Are you just a right swipe away from your potential recruit

Are you just a right swipe away from your potential recruit?

In a recent post on LinkedIn, Mr. Adil Malia, the group president HR at Essar Group, stressed on the need to innovate when it comes to Talent Acquisition (TA) practices

He wrote

\”Talent search often fails not because there is shortage of talent in the market but more often than not by deficiencies in the search process adopted by the TA team… Generally, it is a mindless continuation of the old ways. How then in the new volatile and demanding markets do we imagine to succeed with such shoddy and outdated practices? Talent search is a serious activity and it demands dynamic attention.\”
Taking a cue, in this week’s issue of ‘cajobportal Insights’, we focus on some apparently super cool recruiting ideas and examines whether they can be applied in a broader setting

In terms of evolution over the years, the TA process has seen little change. The humble JD solicits resumes from prospects, either online or in hard copy. It can be published on the career site, job portals or given in strict confidence to head-hunters

A basic screening process followed by a written test and then interviews be it telephonic or F2F job interviews.

Now, fast forward it and try to imagine a scenario where a right swipe was all that stood between you and your potential recruit?

The context is a mobile marketing agency, Fetch Softworks that wanted to hire an intern. It created a profile through location-based dating app, Tinder and wanted asked potential candidates for their best pick-up lines

Every day, through 3 weeks, Kayvon Mesbah, the company’s account director, chatted with prospects and evaluated their one-liners. The winning lines were

Hey Fetch! If I was as good at dating as I am at marketing, my thumbs wouldn\’t be sore from Tinder!

Ms Young, a Stanford graduate, is founder and CEO of the London based Mychefit, a platform that sends chefs to cook in your home She has used Tinder \”just like\” LinkedIn to recruit male chefs

\”I was using Tinder obviously for dating and then I saw some profiles where they were wearing aprons, I approach them and ask if they\’re a chef, before explaining that I\’m interested in hiring them.\”

So far she\’s managed to successfully hire two chefs over Tinder: Olivier, 32, and Sebastian, 30. Young said Olivier and Sebastian introduced her to a number of other chefs that they knew and she\’s gone on to hire four of them, bringing her up to six chefs in total

 

Switch, a discreet iOS mobile app dubbed the “Tinder for jobs” has been launched

Switch allows users to set up a profile and share their resume. The platform then creates a default, anonymized profile, which shows limited information about the user and is hidden from all companies listed on his or her resume. Candidates’ complete profiles are also withheld from internal HR professionals and hiring managers until both parties swipe right and connect. The mobile app features a built-in chat function and also connects parties via email.

The start-up today boats of a user base of 1,000+ companies  that include Amazon, Facebook, eBay and Walmart – with jobs being technical, retail, sales and finance

Snapchat is slowly but surely becoming an incredible vehicle on which to present and show off your employer brand to potential candidates. But how and why?

JPMorgan, the financial behemoth, is using geo-filters on Snapchat to find and hire freshers.

It is using it for high school and university events in UK and US. It\’s a pretty nifty way of gaining traction in recruitment. It\’s the prime time in a young person\’s life when their career path is usually decided. It wants to show young people that there is more to a job in a bank than traditional finance and that it can cater for all different types of people.

Goldman Sachs\’s Snapchat based hiring campaign includes a series \’Career Stories\’ like App Developer, Game Coder, Crowd Funding Champion and Campus Environmental Leader. \’Hipsters May Apply\’. In the videos, Goldman says it is seeking a \”Campus Environmental Leader,\” \”Youth Sports Coach\” or \”Crowd Funding Champion,\” and provides a link to gs.com/campus. Only Snapchatters whose phones indicate they are in and around a campus, or were there in the last 24 hours, are able to post to and view the Campus Story.

Havas Chicago, the renowned global advertising company, recently imitated the second edition of its Snapchat recruitment program for interns, calling on job seekers to create social media campaigns from among seven causes, from fighting hunger to ending gun violence. The winner will get a 10-week internship and an opportunity to lead an agency wide initiative supporting the cause they pitched.

The Irish pub Chain ‘Sober Lane’ released jobs and received 2700 applications through Snapchat. It praised this unconventional hiring approach stating that it meant the company got “the most creative and outgoing staff without having to trawl through stack-loads of CVs and try to get to know someone on paper”.

He said

“Instead, the applicants had ten seconds to impress, which is the most they are likely to have on a busy night in the bar so it makes sense – plus fun and having a laugh is what Sober Lane is all about. I was overwhelmed by the response and so grateful that we had such a huge pool of superb applicants to choose from.”

Back home, ‎Senior Creative Director at JWT India, Mr. Bodhisatwa Dasgupta interviews potential recruits on a WhatsApp group. He gave candidates a copy test fit for the digital age: create a meme. He also asked them to record \’radio spots\’ using the voice message feature in WhatsApp. Judging not just their creativity but how fast they can deliver. While 3 candidates simply exited the group, 3 are now full time employees with JWT.

Maybe a live split screen interview on https://www.periscope.tv/ could be next.

Analysis

The innovative seem to be company’s best bet for hiring millennial and Gen Zs.

The method can have its own share of criticism as well.

Is it possible to fairly gauge someone’s suitability for a role based on a 10 second SnapChat?

And whether it is equally useful across functions since no parameters like age, work experience, educational qualifications are captured.

While recruiting chefs and interns seems okay, imagine, what would be the situation if a company tries recruiting a VP-Finance, based on a right-left swipe chat on Tinder.

However, needless to say, from an employer branding standpoint, the potential is immense. Maybe apps like Switch (discussed above) will show the way

Thanks & Regards

Sonia Singal

Co-founder: cajobportal.com™

HMP House, 4, Fairlie Place, Kolkata-1