MEANINGFUL RECRUITMENT

In my first blog post, I talked about having meaningful conversations, and the next few posts will go into more details about having a meaningful conversation.

But let's start from the very beginning of conversations in the workplace: Recruitment.

Recruitment is one of the examples used at training for giving feedback. I attended a customer mapping training session a few months back and the example used at the workshop was improving the recruitment experience. I attended a service redesign workshop recently and the facilitator was exploring improving a product or a service, you can guess the example used for the workshop: improving recruitment. It got me thinking, what is it about recruitment that makes it a common topic for product or service development and customer mapping? Most working adults have gone through a recruitment process or have recruited people, so there must be pinch points either from the candidate point of view or the recruiter’s point of view.

Why do experiences vary? Probably because, various needs are not met by the respective parties. Where a job advert attracts many unsuitable candidates, the recruiting manager is not encouraged to get back to unsuccessful candidates, it begs the question whether the role was clear enough from the outset.

You have a job opening and you call for candidates. Candidates apply and you shortlist some and some you let go. The natural next step will be to let the people who didn't make the shortlist know they were not shortlisted for the job; a meaningful interaction has taken place in the form of feedback.

The next meaningful interaction takes place during the interview. You both get the opportunity to assess the viability of working together. You choose a successful candidate, and unfortunately for some candidates, the dialogue tends to stop there for the unsuccessful candidate.

The interaction at the interview stage needs to continue whether they are successful or not. Sometimes recruiting managers don’t have the time to give feedback, or sometimes they may be waiting for the successful candidate to accept the job offer which delays the process of giving feedback or puts feedback at the back of the ‘to do’ list.

There are so many reasons why it is important to give feedback to the unsuccessful candidate, I will not go into the reasons why as it is accepted wisdom to do so. However, I would like to propose an alternative to help managers give candidates a meaningful experience: why not feedback after the interview? After all your job description and person specifications are very clear and you know what you are looking for in a candidate. You wonder if immediate feedback would not put potential employees off? Not if it is done in constructive way. Constructive feedback is useful if the person didn’t get the job and indeed if they get the job. Useful as a development tool for the successful candidate in the role and as a learning exercise for the unsuccessful candidate.

Let’s start our people experience with meaningful conversation: feedback on the interview.