When your company is hiring and interviewing, it’s one of the only times that the jobseeker market and your competitors get to take a close-up look at your business and the processes that it uses. So what story are you telling them?
One of my clients recently had an interview scheduled for a director-level role that they were trying to fill. Five minutes before the call was due to start, the CEO cancelled on the candidate, and ten minutes after that, they tried to reschedule it.
You can picture the scene. The candidate was sitting there in his suit, waiting in the video call for the CEO to turn up. When he finally did, the first words out of his mouth were an apology and then a request to reschedule.
You can imagine how the candidate felt.
In fact, they were so put off by this that they turned around and said, “I don’t want to reschedule because I don’t think the company’s culture is right for me. If the leader is that disorganized, I don’t think it will be an environment that I’ll thrive in.”
So what’s the lesson here?
Well, you might have the best product solution on the market, but if your hiring process is dehumanizing, convoluted or just plain clunky, the best candidates will pick up on that. They’ll start to see it as indicative of how you’ll treat them when they join the company, and they’ll also think that your company’s processes aren’t optimized for success.
The best candidates will self-select or fall out of the process and you’ll be stuck choosing from the best of the unemployed and/or below average candidates. And that’s not good for business.
Remember that your company isn’t the only company that’s hiring. When those top candidates are looking for a new job role, they’re going to go with whichever brand is perceived to be the best. If they’ve witnessed that your company’s processes are lacking, that’s not going to be you.
Conversely, a tight and well-orchestrated hiring process will send the message that your company values and respects its employees, has optimized processes for success and is a force to be reckoned with when competing for customers.
You want candidates to be impressed by your company, its management and its processes. You also want them to feel disappointed if they’re not selected, rather than feeling as though they dodged a bullet.
The good news is that you get to decide the narrative of the story that you tell people during your hiring process. And so if you haven’t already done so, perhaps it’s time to take a closer look at the way your company approaches recruitment.
The good news is that recruitment is my bread and butter, and so if you’re struggling to tell your story in the way that you want to, I can help. Get in touch with me today to find out more, or follow me on your social networking sites of choice for more articles. I’ll see you soon for another one!
