New Hires and Speed Dating

Just when you thought you had the whole interview process under control the rules change.  In a competitive job market the employer has had to become as creative as the prospective job applicant.  Employers are seeing huge numbers of applicants for very limited job postings.  The cost of hiring is expensive both monetarily and in man hours needed to find the ideal candidate.  As an applicant what can you expect?  As an employer what can you do to maximize your resources and limit your risks?

First the employer;  you have less than ten jobs and more than nine hundred responses to your posting, rather than read each resume try to scale down the pool of candidates.  Send a group email to each of the respondents asking for a next step, ie. send in writing sample, references, come to an informational open house etc.  Then wait to see who responds.  Chances are, less than half of the original respondents will take the next step.  Now there are fewer applicants to work with.  Devise some activity to bring the smaller pool of applicants in for an in person screening.  This is where the "speed dating" model comes into play.  Quickly run the applicants through a round of five minute interviews with decision makers in your organization.  From this group find the most qualified and interesting candidates to pursue.

Applicants don't expect  to receive a response to every resume you send out, don't just randomly send out resumes to everything posted in your area either.  The more carefully you approach your search the better your chances of interviewing and landing a position.  Carefully read each posting, respond to the language used in the post.   Tailor each cover letter and resume, don't just use the one size fits most approach.  Research the companies posting and find a name of someone to send your reply to.  Learn as much as possible about the organization so that you'll be ready for that important next step when it's offered. 

When you are not busy responding to job posts, contacting recruiters, or researching companies, practice your elevator speech.  Not sure what that is?  The very important elevator speech is the thirty second speech touting your best employable attributes.  Practice this speech with everyone you come in contact with, everyone!  You  may never know, the produce guy you see every week has a son that was just promoted to HR director at the company you have been trying to get into, until you reach out and let him know you're looking,  Your elevator speech is the perfect tool for carving that path.

Early indicators are saying the United States is coming out of this recession.  There have been some pockets of hiring activity but it is still a very competitive market.  Both employers and job applicants need to find the creative smart solution to getting the right candidate or postition.