Recruitment: First impressions
13/05/05
If employers and candidates judge each other within a matter of minutes, why waste time
and money on the rest of a first interview? Amanda Nottage reports on the spread of speed
recruiting.
Dating and recruitment are similar in one respect - they are both in the business of
matchmaking. A few eyebrows may have been raised recently, however, when recruiters
decided to tweak the 'speed dating' model.
The latter is where you get single men and women in the same room, pair them off and then
hit the stopwatch. After 10 minutes, hands are shaken, phone numbers exchanged before
the lovelorn man moves on to the next expectant lady. No one gets stuck with boring suitors
for any longer than is necessary.
Some companies, appalled by the cost of recruitment, are looking at the model as a way of
making quick matches of their own. Deloitte and Goldman Sachs are among the big
employers giving speed recruitment a try, in an effort to find new blood. But just how valid
can brief encounters be when trying to find a perfect recruitment match?
In August, Reed Graduates trialled a speed recruitment event for five clients, including
KPMG and Deloitte, where 22 graduates were whisked through 10-minute interviews.
Companies supplied background information, the graduates brought their cvs, and both used
the introductory session to see if they wanted to take things further.
Martin Hinkerton, operations manager at the recruiting company, is quick to stress that
speed recruitment can only ever function as a first introduction rather than a final decision.
'It's not a replacement for a recruitment process,' he argues. 'And anyway, I don't think
employers are looking for a shortcut. They are still interested in best practice.'
Obviously there's something in it for Reed. As with any recruitment agency, there was a
placement fee if employers subsequently hired one of their graduates. In future, it is possible
to imagine companies might even pay to attend such an event.
Hinkerton believes it works well because of a seasonal gap in the market. 'Graduates were
still searching for jobs and employers were still looking for graduates, but the traditional
attraction vehicles, like the milk round, had dried up,' he explains.
Speed recruitment has the added advantage of offering an opportunity to reach a specific
audience. Reed recently repeated its event with Blind in Business, a charity that helps young
blind students and graduates through its employment and training services, as part of a
diversity day for the visually impaired. Among the employers involved in this session were
Accenture, PwC, Herbert Smith and the London Development Agency.
The charity has found that visually impaired graduates rarely get in touch through the
traditional media of posters and campus activities. 'The key thing that our candidates
struggle with, is that there's just so much information,' says Clare Melville, employment
manager at Blind in Business. 'A lot of them find it really frustrating, especially with websites
and application forms.'
According to Melville, employers find it extremely useful to see the technology available to
allow visually impaired staff to actually function in the workplace, and to meet candidates
with a range of visual impairments. 'It's a chance to break down barriers and stereotypes. It
builds employers' confidence as much as the candidates'. It helps to get over that
nervousness of meeting somebody who is visually impaired - to realise they are intelligent
individuals who just can't see very well.
'We wanted to give them an insight and information about organisations so that they can
make an informed decision about whether they want to apply. And these mini interviews
were a perfect way to do that,' she continues. But it wasn't a handholding exercise - the
students were there to get the most out of the experience. 'The candidates were grilled hard
by the employers. We put the emphasis on making sure that they were put through their
paces.'
Among the companies attending the original event, consultants Deloitte is a prime example
of an employer with a major recruitment need: it was looking to take on around 820 new
recruits, up from 560 the previous year. 'Some of our recruitment took place over the
summer, and traditionally that's quite a hard time. You're trying to match up employers and
graduates when they can't come together on the campus,' explains Sarah Shillingford,
graduate recruitment partner at Deloitte.
The professional services firm decided to give speed recruitment a try. 'It was literally like
speed dating - well, as I understand it, as I've never tried it,' she laughs. 'It's not so much us
interviewing the candidate. It's a chance for the graduate to ask questions about us so that
they can self-select.'
In a company the size of Deloitte, this kind of introduction can be particularly enlightening. It
recruits for a number of areas but predominantly under four main banners of audit, tax,
consulting and corporate finance. Then there are sub-sectors, so for interested students it
can be daunting. 'Having the opportunity for one-on-one contact with a member of the
graduate recruitment department is really useful in helping them to decide if and where they
want to apply,' she believes.
Were there particularly personality traits Deloitte was on the hunt for? 'We were not looking
for anything in particular ourselves because we were not doing this as part of our
assessment process,' argues Shillingford. Instead, they had a list of points they thought the
candidates would want to know about. 'Obviously you can't make a career decision in 10
minutes but if they were interested in Deloitte they had the opportunity to do more research,
such as attending our open day events.'
Of the 22 who attended the event, 15 applied to Deloitte. Following a stringent process of
interviews and assessment, offers were made to two graduates - and both accepted. 'It's
slightly higher than we would expect,' she says. 'Normally, we would make offers to one in 10
people, so we got two out of 15. Based on that small number it was a higher than average
success rate. It was a good return on investment.'
Now the first blush is over, will this method be successful in the long-term? And could it be
extended further than graduates? Shillingford admits that she would be tempted to do it
again. This year Deloitte's target numbers have increased - it is looking for about 1,000. 'We
are probably moving to a model where we will recruit all year round.' However, she's is more
doubtful about its wider appeal. 'The difficulty with other levels is that quite often you're not
talking about such a homogenous group of people,' she explains.
'There's no reason at all why it should be limited to graduates,' counters Hinkerton, whose
organisation has been looking into it. 'Why can't you use it for accountancy or IT or
personnel? There's definitely room and it's something we're looking to develop.'
THE 10-MINUTE CHALLENGE: HOW MUCH CAN YOU LEARN?
'Matchmaking' events such as speed recruitment can obviously provide shortcuts for
employers when looking for their perfect employee - particularly through watching a
candidate's behaviour and body language, as well as what they actually say. But just how
much can you pick up in 10 minutes?
'We make judgments about people in four minutes flat all of the time. There's a certain
inevitability about it,' admits James Bywater, senior psychologist with psychometric
assessment provider SHL. There's a body of research showing that even if you spend an
hour in someone's company, those first impressions tend to stick. 'You've made that
judgment and you spend the rest of the hour seeking confirmatory evidence, and ignoring,
systematically but unconsciously, all the evidence that doesn't fit in with your first thoughts,'
he explains.
It feels right because we do it all the time without ever really realising it. It's mostly based on
cues such as the way people dress, subtle facial signals, how they talk, immediate non-
verbal behaviour - and even their attractiveness. 'There's a lot of research suggesting that
people who look attractive are given very positive judgments on issues that are unrelated to
their other skills,' says Bywater. 'People make such assessments all the time.'
We all know he's right, however wrong it may be to do it. The risk of making a resulting bad
decision is one reason why employers are turning to objective assessment, delaying
judgments until the end of the recruitment process, rather than building them up as they go
along.
Speed recruitment then is perfectly reasonable as a way of providing a chance for employers
and employees to see and be seen. But for both, the actual decision takes longer. It's like
relationships - they take some work, and that's as true for an employment relationship as it is
for dating.
Human Resources 13/05/05