Towards more humane recruitment

Since 2017, I have been observing employers who have an easier time hiring. Each time, I see that they focus on people first. Their practices have remained very focused on assessing personality, skills and qualifications. Their job interviews consist of providing a pleasant experience, while informing candidates of the company's real culture, its values and its management. Concretely, these companies have adapted their methods by drawing inspiration from this:

1. Look beyond know-how

Emotional intelligence, creativity and problem solving are seen as the skills of the future . Starting today, it is beneficial to give them more importance and therefore, to include them in interview assessments. Employers have decided to start this shift by relaxing their criteria and opening up more to atypical career paths.

Silicon Valley-based author and speaker Nilofer Merchant suggests in her Harvard Business Review article that we should stop weeding out good candidates by asking bad questions. She says companies can do better by looking beyond know-how and targeting skills rather than past experience. Instead of asking: Have you done this before? She recommends asking: What would you do in this situation? The result: employers are interested in resumes that would otherwise be weeded out and hiring qualified candidates who didn’t, in principle, meet their traditional standards!

2. Find the right fit

Renowned leadership speaker and author Simon Sinek is right: the why of the company is important. I would add that in recruitment, it is essential! It is a key element that promotes the attraction of talent and helps recruit the right people for your company. Moreover, a large number of job seekers want to be informed about it before applying! This allows them to choose a position and a company because they are also interested in its purpose. The problem is that this information is rarely communicated before starting the job.

Employers therefore benefit from including them in their job offers, their career page and in their selection criteria. They will be better able to attract candidates who adhere to their why and the culture. According to Google's The Hire Team , when it comes to evaluating the long-term success of a future candidate in the company, culture fit is probably the most important selection criterion. Indeed, these candidates stay with the company longer.

3. Test compatibility

More than half of people leave a manager and not a position. The fit between the candidate and the supervisor is therefore another aspect to take into consideration, reveals the Kristof-Brown study . An employee's job satisfaction is influenced by the quality of the relationship with their immediate manager! Thus, hiring managers can include interview questions to validate the potential compatibility between the supervisor and the candidate. For example, when I was a recruiter, I asked candidates: who is the ideal boss for you? / how do you like to be supervised? Often, they answered: "a good boss is someone who listens, communicates well and respects me". Others told me that they preferred to have a lot of autonomy and little support from the manager. This approach was highly beneficial and effective for the company, the manager and the future employee!

In search of balance

The job search is changing. I believe it is high time to adapt our recruitment practices, because the job market is changing. One in three employees would be willing to accept a pay cut to be happy at work, according to the Indeed 2020 survey . Consequently, I invite employers to adopt more inclusive practices that can contribute to the growth of companies and the development of workers' careers. It is by achieving this balance that we will have, in my opinion, made the greatest progress in talent acquisition.