Application, Interview, Offer – It’s Time to Break the Tedium of Recruitment

How many times have you gone through the recruitment process in your life?

The chances are you will have experienced the “application, interview, offer” cycle at least ten times by the age of forty. That’s ten times of explaining how you work well in a team, reeling off the same example of how you dealt with an unforeseen difficult situation, and nodding your head along as the interviewer asks about your time management skills.

It can be a tedious process for both applicant and company alike, leaving candidates who might be perfect for the job lost in a sea of identical CV’s and personality tests, but companies like Apple, Google and Jaguar Land Rover think they might have found the solution by utilising technology to create a quirky new recruitment process that’s surprisingly practical!

In the hope of attracting thousands of bright new talents to their software engineering department, Jaguar Land Rover have offered their job candidates a challenge - successfully crack the code on their mobile app and you will be fast tracked though the application process. It might seem like fun and games, but Jaguar Land Rover’s approach to recruitment is a complex test that identifies a candidate’s practical software skills, rather than relying on standardised interview questions alone.

Though it might be on the biggest scale, they are by no means the only company creating innovative recruitment techniques. In the last few years, Apple introduced a secret page to their website to recruit a new technical engineer. Find the page, and you were invited to apply for the job. Google also implemented something similar in 2015, using the search engine to identify candidates. If you typed in certain engineering terms on the website, a pop up appeared asking if you were up for a challenge.

Changing up your process to include a fun display of practical skills isn’t just limited to tech companies. Handfuls of graphic design companies have also adopted it, by publishing adverts with hidden mistakes and asking candidates to identify them during their application. There’s no limit to creative thinking when it comes to your recruitment process, you really can go as crazy as you like to identify the right person for the job.

The standard interview method might seem like old reliable, but it could also be discounting a whole pool of valuable talent from your candidates. Performing well in an interview doesn’t necessarily translate to success in the work place, and vice versa. A candidate might struggle with face to face interviews but could actually be the best fit when it comes down to ability and job performance. Taking a page from one of these companies could allow you to identify these people and even find a better fit for your position.

Introducing a new and exciting way to apply for a job can shake up the entire procedure and even attract more passionate, interested applicants. So, you could keep using the same application questions and interview techniques. It’s a time-tested tradition, it works… or you could take a leaf from Jaguar Land Rover and revamp your recruitment with some innovative twists.