Recruit the right candidate with these 6 innovative techniques

How do you recruit the right candidate? Today's human resources managers are using innovative new recruitment techniques to woo candidates and find the rare pearl. 🌟

Good recruitment not only means choosing the right profile, it also means ensuring that the new recruit has a lasting place in the company.

In this article, we take a look back at the recruitment processes that came out of a more old-school management style, and tell you about some innovative recruitment methods.

Combined with new recruitment tools, recruitment agencies and HR departments are recruiting talent by valuing innovation and teamwork. 👇

See all software Recruiting

Let's go back to the basics of recruitment

Before diving into specific recruitment techniques, let's go back to the basics. Understanding the basics allows us to approach the process in a more structured and efficient way.

What are the recruitment strategies?

Recruitment strategies vary according to a company's objectives and needs:

• ✅ Internal recruitment: encourages internal mobility by promoting talent that is already present.
  
  
• ✅ External recruitment: looking for new talent via advertisements, job fairs or agencies.
  
  
• ✅ Co-optation: encouraging internal recommendations with bonuses.
  
  
• ✅ Direct sourcing: using databases and social networks to identify potential candidates.

What are the main recruitment methods?

Recruitment methods include various methods for attracting and selecting candidates:

• ✅ O nline advertising: posting vacancies on specialist sites and social networks, or even your career site.
  
  
• ✅ Recruitment agencies: working with specialist agencies to manage the process.
  
  
• ✅ Headhunting: using headhunters for rare or specialist profiles.
  
  
• ✅ Job fairs: attending events to meet candidates in person.
  
  
• ✅ Internships and work-study programmes: recruitment via internship or work-study programmes to train and integrate gradually.

When well chosen and applied, these methods improve recruitment efficiency and the quality of the talent recruited.

What are recruitment techniques?

The 3 classic techniques

Let's look at the tests commonly used in job interviews. Some specialist recruitment consultants are used to using them, whatever the position to be filled. Will you recognise yourself in this trend?

#1 The aptitude test

An aptitude test is a structured recruitment method. Its aim is to assess the candidate's ability to perform specific tasks requiring the mastery of certain skills and qualifications.

• ✅ Comprehension: understanding the meaning of words, both written and spoken.
  
  
• ✅ S peed of analysis: identifying useful and relevant information.
  
  
• ✅ Verbal proposal of solutions: reason on the basis of data provided.
  
  
• ✅ Numerical proposal of solutions: reason on the basis of numerical concepts.
  
  
• ✅ Visual reasoning: visualise shapes and know how to associate concepts with visual elements.

These recruitment methods include psychotechnical tests and logic tests.

💡Sa ve time by using recruitment software to administer tests to your candidates.

⚒️ Jobaffinity is a recruitment platform that makes it easy to manage your applications. Thanks to its integration with specialist tools such as Goshaba, Central test and Assessfirst, have your candidates take the tests of your choice and let the software take care of centralising all the results !

#2 Personality test

A personality test is used to assess :

• interpersonal skills
• the affective and conative aspects of a candidate's personality.

☝️ This type of test must have been tested by an occupational psychologist in a professional context to be considered reliable.

Professionals recognise that the subjectivity of the candidate most often distorts the results. This subjectivity can arise from :

• non-existent or inaccurate self-knowledge ;
• the desire to answer "yes" systematically, motivated by the fear of contradicting;
• answering neutrally, for example by placing oneself in the middle of a response scale, motivated by the fear of expressing a clear-cut opinion;
• the need to please the interlocutor, motivated by the need to belong socially.

💡 To get round this subjectivity and ensure you make the best choice following the tests, centralise all the information gathered on an application (CV, motivations, comments from your colleagues, etc.) in ATS software, such as Taleez, or on a collaborative platform.

⚒️ monday.com HR gives you an overview of your recruitment pipeline. This means you have all the tools you need to get a 360° view of a profile, and not just the feeling you get from a test.

#2 The graphology test

⚠️ Assessing a person's handwriting to make a psychological correlation with a job is by no means a scientifically proven recruitment method.

Certain ways of writing may reveal the existence of certain psychological aspects, but can in no way tell you about a candidate's aptitude for a job.

What's more, it has to be said that the vast majority of working people today use a computer keyboard and abandoned handwriting a long time ago. This obvious lack of practice will further distort the results of a handwriting analysis...

👉So there's no point in asking a candidate to fill in a so-called information sheet so that they can handwrite the CV they've given you!

IQ tests: banned by the CNIL!

The RGPD (European Data Protection Regulation) and the CNIL, its supervisory authority in France, prohibit any question that is not related to the job. The recruiter has no right to do so!

The I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is therefore considered to be personal data unrelated to a job, in the same way as :

• political opinion ;
• religious opinion
• sexual orientation
• health data.

This applies to all written and oral questions. Even if the recruiter gets the candidate to sign an authorisation form, the recruiter is liable to penalties: it's forbidden, full stop!

The 6 new recruitment techniques

New recruitment techniques are emerging that are proving more attractive to applicants and enabling companies to project a more modern employer brand.

A human resources policy that doesn't focus on CVs and covering letters? Incredible, isn't it? 🤔

Let's take a look at how to gather applications by thinking outside the box with 6 innovative recruitment techniques.

#1 The jobboards, sites dedicated to employment.

Pôle Emploi, Apec, Indeed... Who doesn't use recruitment and job sites these days?

Candidates create accounts and set up alerts to receive job offers matching their criteria directly by email. They also identify companies so that they can send them unsolicited applications.

Recruiters therefore need to adapt to these new recruitment methods and post their vacancies on all the specialist sites to ensure the best possible visibility. It is also essential to take care with the title and description of the advert.

💡Save considerable time by optimising the visibility of your vacancies.

⚒️ softgarden gives you access to more than 300 international and local job boards so you can intelligently publish your vacancies on the best platforms. You can also create a personalisedcareer page for your company, with the promise that it will be well referenced on search engines.

⚒️ Recruitment software such as Flatchr (voted HR Solution 2018) or Recruitee (winner of the OnRec 2018 award for technical innovation) allows you to multi-post and update your job adverts on a multitude of professional sites.

⚒️ Softy offers its own integrated multicasting tool for sending your offers to the main job boards on the market.

#2 LinkedIn and social networks

Social networks are consulted on a daily basis: the use of mobile phones is a major contributor to this.

Candidates follow companies and recruiters on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and share vacancies, including in specialised groups on Facebook or LinkedIn, for example.

To facilitate your recruitment on LinkedIn, using the Recruiter application can prove to be an innovative sourcing method: you benefit from search tools to target specific profiles, internationally, and you can have a direct approach by contacting candidates on the network.

💡 LinkedIn's Recruiter application is interoperable with recruitment and application management software to update your data.

⚒️ Factorial Acquisition Talents is also a good solution thanks to its free advanced search function, which allows you to easily source candidates who meet your needs. In addition, the "candidate messaging" function enables recruitment managers to send messages directly to their candidates, creating a two-way communication process. To take things a step further, with the paid version of the tool, it is possible to write a job advert directly via LinkedIn.

#3 The deferred video interview

The video interview process involves sending an online questionnaire to the candidate in the form of a video. The candidate answers the questions on camera and sends the video response to a dedicated platform.

The candidate is not prepared for the questions and has to answer them in a limited time.

Beyond the relevance of the answers given, which are already indicators, the aim of this approach is to observe the respondent's body language, behaviour, voice, intonation, stress management, etc. This technique is part of the new methods of interviewing.

This technique is one of the new recruitment methods and offers a number of advantages:

• getting away from the routine of individual interviews ;
• giving all candidates a fair chance
• saving travel costs and time for candidates;
• conveying a modern, digital image of the company;
• respond quickly to candidates;
• save precious time compared with multiple face-to-face meetings.

Here are a few popular deferred video applications:

⚒️ EasyRECrue, for deferred and live video interviews, schedule management, pre-selection thanks to AI and language tests.

⚒️ VisioTalent also offers deferred and live video interviews, for discovering candidates' personalities.

⚒️ InterviewApp, for lower volumes of recruitment, this application only charges for what you use.

⚒️ Interconnected with these 3 applications, Beetween software innovates by systematically offering a deferred video interview to candidates, with targeted questions to replace the traditional (and outdated) covering letter.

#4 The coded job advert or test

Innovative recruitment methods include the use of codes or rebuses.

👉 Decathlon, for example, has hidden a job advert in the source code of one of its pages, aimed at developers, knowing full well that they are curious and will often rummage through it. There are also advertisements or tests in the form of riddles or rebus. It's a good way of skimming the list of candidates in a fun way, and creating a buzz.

Here's a visual example: in 2015, an advertising agency tested the advertising culture of its applicants for a creative internship, using a rebus-emojis. The result? The email address to send their portfolio to 😄 and some of the most viral communication ever!

💡 Employer branding is very important for attracting talent, in line with your corporate culture. You trigger emotions, and recruit people who are like you.

#5 The hackathon

A hackathon is originally a marathon that consists of hacking the code or a computer programme for a developer. This type of game has now been adapted and used to attract and recruit other types of job profile.

The hackathon is an innovative recruitment technique for both recruiters and candidates:

• the recruiter puts the best potential candidates for a job in competition with each other by launching a major challenge;
• the successful candidate is offered the job, usually accompanied by a prestigious title (as they have taken up a great challenge!).

👉 Example of a hackathon organised by the French Navy in partnership with Thalès:

#6 The game

A serious game , for example, is a game that subtly combines a very serious objective with fun ways of achieving it.

☝️ This type of game is widely used by marketing, sales and HR departments for training, motivational seminars and team building.

It's an innovative recruitment technique that's highly appealing to candidates: caught up in the heat of the playful action, they forget about stress, are much more natural, and even perform better!

The recruiter can then observe the behaviour and reactions of the candidates in situations of reflection, questioning, failure, success, etc. These human experiences are also an opportunity to assess the candidates' ability to work together to achieve the objective. The spirit of cohesion is best detected naturally.

Example of a serious game in video:

See all software Recruiting

Candidates' preferred selection techniques

Several of these techniques can be used for external recruitment, but also to encourage internal mobility. Some of your employees may be interested in other careers and have unsuspected technical skills. Games and challenges can reveal your hidden talents.

To complete and conclude our article, let's take a look at a study carried out by AssessFirst, a company specialising in predictive recruitment:

• the escape game appeals to 64% of respondents, who consider this technique to be innovative and reliable, although less than 2% have tried it out;
• the deferred video interview is considered innovative by 59% of respondents, but only 39% consider it reliable, certainly because 63% admit to feeling uncomfortable with this technique;
• the personality questionnaire was tested by 78% of respondents, with 63% believing it to be innovative and 58% believing it to be reliable;
• the reasoning test was tested by 67% of respondents, 57% consider it reliable.

What's your recruitment tip? And have you found the answer to the Lost Boys riddle? We're still looking...