After feeling a little bit like I’ve focused on some of the more stressful parts of freelancing lately, I wanted to celebrate some absolutely brilliant things I’ve experienced lately – and one is definitely recruitment over the last few months. Some approaches have felt revolutionary and some feel so obvious it hurts – but it’s interesting how each one has made such an impression. It just goes to show how far from the mark a lot of organisations’ recruitment processes are, and how they’re missing a huge trick in setting the tone right early on.
So here are the five big ones that stand out:
1.Realistic expectations
This organisation laid out their preferred criteria – so far so standard. But then they went on to explain that if you met 50% of the criteria, they’d want to talk. That 75% would be great, and best of all, that “if you’re nailing 100%…you’re probably not a good fit for us.” I absolutely loved their honesty – and their obvious culture around realistic expectations and promoting development. It struck me as so different from the usual rigid list of “essentials” and “desirables” as if they’re always non-negotiable. Instead, it felt like they’d written “we’re looking for something like this – let’s talk.”
This organisation was also notable for how they didn’t have essential qualifications for the role – that they were more interested in what you bring, rather than where you learnt it. When I was looking at employment opportunities over the last few years, so many roles still give GCSE, A-Level and even degree minimum qualification levels to apply. It feels at odds with the increasingly diverse ways that people gain their life experiences – for instance is travelling less valuable for what you’ve learnt than university? You could argue the opposite is true in terms of applicable life lessons – you might have learnt more of the “professional skills” in the lecture hall, but your soft skills are ones that’ll really do you well in life.
2. Not working a 9-5
Several organisations have had great approaches to this. One explicitly outlined that being a feminist organisation they have a strong commitment to offering a flexible workplace and that their roles are specifically designed to work around people’s lives as well as their work. They actually stated a 9-5 isn’t expected – instead because of the nature of project work, time requirements may go up or down in line with the where the project’s at so “flexibility on both sides is important”.
It struck me such a unique and refreshing approach, but arguably one that’s just plain common sense. A job is about the work you do, not about the hours you show up for. Whenever the job has allowed, I’ve always been a huge supporter of this – take a longer lunch if you’re meeting a friend, start earlier and finish earlier if you’ve got an evening commitment, work a bit less this week if you just can’t get going. There’s no point logging hours for the sake of appearances – provided the job gets done, do it how it suits you.
The other example of this for me lately was an organisation that stated their preferred time commitment across the month but explained it would be left to the post-holder to decide how to manage their time. Provided the job was being done, they were happy leaving the decision to you. A long overdue move towards recognising how much more flexibly many jobs can be done now, and how much this is valued by your workforce. Not to mention what it signals in terms of a trust-based culture that delegates key decisions to those best-placed to make them.
It also didn’t go unnoticed how incredibly useful this is for some core groups who might otherwise struggle with work commitments – parents locked to short school hours, those with caring responsibilities, those with health conditions who benefit from shorter days. There’s a fairly long list of people who suddenly have a much more practical gateway into work through this approach, let alone the people this simply suits because they’re night-owls rather than 9-5ers for instance. Both these examples are a big step forward to making employment much more inclusive – and arguably open up a far wider pool of candidates for organisations than a traditionally rigid work pattern would give.
3. Paid interviews
No, I’m not lying. This one’s genuine too. I’m about to interview with an organisation that’s going to pay me for the time I’ll be with them interviewing. As a freelancer, in particular, where you’re constantly aware that any time not spent directly working on a contract isn’t bringing in money and is “dead time”, this was fantastic to see. I was blown away to see how much they valued (quite literally) their candidates. It speaks volumes about their culture.
4. Questions beforehand
This one’s happened a couple of times now and I’m interested to see if this was just coincidence or more of a trend. But for both interviews (in different, unrelated organisations), I’ve been sent the set of interview questions a week in advance with a warm message about giving them a read through and hoping they help me prepare. It might divide opinion but I feel like it gives a much more realistic impression of the person you’re going to get. It’s rare for a job that you need to react in an instant, without the ability to check policy, with a colleague or manager, or simply take some time to consider your response. It’s also equally rare you don’t have access to Google for research and support resources to decide your course of action. Giving some preparation time just reflects real life better.
Obviously, the questions themselves matter too. No prep interviews still today have a habit of defaulting to “think of a time when,” or the dreaded “name three words your friend/colleague would use to describe you.” I often struggle to the value in these types, particularly the memory test ones where you’re attempting to force-fit previous work on the spot into the skill at hand. It definitely helps that the questions submitted were often well focused on the actual work ahead – looking for what you support you’d need to get started, your ideas for how to develop the role etc. They were tangible, grounded and practical, and laid all the right foundations for genuinely testing what candidates can offer and how they would tackle the role.
5. Vote of confidence
One stood out by saying “we want you to succeed in this process – let us know if we can do anything else to support you.” Simple but so effective – a great way to set the tone for your recruitment process. The rest of their advert was equally warm, encouraging and open. It felt like they were providing a cheering squad rather than the closed/cold approach of “go on then, impress us” that I’ve experienced in numerous recruitment processes and interviews over the years. To immediately start from such a positive note of confidence demonstrated how much they respect candidates, and likely their staff too.
There’s been some really stand-out brilliant recruitment experiences in the past few months. It’s underlined how recruitment is a great indicator of an organisation’s culture and values, that recruitment is as much about you assessing them as them assessing you and how important it is to find organisations whose culture and values really align with your own.