Recruiting Brand 101 - Candidates Think Your Hiring Managers are L.A.M.E.

How's your recruiting brand?  Got the website, collateral for candidates, maybe even some video?  Cool!!!!

Do your hiring managers reinforce the brand you are trying to create?  Or are they lame, non-communicators destroying all the brand equity you're building in your company as an "employer of choice"?

Stop and think about this one.  A while back, I riffed that the best way to lose talent was to be slow.  Slow to call candidates back after phone screens, slow to get them in to interview after phone screens, slow to pick them up in the lobby for the interview, whatever.  Act slow and candidates start to think your company is a boring, stale, disorganized place to work.  Period.

Speed to market is still my number one driver to create candidate momentum and get a deal inked with the talent you covet.  DDI/Monster recently repackaged the same survey results and focused on ineffective hiring managers, so it's a good time to revisit the other drivers that make candidates think your workplace stinks.  Here are the top drivers of candidate dissatisfaction in the interview process from the DDI study:

"70 Percent of Job Seekers Say Aloof is Annoying. Job seekers identify a number of interviewer behaviors that adversely affect their willingness to work at the company in question. For instance, 70% of interviewees rank “acting like has no time to talk to me” as a common – and annoying– behavior of hiring managers and staffing directors. Other irritating behaviors exhibited by interviewers include:

- Withholding information about position (57%)

- Turning interview into cross-examination (51%)

- Showing up late (48%)

- Appearing unprepared for interview (47%)
- Asking questions unrelated to job skills (43%)"

This should be scary to every HR Pro, because you can spend 10-20 hours on a search, only to have your hard work destroyed by a hiring manager who considers interviewing the 10th or 11th most important task they've handled on a given day.  More important than the destruction of your personal work is the loss of the best talent available, which means you'll soon be filling the same position again.

What's the best strategy for limiting the influence of hiring managers with the personality/demeanor of a depressed, irritable Dr. Cox from Scrubs?  My favorite strategy is to rely on one or two hiring managers per department who have proven their marketing abilities in the recruiting process.

Eliminate the deadbeats from the process or pay the price... 

Comments

[Lisa Rosendahl]

From the queen of sssslllllloooooowwwww federal hiring processes, I throw a question out - do you think a hiring process can move too fast, in effect "scaring off" a candidate with its intensity?!

[Ask a Manager]

I'd love to hear answers to Lisa's question too. I tend to move pretty quickly, but there have been times when I have consciously slowed myself down, because I didn't want a candidate to think we were overeager. The fact is, when I find the right person, I know it -- and I want to snatch them up ... but I do sometimes pull back a bit so they don't mistake that for desperation.

[Luciana Brasil]

From a person who has received ravishing reviews since moving to the US recently, and participated in many interviews both as a recruiter and a candidate (only able to accept temporary assignments for now, while my greencard is being processed) here is what I think:

1) Yes, giving an impression of being overeager is not good. I receive many offers any time I'm in the market after finishing a project, and moving too fast will make me get suspicious, thinking "what are they trying to hide? why are they so desperate?". But I think waiting 2 days after the final interview to make an offer is enough time to avoid passing the desperation vibe.

2) There are a lot of companies out there that I bet are losing the opportunity to hire top-notch people because of their ridiculously long form-filling process to apply to a job. I believe that most people who are (like me) in a field where the demand is higher than the offer will not subject themselves to a boring, lengthy form-filling process before they can submit their resume for consideration. The impression we get is "oh, this is a very bureaucratic organization", and "I can find an opportunity as good as this one elsewhere, and if they allow me to fill in my email address and attach my resume, that's were I'm going to submit my application".

[Jon Almond]

As someone who is now interviewing for other jobs currently, I am not disturbed by a slow hiring process, I understand the demands of hiring managers and often hiring does fall down on the latter to more more pressing needs.

If someone has the luxury of hiring fast that sends the message to me that either
A. The position does not take specific skills and a monkey could do it or
B. They are looking for a warm body my talents wont be appreciated.

Just my thoughts for what they are worth, I have hired some duds and some winners its a crap shoot you just do yor best and cross your fingers but in the end slow is not bad unless its because you are disorganized.