At a recent HR event, I spoke with an attendee that had years of experience as a recruiter. He said a key component to his success was to ‘strike while the iron was hot’. In this case the hot iron would be an emotional and temporarily disgruntled employee. Often he would get really great people approach him to find them a job (yesterday, of course) only to shortly after retreat back to their existing positions and quit the search. The reason for their immediate job hunt was that they weren’t recognized for a job they did, given the bonus they deserved or had their great idea recognized. So for this small window of time, they decide to look at other employment options. When given enough time, their anger subsides, the conditions change or feel like they overacted, and so, they quit job seeking. Some of his best placements are these temporarily disgruntled employees. It was all about placing them within this small timeframe while ‘emotional’.
The purpose of our discussion was to chat about how video interviewing could be used to secure these candidates. The pre-screening process is significantly quicker than traditional phone interviews and the live video interview a huge time saver for the candidate in terms of travel. This was a no-brainer. What it made me think of was the human aspect behind human resources. It sounds silly, but think about it. A bunch of people having good and bad days and making life-changing decisions because of it. This didn’t only apply to the candidates, but the recruiters and hiring managers as well. While they could strive to be as objective as possible with each candidate, they are still human. Their decision on whether or not to move a candidate forward could be influenced by what they were personally experiencing at that point in time. It’s this variable that draws many of our clients to our tool and more specifically, the review function. Candidates can complete their interviews and can then be reviewed and rated by multiple people. In the automated interview, they are even asked the same questions as their peers, which eliminates any of the disadvantages of an organic phone conversation steering in the wrong direction or being cut short.
For many years, I myself have been battled with a chronic case of “The Mondays” and actively discourage speaking to me until I’m two Ristrettos into my day. Fortunately for everyone, my most challenging daily decision is what I am having for lunch (soup or…. soup?). Now in my many conversations with recruiters and hiring managers, they have impressed me immensely with their diligence in finding great candidates in the fairest way possible. I just love that we’ve now transitioned to a time where technology allows the recruitment process to be taken to the next level, resulting in humans behaving in the most humane way possible.
