In the never-ending war for talent, (in our case global talent), companies pull out all stops to wow talent and attract them, what with:

- Fancy business cards

- Nice little gadgets to hand out

- Money spent on job-boards

- Delectable refreshments at the interview                                                                                           

and many other sources to attract job seekers.

Great planning and precision are put into the smallest details and yet with all this effort to attract talent, companies still manage to scare off candidates.  How?. . Simple, the people involved in the interview process are not as prepared as the gadgets, banners, flyers and well-written job postings.

Jobcoconut recently attended a Dutch Networking event, got chatting to a number of Dutch speakers and what companies they happened to be interested in. There was one company in particular, that people had no interest in, so we were curious as to why and dug a little deeper. Soon it had become quite clear that it was not the company at fault, rather the potential new colleague that the candidate met during the interview that they didn’t like.

To put it mildly, the recruiter in question was bursting with self-confidence, and for some people, this can be a huge turn-off.  It turned out that it was a last minute decision to have this person conduct the interviews, who was not dressed in company colours (like most other companies do) and clearly was never trained in interview etiquette.

 Speaking recently with another job seeker, who expressed that in the last round of interviews for a particular company, it was actually a potential co-worker he was put off by because he didn’t like the idea of working with them. During the interview, he was told he would spend 10 minutes chatting with a possible co-worker, in which they could talk about the working atmosphere within the company and answer any questions he may have had.
Instead, the possible co-worker entered the room interrogated the candidate for the full 10 minutes, not leaving him any room to ask questions. It was because of this potential co-worker that he had decided to reject the job offer.

If the potential new colleague had been given better instructions or even training in interview technique, there would have been a better chance the job offer was accepted. But sadly many companies believe that the promoting of a job is more important than the interview process when really both carry equal weight insignificance.

As a hiring manager, you review your job boards and/or recruitment agencies to ensure they can deliver and above all be able to sell your company; however, have you ever thought of looking internally to see if you have the right people involved your hiring process???