Let’s start a journey! It’s a journey about 2 couples

Which one do you think have the better relationship? Which relationship will last longer?

You think the blue one is the answer? Both meet the first time and have very quick many topics to talk about. To find together is easy and quick for both of them.

You think the green one is the answer? Both meet the first time and doesn’t have much to talk. Often, they lose sight of each other and maybe will find together at a later time… hopefully. Their relationship has a different foundation.

What should us tell this story? It is not about the first view, doesn’t matter if we think about private life or business… we should always look behind.
Within recruiting we see very often that companies place a job description, candidates interpret this and build on this interpretation (and what they have seen on the company website) their CV and cover / motivation letter. Well done. But at this moment they have no chance to look behind. Every candidate has a different interpretation.
the same happens on the other site. Company interpret the CV and decide based on this interpretation. But if you show the same CV different companies you will get different interpretation.

This game is the same game as the blue couple.

Do you think we should play this game? The blue couple will separate from each other very quick, find others and separate again. Within recruiting this is a very expensive game.

Maybe you think now you should prove the topics of the blue couple (hobbies etc.) first and have then a look for the topics of the green one before hiring. Great, that makes your life easy… but you will lose many opportunities., maybe the best ones.

Companies are getting hundreds of application on one position and try to find ways to handle it… most time by automation or strict processes handled by interns or external service provider. The result is a very bad applicant experience and a bad employer branding.
The solution should be one step earlier. It is easy to write a job description and ask for hobbies and interests (means the bits and bytes of the business), but this is causing huge amount of applications. The focus should be on the topics of the couple with just some high level topics of the blue one. Based on the topics of the green couple you should start searching… without placing the job description everywhere to get most visibility. Think about the places where you expect the right candidates based on the topics of the green couple and have then a high-level check about hobbies etc.

Have found some interesting candidates, think about the couples and act like one of the green ones in the first call. After the call reflect the call and think about empathy, authenticity and logic.

With this approach now you will for sure hire candidates which will join you for a long time. You will both be happy!

Think you understand the core message behind this example. For sure there are opinions like that you have to do small talk before diving into the points of the green couple. Sure, but not too much. Looking at a CV and cover letter to decide if to go ahead is far much more than small talk.

If we leave out the hiring topic and move over to leadership, we can adopt these things here.
Not everyone needs to be able to do everything (same hobbies), but it is important to develop a same mindset in a team each day.

I’m happy about your thoughts. What do you think? How is your company operating here?