Innovative Techniques used by Companies to Hire People
Here are some innovative techniques used by companies to hire people. When hiring comes to mind we mostly think about a discussion, an interview, a group discussion may be but let us see what few other innovative methods have been or are being used.
1) Coding Competition for Software Companies:
This is one of the new trends emerging in hiring IT people. Instead of usual aptitude before interview, the coding competition helps recruiters to get the good candidates for interview. This is used also by one of the top recruiter, Google, which has been ranked as good place to work. This is true. The online coding puzzle is used for initial screening. Code Jams are also one of these in global recruitment process of Google. It is also being proved as good effective way in finding technical talents. Engineering students are excited at these innovations. This competition shows the software skills, innovation, and motivation. Thus the talent pool for interview is being created with the people with perfect skills. Even though, it doesn’t shows how the candidate plays as a good team player, but surely required KSAs are measured. Mental ability, which is necessary for good job performance would clearly be visible in these types of competitions.
2) Games help to recruit Millennial:
Especially to attract the talent between the ages 18 and 27- the millennial, many companies started to hire with this gamification method. This technique identifies the people who have necessary skill with the help of virtual challenges. This is not only being used for hiring process, but also in increasing the employer’s brand awareness. This is used in one of the companies, which has secured Fortune’s ‘100 Best Companies To Work For’ award, Ethisphere Institute’s ‘World’s Most Ethical Companies’ awards. It is nothing but Marriott International. Marriott’s game named ‘My Marriott hotel’ provides the players the challenges like purchasing supplies within budget, managing restaurant kitchen, managing employees and so on. People from 120 different countries are playing this game. Apart from initial hiring, these types of games are being used in learning and development and creating awareness in health and wellness of employees. It is available in social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.
3) Virtual Company Tour for Effective Hiring:
Company tours, similar to video games give the opportunity for recruiters to create the younger talent pool with the matching skill set, as the initial process of recruitment. Also the same is used for the talents, who want to find the company matches with their expectations. This type of virtual tour helps the recruiters to make the candidates understand about the working style, culture, and also it paves the way to chat with the real employees of the company. For instance, Mitre’s ‘Job of Honor’, Deloitte’s ‘Touches Tohmatsu’s Virtual Office Tour’ creates the platform for the candidates to visit training centers, work places and meeting rooms. In Deloitte’s virtual tour, the tour starts with the choosing of destination office, getting printed plane tickets, on board the plane. In Mitre’s tour, within the three months of release of games, the site got the 5200 hits and 600 registered players worldwide.
4) Case Assignment Approach:
This approach is used for evaluating problem solving approach of the candidates. The real time problem situation, related to the job will be given along with the required time to analyze and approach it. In most situations, problem faced by the company previously will be prepared as the case. Also, it can be hypothetical problematic situation, which depicts the problem faced in the job.
This type of method followed for hiring entry level managerial candidates, in the view of making decision along with possible suggestions. These assignments will be usually conducted as one of the selection steps before the interview. This method has been considered with more validity in deciding job performance of candidates and also its usage is getting increased in the industry for recruiting students from colleges. When this method is used next to the mental ability test, the pool of intellectual candidates could be created for making the organization full of talents.
5) Group Interviews for Recruiting Team Player:
Group Interview is one of the effective tools in evaluating candidates, mainly in the area of interpersonal skills. Traditionally, the panel interviews, one to one interviews are being used as the final process of selection. But these might not show their behaviors as a team player. Thus these are combined with Group Discussion. As most of the tasks carried out in the organization are of team based, it becomes essential to check their behaviors to others. So the interpersonal communication, behaviors towards coworkers are essential to focus. Thus group interview checks both the individual performance as well as interpersonal attitudes. It combines GD and interview in a single round. This helps the interviewers to compare the answers of candidates and their responses towards other candidates’ answers. The interviewers’ training is important to handle multiple candidates at the same time. Mostly the panel style of interviewing is recommended for this type of group interview
6) Hiring by involving Staffs:
Hiring by involving staffs helps the employer to find out the suitable candidate for a vacant position. In this method, staffs are being involved in selection process to choose their coworkers, instead of only the HR managers. It helps the recruiter to create the friendly work environment as the coworkers are being chosen by the staffs itself. The same can be used for selecting the boss, i.e. the selection of boss is done also by the subordinates. The effective improvement in job performance and outcome can be seen through this method of hiring. As the decision making process of selection involves the staffs, the feel of motivation and satisfaction for them towards the job would be more. The staffs are better in understanding of their job, and so the evaluation of candidates for the same job can be done very well by them. For this to be more effective, it should be done along with usual interview process.
7) Recruitment Process Outsourcing:
RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), is one of the techniques in hiring the employees. It involves outsourcing the hiring process of employees to the well reputed recruiting companies. As the selection of candidates is done by the outside company, the economies of scale, i.e. in terms of both cost and time can be achieved. This kind of approach is risky one and so the reputation of the company, who is doing the selection, is very essential to focus. This would be suitable only in the situation of selecting lower level of workers, where the cost of hiring including advertising is more. This is not at all suitable for the competent jobs and higher level kind of jobs. For conducting these emerging techniques, the job description and specification documents should be made clear to the recruitment company. Then only, the quality pool of candidates with the good job fit can be expected through this approach.
8) Presentation and Seminar:
Presentation and seminar is one of the selection tools for getting the candidates who are best fit to the job. This kind of methods is more helpful in hiring lecturers in colleges. The candidates need to take seminar to the students. Here the major judging factor is students only. The average vote of students will be used for the final result. This is usually done after the one to one interview round. This is similar to the job tryout method. This is also used in the companies as the one of the tools, where the candidates’ presentation skills are very essential for the job. The validity of this approach for measuring the job performance is very high, compared to other methods. This tool is extensively used in many top colleges, to get the faculties who are well fit to the expectations of students. During this seminar, other skills like their way of clearing students’ doubts, friendly behavior, how they structuring the basic things are being tested very well.
9) Social Media:
Nowadays, the penetration of social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook into our day to day life are getting increased. Social media networking is used for finding out the good talented people for the job vacancies by many companies. Thus, the social media is used as a platform for attracting the people, who are with the most required skills for the vacant position. LinkedIn is one of the most popular platforms for this purpose, apart from other sites. Employers get the opportunity to create a vast pool of young candidates for the selection process, when they post the job vacancy in the social media site, compared to other techniques. It reduces the advertising cost of initial recruitment. Mobile apps are also used by the recruiters for this purpose, similar to this. Also it is used by the employers to be in touch with the talented people, who quit the companies and getting those again if they are interested to join.
10) Virtual Job Tryout:
Virtual Job Tryout is one of the most valid and reliable methods irrespective of industry for evaluating the candidates in the hiring process. In this method, the sample of job is given to the candidates and be evaluated based on their approach in handling the situation. Job tryout can also be used to make the candidates understand better about the working culture and environment. Virtual tryout can be in checking the writing style, dealing the clients, evaluating skills for sales force, operating the machines, and so on. Sometimes, the real job demands cannot be measured well in the usual process of selection like interview or various forms of tests. In such a situation, the virtual job tryout is used very much to select the better fit candidates. Only the functional or technical skills and capabilities of the candidates can be checked in this, not the behavior or attitudes of the candidates.
