hiring managers critical insights into whether they should hire the person.  Those “behind the scenes” insights help Southwest hire the right people. 

Our team of recruiters gain those same “behind the scenes” insights about candidates as they move through your hiring process.  We know how responsive they are, how they solve problems, how professional they are, and much more.  Think about it this way, your hiring team will likely have 3-5 interactions with the candidate, but we engage with that same candidate at least 10 times during the interview process. 

Any candidate Kester Search Group submits to a client has gone through a multi-step screening process.  

1. Initial phone screen: This step ensures the person meets our client’s minimum requirements and overall fit to the hiring profile. If the candidate makes it past the phone screen, we’ll ask them to research the company over the next day or two. 
2. Post-research interview: We’ll use this step to discover how much they’ve looked into the company, assessing if they understand what the company is trying to accomplish and asking if they can share with us why they’d be interested in talking to a hiring manager. 
3. Resume walk-through: If the candidate makes it to this step, we’ll have them walk through each position on their resume covering the product(s) they represented, call-points, territory, successes, and why they left.  

So, much like Southwest asks their Flight Attendants about their candidates, next time you’re near the end of the interview process gain some insights from your recruiting team at Kester Search Group.  It could be the additional insights you need to make great hires for your team.