Candidate’s photo
We know many HRs who collect photos that absolutely disagree with resumes. One candidate sends a photo in the «nude» style with a cherry in his mouth, the other one makes photo with a bottle in his hand against a background of unbridled fun. What do these «photo reports» speak about? At least about the attitude to their employment. The analysis should also touch the details of the photo, in what setting and pose the candidate is captured, what he is wearing, what his body language is talking about. Even before the meeting with the candidate, this information will help determine both the basic psychotype and the metaprogram profile.
Cover letter
Based on the study of the text of the cover letter, we can evaluate how convincing the candidate is, how clearly and intelligibly he expresses his thoughts, determine his literacy, the structure of the letter, examine the text for adequacy to the context. One of the HRs had a case when a «cry of the heart» was sent as a cover letter. In the letter the candidate literally begged to employ him.
Preferred contact method
The choice of contact methods sometimes indicates whether the candidate is currently working elsewhere. Correspondingly it might shed light on the habits of behavior (e.i. a candidate hides from the employer that he is looking for another job, thus he might be ready to lie in your organization). For example, the candidate denies that he works in a company, but writes that the preferred contact method is mail and indicates a corporate e-mail.
It can also show how important it is for him to find a job; whether the candidate wants to know about his employment «here and now» or he prefers to get an e-mail and have some time to think which place to choose.
CHAPTER 5
PRELIMINARY STAGE – COLLECTING INFORMATION ANOUT A CANDIDATE FROM AVAILABLE SOURCES OF INFORMATION
The next stage of work is collecting information about the candidate / employee from available sources with subsequent analysis.
Working with social networking sites
The first source that we turn to – a personal page in social networking sites (Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, Instagram, MoiMir, etc.). Social networking sites are a storehouse of all sorts of information about a person, but analyzing pages and accounts of a person is a creative task, because there is no clear algorithm here.
Do not forget that filling the page, a person creates his own refined image. Actually, this is how a person would like to present himself to society. Of course, the ideal image is different from reality, and, nevertheless, we are interested in everything that a person tells about himself. What photos does he show, which one does he have as an avatar, what posts does he write, what reposts does he make, what groups he is subscribed for, what he «likes», how detailed is information about him, his statuses, the number of friends and subscribers, etc. Everything that is laid out by a person is connected with his perception of the world, his experience, system of values and beliefs.
Note the important difference between profiling pages in social networking sites and forensic profiling. How profilers come to conclusions when analyzing a crime, a crime scene, behavioral traces cannot be reduced to a formula or structure. The fact is that a person is a rather complex organism. He has a wide range of characteristics, peculiarities, experiences, capabilities and abilities that affect his behavior and decision-making process. There is no simple correlation, when one particular event characterizes one particular trait of a person. And yet, the set of actions that he used to do allows to come to a conclusion regarding his personal characteristics.
Profiler is well aware that when he works on the case of a criminal, he must always have doubts about the correctness of the decision. It is these doubts in the preparation of the profile that force him once again to double-check some things and make sure of other things. If the assumption made does not fit into the overall profile, then it is better to put aside this assumption. It happens that having processed the crime scene, we get data that contradict each other. It means that something went wrong, there is a mistake somewhere. If such a contradiction has arisen, it is better to stop and return to the beginning, to review everything again. So it is easier to understand at what point the mistake occurred.
For example, processing the trace picture and the crime scene, profilers see that the criminal picked the lock in the house, leaving no traces, did not wake anyone up, did everything quietly and carefully. No witnesses. The culprit wiped his fingerprints out or was in gloves, brought the crime instrument with him and then brought it away. The victims were wounded in the bedroom with no signs of a struggle. Most likely, he has experience in this matter and according to the FBI classification he is an organized criminal. But profilers found a broken flower pot in the corridor. Impulsiveness and negligence do not fit into the compiled profile. And since this footprint contradicts the general picture, it was not included into the profile. Besides, profilers do not know who was the author of this change. What if the cat broke the pot?
But we know that in terms of the social networking site page the author of the changes made to an account is the person who being profiled. There are no random elements, there will always be that part of the personality that the person himself wanted to show, so you can work with social networking sites. Here we do not work with the accounts of public people whose accounts are managed by other people, for example, PR experts.
Let us look at some examples.
For instance, in the account a candidate posts a large number of photos in different contexts, with different people, while traveling, doing some extreme sports and everywhere he is smiling. This may indicate a kaleidoscopic nature of events in life, an «opportunity» world picture where the person is ready for a new experience, impressions and is open to the unknown.
This part of his profile will manifest itself not only on vacations, but also at work. This candidate should not be given tasks with strict operational functionality that must be performed «from start to finish» in fixed deadlines. Routine, repeated day after day, is also not his cup of tea. Such an employee will get bored and start creating chaos in the work of other employees. Depending on the mood he will try to bring changes to his work. He will disregard the deadline. So it is better to put such candidates in creative positions, for example, sales, where communication and change of contexts are expected: different people, different places, different conditions.
We came to this conclusion, assuming that besides differences, there are also similarities between forensic profiling and social networking profiling. In the first case profilers use the principle of behavioral consistency. The main essence of the theory of behavioral consistency is that offenders behave relatively equally from crime to crime, even if the focus of crimes is different. And the individual characteristics revealed at the crime scene are also manifested in personal everyday life. The same principle is obligatory in our case.
Let us take another example: a person puts out photoes with repetitive contexts, regularly maintains his page, posts information abouthis his interests with a certain sequence. There is a tendency to procedural actions, planning and desire for stability. The tasks that such people perform well are related to proven algorithms and mandatory operations.
If a person puts out a large amount of information about himself, but only from the point of view of the professional sphere, then most likely, the page has been specially created for this purpose. It is difficult to evaluate in this case, although a definite conclusion can still be made. It can be seen that a person is professionally targeted, clearly differentiates contexts and wants to demonstrate only this very part of his personality. Otherwise, such a profile says nothing.
There