🤨 How you hire sends a message about how you do business
These are the exact words a nonprofit leader said to me recently:
How you recruit sends a message about how you do business.
I couldn't agree more.
In this conversation, she was the candidate, not the hiring manager. She went on to say that her experience as a candidate had been surprising. She said it felt impersonal, despite the amount of time and mental effort you put in.
I know anecdotally — through thousands of conversations over many years — that candidate experience is generally dire. There are exceptions of course, but overall, how people experience the recruitment process is far from good.
Beyond organically gathered anecdotal evidence, I recently decided to do some focused research about this. I'll share the full insights next month but for now, here are some of the early themes:
Looking for a new job is exciting, but it's also draining, frustrating and can be brutal. The waiting is really hard. Hiring teams need to be more authentic, more transparent and more respectful. They should provide more information, earlier and be prepared to answer questions. We need put humanity back into the hiring process.
This is not my opinion. These are not my words — they're the exact words interviewees have shared with me.
We need to stop thinking about recruitment as a process. It is much more than that.
Recruitment is relational.
It's the beginning of a professional relationship and an opportunity to transform and upgrade your team.
Effective recruitment is about creating connection and engaging hearts and minds.
Getting recruitment right is business critical. It can also be very time consuming.
Like customer experience, candidate experience (the other CX), matters. How you recruit sends a powerful message and there is so much we can do better.
Super long application forms which require you to enter details which are in your CV? Terrible. Too much friction. Too much time. Too hard.
Compulsory response to selection criteria which take hours to write? Anyone could be writing these war and peace submissions.
Side note: iImagine the time it takes to properly review 200 CVs and selection criteria responses. Elongate your recruitment process and you lose.
Not sharing salary information publicly? Seriously?
Readvertising the same role and changing the job title? People aren't silly, they will figure it out.
Not responding to every application? Rude.
Recruitment is a marketing challenge.
Even in a buoyant, talent-rich market; when you're hiring your job is to motivate the right people to choose you.
Flexible talent support for NFP leaders
I am deeply committed to making recruitment easier for nonprofit leaders.
I support leaders and organisations to attract the right people through:
traditional recruitment solutions
flexible unbundled recruitment support
helping you review and improve your recruitment approach
helping you understand and articulate your real EVP through employee research
leveraging this research to develop authentic recruitment content
building campaigns that reflect culture and the employee experience
consulting and advisory work to develop talent attraction strategy and capacity.
If you’re curious to know more, send me a message or get in touch for a chat.
As a communications professional and writer turned recruiter, I know modern recruitment is marketing, and I'm on a mission to share this approach with the sector.
Each Friday, I share talent attraction advice and insights. The Nonprofit Talent Edge will help you become more intentional, creative and proactive with your recruitment.
Have a great week.
Cynthia