Recruitathon 2020 by Alina Manaig
In February of last year, John Clements’ (JC) RLab (Recruitment Lab) hosted the very first Recruitathon, a week-long intensive basic recruitment course for fresh graduates and career shifters. Given this program’s success, we had our second run last March 2 to 6, 2020. This year, we had 15 participants — five fresh graduates and 10 career shifters from various industries like culinary, banking, comp&ben, HR admin, BPO, and operations — who were all passionate to learn about recruitment and committed to complete the five-day program.
During the morning session of the first day, participants were given an overview of the week’s activities, the recruitment process, and the science behind it. They were even privileged to hear from JC SVP and Managing Director Grace Sorongon, who shared her insights on Recruitment 4.0. Meanwhile, the afternoon session was focused on branding and social media as these two are now critical for the work of a recruiter.
The second day kicked off with a session on talent attraction, which included sourcing and job posting. The participants were not just walked through the topic, they were also given a workshop and a first-hand experience of posting jobs on one of the portals. The afternoon session was also very interesting as it dealt with job matching and initial screening of candidates. The afternoon workshop proved to be enjoyable for the participants since they were able to experience screening candidates over the phone.
The third day hit the core of recruitment. It included a whole-day discussion and small group workshops on competency-based interviewing. In this session, they were taught how to conduct in-depth interviews, as well as assess and score/grade the answers of interviewees.
The fourth day’s morning session was about executive presence. As a recruiter, your actions should leave an impression on your candidates and other stakeholders — you are a true recruiter, who is worthy to be respected. It dealt with verbal and non-verbal communication, confidence, and presentation skills. In the afternoon, they were exposed to various recruiting tools for assessment, applicant tracking, candidate management, and finally, reporting/analytics. The day ended with a very important topic on stakeholder management, which covered both candidate and client management.
The last day was the culmination of the five-day program, and one way to ensure that the participants understood what they learned was for them to go through a short exam and present their respective action learning projects to our distinguished panel of judges.
Once again, the Recruitathon has proven to be an effective program of John Clements’ RLab. I can’t wait for the next batch!
Please visit and join the John Clements Talent Community.
About the author:
Alina has over 25 years of professional experience in executive management consultancy, talent search and recruitment operations, and sales and marketing. Alina is mother to three beautiful children and a wife to a wonderful husband. Aside from her love for coffee, she also loves shopping with her older sister. Alina spends her free time traveling, playing badminton, and watching movies.
