Game Changing Interviews

February 3, 2013

Just before the New Year we decided to publicise a vacancy for a Senior PR post in our Dublin office.

We deliberately wanted to leave the job description open so that it would invite interest from a wide range of people leaving us with the opportunity of shaping the role around the successful “right” candidate instead of letting everything be dictated by a very specific role ..it has been an interesting journey with some really good learnings!

The job vacancy posted on our website and the use of social media alone was enough to generate a huge number of responses and enough quality candidates
From the minute we tweeted and posted the link for the vacancy we could see huge traffic hitting our website
People are really happy to retweet and share news about job vacancies
So many people apply for jobs without reading what the job is about!! – I would say about 40% of the enquiries were totally irrelevant
The role attracted a lot of attention because of the way we described it – avoid cliches (dynamic person…)!
People in really good roles are now prepared to move to new jobs – is that recession fear easing off?
Some people are caught in “fur lined” mouse traps – they are getting no satisfaction from their jobs but are stuck because their packages are too good to leave. We met a few of these!
Many people have taken roles in the recession because they needed the money – most are really unfulfilled now, which is bad for them and their employers.
There are a lot of really talented, hard working people out there – the quality of the people we met was amazing
Employment agencies – I can’t see us ever having to use one..

After just one week of searching we found more than one ideal candidate for the role but we also met a number of quite diverse people all with something unique to offer who we know we will stay in touch with and work together in some way on various projects..

The game of recruiting is changing, the game of looking for a job is changing and hopefully this simple interview process could turn out to be a valuable “game changer” for us.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion