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WHAT’S NEXT?
The recruitment process You may have heard this before and frankly, we agree: a job interview is quite like going on a first date. Unless you’re a very unusual kind of person who thrives on feeling tested and judged, let’s be honest – a job interview isn’t the most pleasant experience. The reason we made the comparison with dating is because it can be quite a constructive guide on how to present and handle yourself in an interview. On a first date, you want to put the best possible version of yourself forward. You want to subtly sell yourself without making it obvious that you’re subtly selling yourself. You want to appear relaxed, natural, charming, wildly interesting and – above all – the right person and the right fit for the person sitting across the table. This is pretty much what happens at a job interview. In both scenarios, you may feel nervous beforehand because you are essentially placing yourself in a very vulnerable position: opening yourself to judgement and even rejection. Perhaps the only plus a job interview has over a date is that you can do your homework beforehand and try to use your research to give you an edge against the competition.
That’s where we come in. We can’t help with the selection process and criteria of a potential date, but we can shed some light on the general procedures that your potential employer might have in place for recruiting new talent into their companies. The more information you have, the better prepared you’ll be. Having context around how employers go about finding new candidates will better help you prepare when you meet them. Obviously, every company (like every date!) is different and they will each have unique nuances in the way they recruit. A lot of companies, especially the larger ones, will have some information on their recruitment process on their websites and researching this will give you an advantage against other candidates who didn’t bother to look it up and prepare accordingly. That being said, there is a general pattern to how employers hunt for talent. This involves four stages: planning, searching, application/interview process and selection.
