Interviewing the Passive Candidate

The last phase often carries an oceanic calmness. But, even as the waves approach the shore, its impact is unpredictable. David, the hiring manager, has convinced couple of candidates to take the interview. But, he is still uncertain of the outcome because of one major reason —

If you’re wondering who David is, you might have landed here for the first time. Read the first article from our series “Let’s catch your purple squirrel”

Do you want to hire a Purple Squirrel?

— Snail speed recruitment process!

When a dragging recruitment process can put off an active candidate, think about the passive candidate who does not want to necessarily move to a new job. But, at this point, you have intentionally seeded a thought in their head: job change.

While you want them to join you at any cost (quite literally!), they would repel if your process takes a lot of time.

• The purple squirrels know their worth; when they are not treated with due diligence, they will give up on you quickly.
• They would drift off to other companies since they have almost decided to move on from the present company.
• Being the top talent in their field, as soon as they are openly looking for jobs, they will be bombarded with offers from all around.
• Think about the dollar loss for your business when the purple squirrel everyone has been waiting for doesn’t turn up at all. A vacant position for long causes unimaginable productivity gap that impacts the entire organization.
• Not only that you have lost the top talent you found, the image of a slow recruiter will adversely affect the company’s employer branding in front of future talents.

To sum up, slow hiring is going to blow up in your faces. If you don’t take steps to rectify it, you are going to lose the game. How do you win it back?

The passive candidate considers their time important; an obvious reason why they excel in their field. They would think twice before they sit down for a lengthy application process. The question of ‘why should they?’ will keep coming back to them. In fact, in a survey conducted by Careerbuilder , 42% of candidates said they would never seek employment at the company again if they faced a negative application experience. If this is the case for active candidates, image how it would be for a purple squirrel? Logically, when you have found your purple squirrel, their skills and qualifications are already known. An application process is obviously redundant in this case.

Let’s say the application process has been scraped, giving the candidate a direct access to the interview panel. Scheduling an interview with someone who is presently working at a different company is a tedious task. When you finally agree on a time convenient for the candidate and members of the interview panel, you might have lost productive hours that you cannot gain back. Sometimes, even after the scheduling-rescheduling loop, an important interviewer might have to leave for an urgent meeting at the last minute. Finding a replace at the last minute is going to drive you crazy. Think about the chaos you would face only to ensure that candidate experience is not affected.

Don’t be worried when technology has found answers to your problem. We were recently mentioned by Recruiting Daily as one of the important HR technology to watch out for in Q1 2017 for our AI assistant that aids recruiting operations. Our AI assistant, fondly called Alex, works with the aim to increase efficiency of recruitment. Instead of manually coordinating interview schedules, you can offload it to the assistant who will now handle back and forth emailing to schedule the interview. While Alex takes care of tedious scheduling, you can focus on ensuring the quality of experience as the candidate comes for on-site interview. Having an efficient process in place, projects a good image of the company boosting the employer branding.

In the recently concluded HIREConf NYC, recruiting leader Glen Cathey touched on an important point that resonated with the recruiting community:

It is now widely accepted that HR industry is increasingly disrupted by Artificial Intelligence. How fast you adopt an AI powered system matters now more than ever. Not only that it takes care of repetitive tasks, but it also gives back data that is much valuable when you consider the next recruitment. As AI pierces through Talent Acquisition, the efficiency of the process is maximized, aiding you and the company as a whole.

As this series ends, it would be good to emphasize the importance of candidate experience throughout the recruitment process. Recruitment is a continuous process-the results of one follow the next and the lessons learnt reflect on the next. We hope we have contributed workable solutions to various problems faced when you want to recruit a purple squirrel.

Your comments are most welcome; it is a learning process for us. Drop in a mail to connect@myally.ai

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