How to choose the perfect candidate?
Leaving behind the importance of the Human Resources is most common in the companies’ atmosphere nowadays. All the efforts are just concentrated on the hiring process and then, they all usually finish when the perfect or the only candidate wehave is signing a contract.
I think there is a mistake from the very beginning, from the ‘Human Resources’ itself. I do not agree with the idea of having ‘humans’ as a ‘resources’, which gives the impression of getting benefits from people and what is worse, taking advantage of them. I would like to call those departments ‘Human Sources’ instead. The fact of finding people who meet the requirements of your company is often an quite easy thing to make, but having a connection afterwards and make your candidates feel that they are relevant and they have more opportunities to grow both professionally and personally, that is a different story.
I started working at Kleinson recently and I have found out that making small changes you can get a huge result. I remembered advertising jobs on the net and finding good candidates, but I had the feeling that we did not want just that for Kleinson. So, I just changed the whole process, including templates, emails, calls and specially the tone of all that. Instead of dry and cold calls and interviews, I started having meetings in groups with potential candidates, having a coffee, to get ready a comfortable place where I can get not only their professional skills, but also their values. The new people who started responding did not have a lower level of quality; however they were more ‘human’ to boost.
During my interviews, they all have the time to express themselves and share their personal experiences, having a great opportunity to learn from others peers. In this way, they do not feel that they are just useful tools, but they all always have something interesting for other people. To be honest, I do learn a lot at the end of the process. And then, once they become part of the team, it is important to know how they feel, who they are and how they can improve. That is the reason why, I started also having personal meetings with them to show them their results, and as an excuse to talk for a while in person, to know what I can do to help them too. Also, we are having specialevents just for our staff, like brunches where we meet each other out of the work place.
The best marketing campaign a company can have is its own employees, and they need to feel important themselves in the place they are. It we consider them as ‘sources’, we are giving a positive meaning here: we can also learn from them, and to be honest it is something I have experimented with, all the time with my teachers.
