Friday, 30 November 2012
Interviews: How Long Should You Wait?
This is a
frequent question I discuss with my other half, mostly regarding queues for the
checkout and waiting for buses. But I was intrigued recently to read a blogpost on the black coffee blog on behalf of marketing job board OnlyMarketingJobs.
It suggests that candidates should be made to waitin reception for extended
periods before an interview in order to filter for determination and
enthusiasm. So rather than posting the usual idea that it's up to candidates to decide how long to wait (which it is of course), I'm turning it around and asking clients how long they are prepared to keep them waiting and how this affects their recruitment process.
According
to the survey by OnlyMarketingJobs (their dataset was 444 respondents),
35% said they would wait 'as long as it takes'. This isn't that
surprising, the dataset was presumably heavy with desperate jobseekers, given
that it was an open pole on LinkedIn by a jobs board. What was surprising was
the idea extrapolated from this data - that it was showed "Why employers
should keep interviewees waiting… ".
It doesn't.
What the
figures show is that if you leave people waiting even 30 minutes, 65% of the
potential talent has left, never to return. In fact, this is actually a good
example of why potential employers should not keep interviewees waiting and
instead should treat them as desired guests. Here's another (long) post by
someone who was kept waiting and their thought processes. Interestingly, that
interview was arranged through a recruiter. Unfortunately, we didn't get the
recruiter's opinion on their client's actions in this case.
What is
clear is that the initial stage of
the recruitment process is composed of three key actions. For most in-house
recruiting functions and recruitment agencies, these are:
ATTRACTION
> SELECTION > ENGAGEMENT
or in the
case of more selective headhunters,
SELECTION
> ATTRACTION > ENGAGEMENT
Now, if
you've invested your time and resources in selection and attraction, why would
you then flush 65% of that work down the proverbial toilet with some kind of
waiting exercise? If someone did that to their own work, they surely have
issues. If someone does that to a headhunter's or in-house recruiter's work, I
think the person who did the work would have some serious questions. In the
case of employed candidates, these are people that have been invited in for a meeting,
as a guest.
Especially
in the PR market where potential employers are all at war for the existing
talent working at their competitors, and an industry pre-disposed to social
networking, this type of approach is unthinkable. But it does happen. Only last week I was told a story by a
candidate about a well known agency who kept them waiting over 45mins, only for
them to be told the brief had changed and they no longer needed to be seen!
So the
message is clear - what does your candidate interview experience say about you
and your company and is it up-to-scratch?
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