SkillSurvey Reference Check: A New Tool for the Hiring Process

Carnegie Mellon University’s Office of Human Resources (OHR) will be launching a new tool to support the hiring process: SkillSurvey Reference Check. This web-based tool helps to streamline the hiring process by providing an efficient and effective way to check the references of potential candidates.

This tool allows a candidate’s references to complete confidential surveys to provide insight on the candidate’s skills and abilities. Once completed, those surveys are conveniently analyzed and summarized to aid hiring managers in making final hiring decisions. The tool will be managed by OHR recruiters for the benefit of hiring managers campus wide, providing consistency to CMU’s hiring process. This includes the following highlights:

• More meaningful information: SkillSurvey reference requests come directly from the candidate; therefore, there is an increased likelihood that references will provide meaningful information.
• Analytical reports developed: Once the required reference surveys have been completed, the HR recruiter generates a SkillSurvey report for the hiring manager or search committee’s review.
  • A SkillSurvey report summarizes the reference results and rates the candidate in a number of competencies related to the position.
  • If considering more than one candidate, SkillSurvey can provide reports highlighting each candidates’ performance side-by-side.
• Job specific feedback: By making their reference surveys position specific, SkillSurvey is able to acquire job-specific feedback from references that can help predict the success of a candidate.