Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire

How to Attract Top Talent with a Top-Notch Interview Process

If you want to appeal to the modern job seeker, you need to retire outdated hiring practices. The text-heavy job ads, impersonal phone interviews, and routine interview questions of yesterday aren’t going to do a great job at attracting and securing today’s top talent.

And, considering nearly half (46 percent) of the 3,894 talent acquisition decision makers surveyed in LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2016 report are having trouble finding candidates in high demand talent pools, it may be time to step up your interviewing game.

When it comes to scoring top talent with updated interview processes, these hiring professionals have the right idea:

1. Have an actual conversation.

Behavioral interviews are (finally!) dying out. Asking canned questions will not help you connect with the top talent that you want. Forward-thinking companies are empowering recruiters and hiring managers to show their personalities and actually have conversations with their candidates.

It might sound old school, but nothing beats sitting down with a candidate over a cup of coffee and doing a deep dive about their experience. Does this take a lot of time? Yes, having a conversation with a candidate is an investment but isn’t it one you should be making with someone potentially joining your company? Worst case scenario is that the candidate will not receive an offer but will leave at least feeling heard.

Glen Loveland

 Glen Loveland, HR Manager, CCTV News

2. Get the whole team involved.

Team interviews are often used by different companies so that candidates can meet with the entire team (or a few key members) in a group setting or actual work environment.

Team interviews ensure that there is synergy amongst the team and the candidate for collaboration if hired. Team members often feel threatened by new hires so if you give them the opportunity to weigh in and help make the decision, it can only benefit the business overall.

Samantha Lambert

Samantha Lambert, Director of Human Resources, Blue Fountain Media

3. Connect with candidates via video.

It’s become an increasingly common trend to use video conference as an interviewing tool to help capture candidates faster and to help with candidate “convenience” when it comes to getting away from work to interview. This approach has also assisted with employer costs by eliminating the need to fly in candidates multiple times for face-to-face interviews.

Many candidates fall off in the interview process due to being too busy with the work at hand and an inefficient interview process where they have to leave work on multiple occasions in order to interview. Creating a video conference option really helps capture high-performing candidates and keeps them engaged in the interview process by limiting the amount of time they have to leave work.

Kathleen Steffey

Kathleen Steffey, Founder and CEO, Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search

4. Focus on culture fit vs. technical skills.

The best test of a good hire is what happens once they’re in the door. High volume hiring isn’t a success if it’s followed by high attrition. Hiring for soft skills and culture fit increases the likelihood that new hires will succeed and thrive. Not every company is right for every person, so

carefully vetting fit up front can significantly reduce early (less than one year) attrition.

Companies are increasingly relying on recruiters, HR, tenured employees, and board members as objective interviewers assigned to talk to candidates about leadership, coaching, inspiring teams, and handling difficult employee situations. This new focus gives recruiters an opportunity to go beyond a focus on numbers and candidate experience, and contribute strategically to quality hiring and retention.

Mikaela Kiner

Mikaela Kiner, Founder and CEO, Uniquely HR

5. Throw in a few oddball questions.

Some employers have taken a liking to the practice of asking odd, quirky, or otherwise unpredictable questions. By doing this, interviewers are able to gauge how well a candidate can think on the fly and see if they are easily flustered. At the same time, an interviewer can gain an even more clear picture of what a person is really like, while simultaneously endearing themselves a bit to the candidate.

Monica Eaton-Cardone

Monica Eaton-Cardone, Co-founder and COO, Chargebacks911

How has your organization stepped up its interviewing game in an effort to score top talent? Let us know in the comments below!

Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan is the Founder and CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform used by 6,000+ customers in over 100 countries.