Human – People & Culture

Using smart recruitment to secure the perfect candidate – who wasn’t even looking

If you know anything about Human, you’ll know that we don’t sit around waiting for the perfect candidates to drop into our lap. You can’t in this climate, where unemployment is at its lowest rate and the choices for talented people are better than ever.

We are proactive networkers and build relationships as part of our daily routines to ensure that when we are asked to fill a role we can look beyond the candidates who are already actively looking for a new job if that’s what we need to do.

Take a recent example of a role we filled for The Sheffield College. They were looking for a data protection officer and had drawn blanks in their own search.

At the time, the final implementation date for new data protection legislation GDPR had just passed, so we knew that many people who were contractors with that specialism would likely have just finished temporary roles.

Using the networks we’d nurtured, we asked whether anyone had let go of a superstar who had recently completed a project for them and were surprised to be given the details of a direct report of one of our contacts who had revealed to his manager he was ready for a move, but hadn’t yet started looking. (There’s a whole other blog about being able to be honest with your boss about looking for another role!)

Seb Smith turned out to be the star that The Sheffield College were looking for and we were able to connect them using our innovative recruitment platform, Human DNA™.

Seb may not have been offered an interview if he’d applied with his CV in the traditional way. One example is that his job title and the stage he was at in his career didn’t reflect the level of skills and responsibilities he had in his current role.

Human DNA™ negates these issues by making the recruitment process much more personal and demonstrating more than just an individual’s skills and experience. It shows more of the whole person behind the CV. This level of detail ensures not only the quality of the shortlist but also offer assurances that both parties are engaged and committed to the recruitment process.

Human DNA™ allows us to:

  • Profile both the role and the organisation to establish exactly what skills and behaviours being sought – This is a detailed approach, and includes ensuring that team dynamics will be balanced with any new recruit
  • Profile candidates we judge may be suitable to see how well-matched to the role they are
  • Create profiles of the top three candidates with pictures and a short introductory video so they can explain why they are interested in the role and a bit more about themselves
  • Include a behavioural profile of the candidates alongside an executive summary written by us and their CV
  • Showcase the candidates with the opportunity to add six facts about themselves – giving them a chance to show off their personality
  • Assure the recruiter the candidates can meet their standards by posing six competency-based questions that the candidates answer in writing. This also allows them to assess spelling and grammar as well as potential skills and knowledge
  • Ask up to five questions by video which the candidates have a limited amount of time to answer. This shows how they perform under pressure, as well as being another opportunity to show off their skills and knowledge

The whole system works online so those shortlisting can work independently, sharing comments and feedback with one another remotely and removing the need to synchronise diaries for extensive shortlisting sessions.

Our smart recruitment process gave The Sheffield College the confidence to look beyond Sebastian’s experience and job title to see the real skills, knowledge and aptitude he could bring to the role. It also gave Seb the confidence to go for an interview knowing he had been screened in depth and that the organisation was seriously interested in him.

Our rigorous process means that face-to-face interviews have much more value, being more like a second interview as all of the basics have been covered remotely, with a much-reduced time investment for both candidate and recruiter.

Sebastian says: “The personal touch of HumanDNA was pivotal to me securing my role with The Sheffield College. It’s nearly impossible to get an understanding of someone’s personality through a conventional CV and it’s amazing to see Human utilising the times we are living in through video interviews and the Human DNA™ platform in general. It’s something I’ve never seen or heard of before.

I would not have been aware of the role at The Sheffield College if Amy hadn’t reached out to me. She seemed to have a perfect understanding of exactly what the College were looking for. It’s always beneficial if the company and the recruiter are on the same page and in this instance it worked perfectly.”

Paul Simpson Executive Director of HR and OD at The Sheffield College said: “Finding the right match for our Data Protection Officer had been challenging, in part because we ideally wanted not just a technical specialist but someone who could successfully communicate and engage with others on Data Protection matters.

“Amy understood our requirements and through talking to her and through Human DNA ™ we had a good shortlist of candidates to interview and were delighted to appoint Seb to the role.”

If you think Human DNA™ could help you recruit or find a new job, give one of the friendly team a call.

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