Recruiting: A Love Story

Whether you’ve been in the business for decades or are just starting out, you know that corporate recruiting is all about the Pursuit and Capture: attracting qualified candidates, and keeping and retaining the top match.

Kinda like dating.

Think about it. As a dater, you have a dream: finding that special someone with whom you can spend the rest of your life. As a corporate recruiter, you have a parallel mission: filling an open position with the best candidate, one who will be a loyal and steadfast member of your company’s workforce.

A realistic player in the Dating Game, you realize the importance of first impressions. You want to position yourself as a worthwhile dater, so throughout the process, you make sure that your appearance – what you present to your potential dates – is a true reflection of yourself. Similarly, as a serious corporate recruiter, you know that employer branding is a key component to the recruiting process, since your reputation sets the tone for any future connections. You want to ensure that your public character reveals your company’s chief attributes.

Next, you need to source – or, as daters would put it, let hunting season begin! First, there’s the good ole’ fashioned matchmaking by friends or family. (While they’ll do this out of the goodness of their own – perhaps meddling – hearts, some traditions hold that a successful matchmaker of three marriages wins a free spot in heaven. Sweet deal.) Then there are the different social media sites. In an informal virtual environment, it’s easier to check out and connect to friends of your friends who have similar interests, thereby expanding your romantic network. Online dating websites allow you to directly advertise yourself and what you are looking for in a mate. And then there’s speed dating, which lets you mingle face-to-face with many potential dates at once.

As corporate recruiters, you integrate these very same tools into your daily repertoire. Employee referral programs encourage your employees to “introduce” you to their friends – and while you can’t offer your workers a place in the celestial skies, you can reward their hard word with prizes. Harnessing the beneficial power of social media by integrating it into your referral program via your employees’ social networks enables you to directly connect with a larger pool of qualified candidates. And just replace the dating sites with career websites, and you have instant platforms from which you can present your company, the open positions and required qualifications. Lastly, career fairs give you a chance to personally meet several potential candidates in one shot.

The sorting process is just as comparable. As a dater, you first read through the potential dates’ profiles on the dating/social media sites (or listen to your Aunt Jeanne sing the guy’s praises for a week straight) and exchange a few innocent messages before deciding who passes muster to proceed to the First Date. At this initial meeting, both of you are on your best behavior, each telling a bit of your life stories, and considering if there is any potential. Assuming all went well, the Second Date finds you engaging in more personal discussions, as you begin to evaluate your date’s values and goals on a deeper level. After, even if the spark is there and you are aligned on certain core issues, you still take it slow; you begin to date regularly, but before you can commit, you want to make sure that you really ‘click’. Finally, you both agree that your bond has the potential to succeed, and while you understand that this is a continuing process with constant development, you feel confident enough to invest in a long-term relationship.

You use the same formula as a corporate recruiter. After your initial interactions with candidates, whether through employee recommendations, personal encounters at career fairs, or resumes, you correspond with them, assessing their suitability and genuine interest, before inviting the qualified ones for the First Interview. You will both be there to impress, the candidate touting their professional experience, and you explaining your company’s mission and hopes for the position. If you have a good feeling about the candidate, you extend a request for the Second Interview. Already acquainted with the relevant background, you might administer an internal psychometric exam or pose a series of realistic test questions to assess the candidate’s responses and reactions to the different issues. And when you think you’ve found ‘the one’, you must still be cautious, so you might hire the candidate on a contingent 90-day probationary period – you want to be sure that they fit in with the company culture, adapt well to the position and is a productive member of the corporate team. Once you see that the candidate lives up to your expectations, you take them off of probation, and start to cultivate a long-term relationship in hopes of yielding a higher retention rate.

Just like those in the dating scene, corporate recruiters face the formidable task of building relationships with candidates. Behavioral patterns have evolved, and candidates today want to be wooed. Like daters, corporate recruiters need to actively engage on a sociable and personal level. Remember, the magic word is ‘investment’. A good investment in a qualified candidate with the possibility of an eventual hire can result in a high ROI. And that’s a happy ending to any love story.