How To Empower Candidates During The Hiring Process

How To Empower Candidates During The Hiring ProcessSusanLaMotte from exaqueo is here to teach you how to empoweryourcandidates.Click To TweetIn the 19th episode of The Recruiting Reel, Susan Lamotte, Founder and CEO of Exaqueo, gives us some ideas on how to empower your candidates during the hiring process. Heres the transcriptJosh Tolan My name is Josh Tolan and Im the CEO of Spark Hire, the leading video vorstellungsgesprching platform used by thousands of organizations around the world.And this is The Recruiting Reel, a video series in which we discuss real recruiting challenges with prominent recruiting experts to provide you with actionable tips you can apply to your own recruiting.I am thrilled to introduce todays guest, Susan LaMotte. Susan is the Founder and CEO of Exaqueo and has a ton of HR and recruiting experience with some major brands including The Home Depot, The Ritz Carlton, and Marriott International.Todays topic is how to empower your candidates during the hiring p rocess and Susan has some awesome advice shes ready to shareTake it away SusanSusan LaMotteHi everybody, Im Susan LaMotte the Founder and CEO of Exaqueo. We are an employer brand experience firm and we help our clients all over the world research, build and develop and activate great employer brands.We all know that a great employer brand is one way to attract and retain great talent. Its also really important to make koranvers youre attracting and retaining the right talent. Your employer brand is the first step in doing that. But as candidates come into your process, its also really important to make sure youre empowering them along the way.Allow your candidates to shineNow, legally, we all have things to do to make sure our hiring processes are fair. But when you empower your candidates, you really give them an opportunity to set themselves apart. What do I mean by that? Well, empowering your candidates is making sure you arent putting them through such a prescriptive process, th at they dont have a chance to go above and beyond. Theres a difference between a good candidate and a great one. A great one is a wonderful fit who really wants the job, who will go above and beyond to show you that they do.Remember, this isnt just active candidates, its active candidates too. Once they get in the process, no matter how tight the market, or how bad you want them, you still want to make sure youre hiring people that actually want the job, really care about your organization and are a good fit.Get creative with your bewerberinterview questionsSo, how do you empower candidates? Well, there are a couple of things you can do. First, be creative. Encourage your candidates to respond to open ended interview questions. Tell me why you want this job. Or, tell them that youre in the final hiring or decision making process and see how they react or respond. Some might just sit back and say okay. Others, might come back to you and say I understand youre in the final decision ma king process, I really want this job and heres why.Creativity also allows them to share things that we see from graphic designers or web designers about how good they are or how talented they are. But, anybody can share what they would do in the first 30, 60, 90 days on the job. Or, really showcase what about their background makes them a great fit. When you empower candidates they feel comfortable, open and really honest about being able to do that.Personally connect with candidates Another way to empower candidates is to build a relationship with them. Dont just usher them or shuffle them through the interview process like an assembly line. Its really important. Even if youre on your 5th, 6th, 10th interview of the day to stop for a second. Use voice and tone to be comfortable and say, tell me a little bit about you, interact with them. Oh, you really like running? I do too, I ran a marathon last week. When you build a relationship, they feel empowered to do the same. Once they bu ild a relationship with you, they are going to be much mora open and honest.Encourage candidates to get to know your company Finally, empowerment is about letting them get to know your organization. Make them feel empowered to visit your work sites. Stop by to buy and use your products and then tell you how they feel about it. And, empowered to ask questions. The more they know about your organization and the more open and honest you can be, and share your authentic self, the more empowered they are to make the right choice.Empower candidates to make the right career choiceAfterall, at the end of the day, no matter how tight a market is, even for the toughest talent tech or otherwise, its important your candidates are empowered to make the right choice. Otherwise, it hurts retention down the road, and you dont bring in candidates that really fit your organization, your culture or your brand.So, the next time you sit down to rethink your hiring process, or to just say, how can we mak e sure we have the best talent, think about the importance of empowerment.Happy huntingJosh Tolan Thanks so much, Susan. What you just outlined is extremely powerful.If you use Susans advice, youll clearly see who your best and most engaged candidates are which will ultimately lead to an improvement of the people youre bringing on board and the length of their tenure at your organization. I love the idea of being as transparent as possible about the job youre hiring for. My recommendation to all of our viewers is to document these experiences and the message you want to get across to your candidates. Include it as part of your interview kit so you can be sure its always discussed.I also suggest asking interview questions such as what did you like most about your previous job? and what are some of your least favorite things about your previous job? This opens the door for a candid conversation about what the experience would be like in the role at your organization.A big thank you to Susan LaMotte for coming on the show today. Head over to exaqueo.com to learn more about her company. Also, follow her on Twitter SusanLaMotte.Thank you for watching The Recruiting Reel and stay tuned for more episodes. For additional HR and recruiting content, head over to hr.sparkhire.com and subscribe. Also, follow us on Twitter, sparkhire. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to know about the newest episodes of The Recruiting Reel.Thanks again for watching and happy recruiting