Designing Hiring Events that Don’t Suck

Hiring events are still a valuable way of reaching candidates in today’s market –  but the old way of doing them isn’t going to cut it.

Hosting an effective hiring event is less about the what and more about the how. Don’t expect to wow your candidates with outdated paper forms, lines of wrinkled black tablecloths, and HR managers in uncomfortable suits shaking hands.

Throw out the banners that talk about your competitive wages. Set the stock imagery of uncomfortable middle-aged women in high heels and fake smiles on fire. Better yet, take every piece of your hiring event collateral, throw it in a dumpster and toss in a match – just like the dumpster fire it is. It’s not 1998, so let’s stop replicating our practices like it is.

Unless of course, your company culture is something straight out of the 90s. Then feel free to scratch everything I just said because at least your branding is on par with reality.

Obviously, I’m generalizing but even if your company isn’t (fully) guilty of the travesty I’ve outlined above, I know you can picture it quite vividly — maybe even recall a memory or two.

Job fairs don’t suck, the strategy does.

The Candidate Shuffle

Over the last decade, I’ve spent countless hours planning & running hiring events. Each time, I hear recruiters and hiring managers concerned about resources, financial or time investments. Each time I also hear candidates complain about the same things, through a different lens. It’s clear that there is a gap in what one group needs vs. what the other provides.

I have watched as the market has taken drastic turns from candidate-driven to employer-driven and then flopped back again into one of the biggest candidate-driven markets we’ve seen. However, despite the flop back and forth of these market trends, one thing still stands – if you give a motivated candidate the opportunity to shake hands with a hiring manager, they will show up. Every. Single. Time.

The Business of Changing Lives

There is an exact moment in time when your candidate meets your brand face-to-face for the first time. What your candidate feels in that moment, can change both yours and their future forever. No matter how trivial it may seem, we’re in the business of changing lives.

Reach back into your memory and think about the first time you physically stepped into your facilities — an area that is a physical embodiment of your employer brand. Perhaps it was for an interview or maybe your first day. I know that no matter when or what it was, that memory brings a feeling.

Yet, there is still a rather large disconnect between what a candidate wants at this moment and what they experience. If only we could reach back in those memory banks and remind ourselves of that experience along every step of the journey.

Rather than relying on a candidate’s first interview or first day to cultivate this feeling, a well-executed hiring event can serve as a strong base for the remainder of your future employee’s time with you. When you bring energy and excitement to this initial moment, with clear intention and purpose, you’ll see the energy returned tenfold.

Not All Memories Are Created Equal

With all the buzz around candidate experience, it’s alarming just how much a gap still exists. There are many things that can be easily implemented to align with your candidate’s needs and elevate your employer brand in their eyes. Yet we are stuck in a rut of has-beens. Severely missing the could be.

The greatest thing to come out of The Great Resignation, has been this collective realization that the candidate experience DOES impact how engaged your employees are down the line. However, we often miss the execution of this realization. We all know that every single contact your potential candidate has with your organization plays a part in that experience, hiring events included.

Why not take them from awkward and forgettable to something they won’t soon forget? Add a little magic, if you will.

Book an Intro Call