Why is the questionnaire needed?
HR specialists widely practice the active recruitment method, when they attract as many applicants as possible for one position. In order to select a suitable employee from among them, applicants are asked to fill out a questionnaire. A questionnaire for an applicant when applying for a job will help the personnel officer analyze the personal and professional qualities of applicants, give them an overall assessment and select candidates for testing and interviews.
Mandatory use
The application form for employment is required only for state and municipal employees, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, tax inspectors, as well as citizen applicants for participation in elections. It is impossible to accept documents from applicants for the position being filled without submitting a questionnaire. The questionnaire form is approved by the Government.
It is important to know! When employing other categories of citizens, a questionnaire cannot be required among other documents (Article 65 of the Labor Code). But many organizations, individual entrepreneurs or LLCs develop their own version of the survey, inviting the employee to answer it voluntarily.
What questions does the civil service application form contain?
The official sample application form for a job candidate from the Government Order contains 23 points. This amount of information is enough to create a general description of the applicant. In addition to the formal fields about name, date of birth, place of residence, education, and detailed work experience, the form includes questions that allow you to assess the applicant’s trustworthiness and involvement in government affairs:
- about changing the surname;
- about citizenship and the reasons for its change, if it was different before;
- about promotions in civil, state or military service, when and by whom class rank was assigned, if any;
- about a criminal record;
- is there access to state secrets;
- about the availability of state awards and insignia;
- addresses, positions of close relatives, including former ones;
- about staying abroad, for what purpose, as well as about living abroad of close relatives, including former ones.
Employment Questionnaires - A View from All Sides
Such care in verbal expression is also necessary when compiling a questionnaire. Despite the fact that, in addition to personnel practice, questionnaire surveys are widely used in sociology, psychology and other sciences, we should not forget that the results obtained on its basis, describing the behavior, opinions and attitudes of the respondents, require confirmation by other methods - only then the conclusions based on the results obtained information can be considered reliable and reliable.
Ideally, the questionnaire should contain questions that allow you to evaluate the applicant in terms of compliance with the personal specification (that is, describe what qualities a person must have to successfully perform the work assigned to him). Naturally, it makes no sense to create a questionnaire for each position. In the literature on personnel records and personnel management, it is often recommended to create, for example, three forms of questionnaire: for workers and junior service personnel; for specialists and technical performers; for managers. Having developed a fairly large number of different types of questionnaires, I came to the conclusion that it is much more convenient to use one common form for all categories of workers, but with several “applications”, which were already mentioned above. It is the latter that can vary depending on the position or profession, and therefore provide the necessary information about the professionalism of the applicant.
How to write questions correctly
The questionnaire should help the personnel officer get an idea of the candidate’s professional, business and personal characteristics, consider his suitability for performing job duties, ability to work in a team, and ability to take into account not only his own interests, but also general ones.
It is necessary to highlight the main criteria for each vacancy, which will be the basis of the requirements when selecting a candidate. Here is a model for effective employee selection, developed using modern methods.
What are the purposes of the survey?
Both employees and future candidates often underestimate the opportunities that a competent survey provides. Thanks to this procedure, it becomes easier to resolve a number of issues of strategic importance.
Applicants can find out in advance what the main tasks and goals of the enterprise itself are before applying for a job. Many questions hide the meaning of a specific position or the entire enterprise as a whole.
Some managers like creative people and ideas. Others strive to find good performers who are not used to deviating from the proposed standards.
Questionnaires for managers and HR department employees allow you to immediately obtain all the important information regarding candidates. The data is then kept at hand. The answers to the questions will tell you which points require clarification.
Based on the questionnaire, personal files are often compiled, which also facilitate record keeping and systematization of information.
Staff psychologists often conduct additional analysis based on completed questionnaires. They evaluate not only the answers given, but also the handwriting used. This step is justified, since it will allow us to evaluate the internal reserves that applicants have to solve certain specific problems. This makes it easier to identify the ability to work alone or in a team.
Education
Education information should include detailed information about educational institutions, graduation date, and qualifications awarded. Information about additional education and self-education of the candidate is important. For example, about knowledge of foreign languages: what and at what level. A question about computer literacy is also required.
Most organizations pay attention to the basic education of applicants and give preference to graduates of reputed higher education institutions, but skills and experience are also considered in parallel. Modern employers are happy to see specialists with three to five years of experience.
VI. Recommendation Information
There is enough advice in personnel and other specialized literature on how to prepare recommendations, and applicants study it no less carefully than personnel officers. From a “professional applicant” who has studied more than one manual on employment and personnel selection, most likely, one should expect a folder with prepared letters of recommendation, certified by the most impressive coats of arms and signatures. But it doesn’t matter if the applicant is not “recommended” properly - you can always call the company where he previously worked (by the way, in my experience there has never been a single case where the company’s management refused to provide a recommendation). To do this, you need to find out who you can contact and who, in the candidate’s opinion, can objectively answer your questions. The fact that a person indicates his potential recommenders (he still does not know what you will ask and what they will answer) can be regarded as the ability to “peacefully” part with his former colleagues and maintain business relations even after dismissal.
To do this, read the answers to the following questions:
- Which of your former colleagues and managers can give you a verbal recommendation or a letter of recommendation?
- Address, telephone number of the organization and official.
- Which of our company employees can give you a recommendation?
Experience and skills
It is proposed to indicate previous places of work and job responsibilities in chronological order. Vocational questions about knowledge and skills cannot always be included in the general form. But it is convenient to add a question to your sample questionnaire for a job interview whether the applicant agrees to take a test for knowledge of the profession.
An employee may have a specialized education, but no experience, or vice versa - have suitable experience, but have a different education. It is necessary to correctly assess its potential capabilities. An applicant who has no experience, but has business qualities and energy, will begin to work more efficiently over time than an employee with more experience.
Psychological techniques when applying for a job
Nowadays, it is very common to ask candidates for vacancies to complete tasks that will indicate the degree of development of logical and spatial thinking, the ability to memorize several facts at the same time, and the ability to compare and generalize certain knowledge.
The most famous and well-written is the IQ test, which was compiled by Eysenck. The result of completing this type of task will give a more detailed answer about the candidate’s intelligence, in particular compared to a questionnaire where the subject describes himself independently. Direct communication between the head of the company and a potential employee is also an important step in assessing the personality of a candidate for a vacancy. During the conversation, you can ask clarifying questions, and also evaluate the interviewee’s speech skills, his self-control, self-confidence, and reaction. During the communication process, you can find out information about both the personal and professional characteristics of potential employees.
Health
It is believed that it is inappropriate to include a question about health in an applicant’s sample application form when applying for a job. In Russia, for example, discrimination based on disability is not allowed - Article 3.1 of the Federal Law No. 181 of November 24, 1995. But when it comes to professional selection for positions requiring great physical endurance, candidates are expected not only to have exceptional health, but also to have certain sports skills . The selection stages, for example, for firefighters and rescuers of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, include both a psychologist’s opinion and a medical examination. Physical health also determines the fate of candidates for many working professions, especially in heavy industry. Therefore, questions about health must be justified.
How to pass psychological tests during a job interview
- Follow the “I’m a plus” rule. That is, about yourself a little better than in reality. But only a little bit.
- Try to ensure that your answers reflect a positive attitude and a positive perception of the world.
- Psychological tests are an auxiliary tool for selection.
In trying to present yourself as a knight without fear or reproach, it is important not to overdo it . Your task is not to get confused yourself. Sometimes there are “traps” in such tests, for example: the same question, with words rearranged, is contained in the test several times. If the answers are different, you may be suspected of lying or inadequacy.
What not to ask
When recruiting personnel, two parties take an active part: the employer and the candidate for new employees. We must try to interest the future employee and leave a good impression of the organization. Questions about nationality, religion, marital status, and living conditions can interfere.
You should not include a question about the purpose of employment - it causes awkwardness and distrust in the personnel service. Highly qualified applicants know their worth and can evaluate the work of the personnel department, and based on it they get an idea about the entire team of the organization.
The choice is up to personnel officers
When an applicant with a well-developed resume comes to the personnel officer, the task of studying the candidate becomes much easier for him. And he can offer a questionnaire and a choice of 2 actions:
- make a proposal to mark the answers given in the summary with the appropriate mark;
- ask to transfer information from the resume to the issued application form.
Of course, documents separately create some difficulties for the personnel officer, because there is a need to look at them one by one. That is why, if a personnel officer asks you to fill out a questionnaire, it is better to answer all the questions in detail, regardless of how carefully the resume is written. In addition, the resume does not provide any value - it is the candidate’s presentation of himself as an employee, which is necessary for the organization.
At the same time, it is the questionnaire that is recognized as a document that is included in the personal file of each employee and is then positioned as one of the most important factors for forming a decision on promoting an employee up the career ladder.
