Innovative recruitment techniques for consulting

Consulting and service activities are finding it more difficult to recruit every year. The youngest in particular, attracted by the sirens of entrepreneurship, are somewhat abandoning our formerly more popular professions. Several start-ups have been able to build new working methods. But above all, develop effective communication using their generational codes.

Let's take an overview of new recruitment techniques.

Heineken attracted a large number of applications with a humorous video. It features a recruiter who asks offbeat questions and puts real candidates through strange situations. Only a handful of candidates have had the experience. But the video was widely shared on social media. The approach highlighted the unconventional and refreshing side of the company. A message that resonated with young graduates.

1. Building confidence: Unilever

Candidates, especially when they leave school, do not have much experience of the business world and its recruitment processes. They often do not know the different stages of recruitment. This can cause them stress, discouraging them from sending their applications or making them less impactful during interviews.
To support candidates, Unilever has posted a video online explaining step-by-step the different stages of the process. That is to say: what would be expected of them and the deadlines. An invitation to ask their questions and their applications closes this video.

2. Bootcamp & Hackathon: Coca-Cola

Vlerick Business School organized, in partnership with Coca-Cola, a “bootcamp” dedicated to digital marketing. The students were immersed for three weeks in the world of digital marketing and thus attempted to understand this rapidly expanding field.
This partnership gave Coca-Cola privileged access to the school's students (particularly useful in consulting professions where a limited number of schools are sought) and allowed students to discover their future work and submit their applications. for those who were most excited about it.

The term Hackathon refers to this idea of putting candidates into competition by having them work on collaborative projects. This allows you to choose the best ones. It is a technique widely used in digital professions.

3. New external recruiters: All companies

Many start-ups are seeking to reinvent recruitment via intermediaries; we have selected three as examples:

• Welcome to the Jungle : a platform where companies present themselves and praise their qualities (they generally highlight the good atmosphere)
• The ignition program: a recruiter focused on “high potentials” for start-ups. Some recoverable candidates for your datalabs?
• Software: several solutions have been launched on the market, with the dual objective of facilitating operations for the firm and supporting candidates by creating a relationship close to that of clients. Some names: Jobvite, Recruitee, BambooHR,… and soon Stafiz

4. Active canvassing: Google

Google is constantly looking for the best engineers on specialized subjects. They took advantage of their search engine to identify users who were looking for information on advanced coding techniques to contact them and offer to enter their recruitment process.

Why not contact school students directly via email?

5. Puzzles or gamification: Bletchley Park

During World War II, Alan Turing sought to recruit engineers gifted in deciphering to help him crack Enigma, the German encryption machine. To do this, he placed particularly difficult crosswords in the newspaper “The Telegraph”. The campaign was a great success (see the good film “The Imitation Game” if you haven’t seen it).

Gamification of the recruitment process can be done through games in the advert, but also during the interview in order to shake up traditional codes and make it all more attractive. Recruiters can be imaginative about game ideas that will put candidates to the test and compete. The escape game is an effective example, it allows candidates to be put at ease and to show certain thinking skills or other. But allows recruiters to present their expectations, and to observe different behaviors.

Why not present your missions and their challenges directly to candidates in your communications or in a revisited interview?

6. The offbeat announcement: Shackleton

To find volunteers for his Antarctic expedition, Shackleton wrote a humorous advertisement that focused mainly on the negative sides of the job. But the fact that he himself did the same job was convincing enough.

And at your place, an ad presenting nightlife and demanding customers?

7. Video interview: All companies

Started in start-ups, video interviews (Zoom, or other) are now spreading among larger groups. This makes it possible to save travel time, to adjust the duration of the interview (we feel less guilty about cutting off the interview after 15 minutes if the candidate has not come) and it makes it possible to find slots more quickly (a consultant on assignment abroad does not have to wait for his return to schedule the interview).

8. New channels, like Tinder: Amazon

For recruitment in its AWS entity, Amazon created a buzz by inserting an ad in the Tinder application. Users were therefore able to find themselves “matching” the job offer in a very unexpected place and therefore significant for them.

Matching algorithms can be useful in recruiting and finding suitable talent. It's innovative and trendy today, it's a technique that can be successful with millennials and young graduates.

McDonald's, for its part, used Snapchat, and Goldman Sachs Spotify. And you, what media would you use?

9. Artificial intelligence, of course: Large groups

Finally, artificial intelligence is also reaching the recruitment professions, in multiple forms. Companies are increasingly starting to automatically read CVs, with intelligence that automatically deciphers CVs and cover letters and identifies candidates to be seen as a priority. Some examples of technologies: Pivotal Talent, Weavee, Headstart, etc.

 

More information on the Recruitment functionality in Stafiz

On the subject of recruitment, re-discover an article on the Reasons for hiring consultants

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Stafiz helps professional services gain visibility and better manage their resource planning and their progress of projects thanks to real-time data, taking into account all costs and financial KPIs. Stafiz is a SaaS management resource planning , project management and Business Intelligence. This way, budgets and margins are always respected and you make better decisions for your business.

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