Are you sabotaging your employer brand by the way you hire?

We have seen too many companies turning great candidates away for doing something silly, if not downright rude. This is not just a waste of time and resource, but harmful to their employer brand. Down this road, their chance of getting good workers would slip faster than they could ever imagine. Be sure you are not one of them.

You might be losing competent candidates by doing these 2 things when you hire

1. Having an insatiable desire to collect forms and information

A whopping 92% of people who clicked “apply” button on the company’s website never complete an application. Employers thought a complicated process can test how determined thecandidates are to get the job.

They would make applicants to fill out forms after forms, and by the time the applicants get to the interview stage, they would have filled out the same information a dozen times. Or they ask applicants to fill out the same information that had been submitted electronically again on paper forms on the interview day. If that is not enough, ask the candidates to provide all hard copies of their certificates, academic transcripts, reference letters, etc. before an interview is arranged. Nothing works more effectively than functional stupidity in putting off intelligent candidates.

2. Misusing the “good cop, bad cop” strategy

Many of us have heard of the “good cop, bad cop” strategy in negotiations. In the job interview scenario, it is a way to exert pressure on the candidates and see how intelligently they would respond. Interviewers thought one must be mean, aggressive or unreasonable to play the bad cop, lashing out offensive comments or asking them to perform a task that is irrelevant to the job. That’s a bad cop hammering a nail in the coffin —making it harder for the company to find quality candidates.

In fact, being a bad cop means that one can be critical but remain professional. Interviewees deserve respect like the clients do. When the interview became a power trip the candidates would bite back, and worse, spread a word on glassdoor or reddit.

Employers should care because the talent war is real

Workforce in Hong Kong has been shrinking since 2019. In Q2 2022, total labour force has shrunk to the lowest in the past decade with only 3.75 million. 113,200 residents have left Hong Kong from mid 2021 to mid 2022 alone. While Hong Kong is going through an economic recession, the number of vacancies had continued to climb since Dec 2020 and had doubled in less than two years’ time reaching 74,838 in Q3 2022.

When candidates were given a chance to ask questions at the end of the interview, time has come for the candidates to ask, “Please tell me in 2 minutes why I should join your company”. Job market in Hong Kong is now highly candidate driven. Employers should be complacent no more.

Even when the job market normalises, there is no excuse for running an organization inefficiently. The fact that top candidates will only stay in the job market for 10 days on average is enough a reason for employers to be wary.

How to build your employer brand through hiring processes

1. Review your application process and design it in a way that is efficient and warm. We recommend using empathy map to identify gaps in building a user-friendly application process.

2. Keep the applicants informed of the hiring process once they have started the application. When they are not hired, telling them instead of ghosting them.

3. Provide adequate training to your interviewers. Carve out time from their busy schedule to review the background of the candidates before interviewing them.

4. On the interview day, stick to the interview schedule and do not stall the candidates before and after the interviews. Respect everyone’s time.

5. All correspondence should be communicated in a genuine and professional manner.

There is a reason why recruitment agents are increasingly in demand for they are professional in taking tension out of the hiring process. Talk to us if you would like advice on how your hiring process could be better managed.