Creativity in Talent Acquisition
We have an opportunity to use Creativity in TA/recruitment to improve the candidate experience, source better candidates and build a stronger employee brand for our company.
Principles of Creativity in Recruitment
Human-Centred Design - Empathy
Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving... It’s a process that starts with the people you’re designing with and ends with new solutions that are purpose-built to suit their needs. Human-centred design is about cultivating deep empathy.. - IDEO
If you want to bring a more human centred approach to your recruitment process ask yourself these questions:
What questions are your candidates asking?
What is the most frustrating aspect of your recruitment process for them?
What questions are you hiring team asking?
How are you measuring feedback from the people involved, candidates and hiring teams?
When’s the last time you’ve been able to test something new based on feedback?
Innovation
Recruitment is an industry that easily get’s stuck in it’s ways and traditions. If we allow ourselves to foster a sense of curiosity there are so many areas that we can innovate with tech, systems and processes. We could draw out an end to end journey of a recruitment process and question each stage and ask what’s the value of this part of the process? Where is the friction? How could this be improved?
Data: We need to think about the data that we need to be measuring to ensure we know where the focus in innovation should be for us.
Experimentation: Once we've looked at the data or heard feedback about our process how can we test, experiment and iterate on our process?
Here's some questions to ask:
"Where do you see opportunities for technology to make our recruitment process more efficient and engaging?"
"Can you identify any steps in our recruitment journey that seem outdated or unnecessary?"
"What innovative recruitment strategies have you seen or heard about that could be applied to our process?"
"How can we better foster a culture of curiosity and continuous improvement within our recruitment team?"
"What's one radical change we could test in our recruitment process to improve candidate experience?"
Visual Communication
If you're still relying on countless word docs and pdf's you're missing a golden opportunity to use the power of visual communication to tell your recruitment story in an engaging dynamic way.
Everyone learns and digests information differently. For me I’m a very visual learner. If I were a candidate I’d far rather you show me a few slides about the company, team and their goals rather than just talk at me. When I’ve done this for roles I’m recruiting, I’ve interviewed top tier talent from big tech companies in silicon valley and they’ve shared that this is the best recruitment process they’ve ever been in. What did I do? Shared a company deck before the interview, a talking presentation where I talked through the company vision, mission and goals; During the recruiter screen I pre-empted most of their questions by sharing a team deck (taken from a stripped-back version of a vision deck the teams had to make anyway). It talked over the teams current goals, pain points, team structure shared feedback.
I've got a number of free templates that that you can use to get started with utilising visual communication in your recruitment process (send me a message or comment and I'll send them to you)
”The more you know the more you see, but the converse is also true, the more you see the more you know.” – Aldous Huxley
Story Telling
How are you using the power of story telling?
“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”― Robert McKee
Emotional Connection: Use real people stories to create an emotional connection. What stories can you tell about real employee growth stories to create a showcase of professional development opportunities.
Bring your Values to life: Rather than just list your company values, how can you tell a story that illustrates that value in action.
Brand Identity: Share videos or stories that highlight your company's mission, and the impact of your work, making your brand more relatable and distinct.
Here's some further questions to ask:
"How can storytelling be used to differentiate our company in a crowded job market?"
How could we gather impactful stories from out team to share in the market?
How can we empower out team members to tell their stories publicly to build our employer brand?
"How can we more effectively use our company's success stories to engage potential candidates?"
Human Centred Design
Innovation
Visual Communication
Story Telling
How can you use these principles to bring more creativity to your recruitment experience?
If you want support in building talent strategies that engage the best candidates or if want to bring in more creativity into your recruitment process then reach out, I'd love to connect for a quick call.