In this market, everyone is challenged with meeting their hiring goals.
Unemployment is at a low presenting multiple opportunities for candidates in the job market. However, in the architecture and design world, we believe the challenge isn’t in FINDING the talent but rather in ATTRACTING the talent to your position.
How do you make your position and company stand out?
Simply put, create a candidate-centric experience. It starts with the initial messaging and continues through the entire interview process. The foundation of a positive candidate experience is taking the time to understand the motivations for change. Without an effective interview process, you don’t have the tools to dig in and find out what this particular person is looking for.
Changing your process involves digging in deep and investing in this change. The end result is that you will hire better and retain your talent longer. Keeping your good employees is a tremendous cost saving and in this market one of the best things you can do to remain competitive. Here are a few steps that you can easily incorporate to start a candidate-centric experience.
- Flexibility surrounding the interview. If you have candidates that are working offer to have preliminary interviews via phone or video to avoid them taking time off work.
- Share your Brand and Mission. Where does your company fit in the market, what’s the history and who are the leaders? Confidently making a career change requires understanding the big picture and how a position will fit into this plan.
- Move beyond the resume. Start asking deeper questions. Uncover the type of environment this candidate thrives in.
- Share Challenges and Obstacles. Candidates appreciate and respect hearing the whole picture. If you have company challenges be honest and follow-up with how you are planning to fix them.
The number one candidate complaint from interviews is that they aren’t given enough information. An effective interview leaves both parties with a deep grasp of skills, people and growth opportunity. If you don’t take time to understand the motivations for a change it’s impossible to attract the right person for the position. People make a change based on growth, leadership and work/life balance, the salary is rarely the driver.
Stay tuned as we continue this series and dive further into interview steps, using assessment and creating a compelling offer.