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November 1, 2021
It’s that spooky time of year again, and many hiring teams are experiencing the ghosts and goblins of a tight labor market.
We asked real businesses like yours which hiring “tricks” they’re avoiding and which “treats” they’re embracing. Here’s what they said:
Not every recruiting tactic works. In fact, some practices are downright scary. Watch out for these tricks…
Relying on job boards was an obstacle that we didn’t realize until we weren’t getting a strong stream of applicants. More and more people are searching for a job via social media, so we just weren’t seeing the same number of applications that we used to get via online job boards alone.
-Logan Mallory, Vice President of Motivosity
“A “trick” was trying to hire on TikTok. To be honest, I didn’t think that this trend would work at all given that we’re a law firm, and I was right. It was far more trouble than it was worth. TikTok is only going to work for certain types of businesses, and ours was not one of them!”
-Mark Pierce, CEO of Wyoming Trust & LLC Attorney
“Employer branding has emerged as something extremely important today.
During one of our recent social media hiring campaigns, we did not receive an excellent response from candidates. The response was just average. When we investigated the issue, we realized that the lack of employer branding on social media was responsible for the average response.
So, for recruiters hiring during Halloween, it is imperative to focus on employer branding using social media platforms. If possible, they should use employee-generated content for the same as it is authentic and generates maximum impact.”
-Jessica Robinson, Content & Human Resource Manager with The Speaking Polymath
Even if you’ve fallen victim to hiring tricks, there are always new strategies to try out. Embrace these recruiting treats…
-Alex Mastin, Founder, CEO of Home Grounds.
I have found that starting the interview by asking them to talk about something they are really proud or happy about helps to ease their tension and make the interview feel more natural.
“The hiring treat that’s been working for us is reaching out to local colleges and universities as well as professional organizations to find candidates. We’ve had great success especially from the professional organizations, and we’ve made about 65% of our hires from these direct outreach programs.”
“A “treat” that’s been working well for us is posting on industry-specific job boards as well as the traditional bigger online ones. We also reach out to alumni associations and have them share our job postings as well.”
“A strategy that has always worked for us when hiring on Halloween is to get dressed up as ghosts during the interview session. This strategy works by helping us see the true personalities of candidates. When we dress up as ghosts, an air of relaxation fills the interview environment. As a result, candidates begin to show their true personalities to us. We can easily find out which candidate will be a perfect fit for our company’s culture and which won’t. Moreover, when we are dressed as ghosts, we expect candidates to catch the vibe and get into a celebratory mode too. But, if a candidate still remains too reserved, it means that he is extremely nervous. Such insights simplify the decision-making process for us.”
-Jessica Robinson, Content & Human Resource Manager with The Speaking Polymath
“One hiring “treat” we’ve found to work quite well is doing multi-step interviews where at least two different people interview the candidate. This approach is helpful because it ensures that the candidate is vetted by multiple people. It’s also a great way to measure candidate integrity – if they give the same types of answers consistently regardless of who’s interviewing them, that’s a positive sign. If their answers differ (for example, first with a male interviewer and second with a female interviewer) that is a major red flag. Inconsistent answers between interviews are also a warning sign.”
–Zachary Hoffman CEO with DigitalPR.com
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