Are your interviewers your best brand ambassadors?

Would you go on holiday to a location that you had never Googled? Would you go and watch a new release without viewing the trailer online first? Would you buy a new television, or any major appliance, without comparing the prices online? So why would you think that your candidates would not do online research on your interviewers before they meet them?

This brings me back to my original question of: are your interviewers your best brand ambassadors? Are they the champions of your organisation who are always sharing organisation’s wins and successes on their personal social media platforms? Are they sharing posts from your company Facebook and/or LinkedIn pages as they are proud to have their personal brand associated with your organisation brand? I really hope, at the very least, that their LinkedIn profiles are up to date with their current designation!

In this scarce-skilled market, where you are probably meeting more passive candidates, the interview almost always needs to turn into a sales pitch! Let me explain this statement. By scarce-skilled I refer to the war for talent as everyone is looking for the same hard-to-find skills these days. As the demand increases, these candidates realise that their value in the market is much greater than it was previously. These candidates do not even need to put their CVs on traditional job boards as they are bombarded by recruiters daily on LinkedIn. If the recruiter is good at their job and knows how to apply a few gentle strokes of their target’s egos, they can usually persuade the candidate to attend an interview.

The interviewers need to be briefed accordingly before they meet the candidates. They need to approach the interview differently if the candidate has been headhunted for the role, or if they have applied directly to the company as they want to work there. In the latter, half of the battle has been won as the candidate has already decided that they want to work for them. In the former, the interviewers need to decide quickly if they like the candidate or not. If they do, they need to start selling the merits of working for your organisation and how this will be a career move that the candidate won’t regret.

Herein lies the reason why you need your best brand ambassadors in this first interview. I firmly believe that the people who are passionate about, and most loyal to the company, will sell your organisation most effectively. I also feel that you need to have someone who is directly linked to the role that you are recruiting for in the interview. This person can honestly explain the challenges, and highlights, of the role. During an interview, your candidates are looking for genuine human connections with people who are “in the trenches” and understand your organisation. They are not looking for Utopia, but a real and trustworthy account of your organisation.

Luckily, your best brand ambassadors should be really easy to identify. These are the employees who shout the successes of your organisation from the rooftops! They are the employees who attend every social event, fundraising drive, company picnic etc. They are always willing to go above and beyond what is required of them. They are the people who put their hands up to volunteer for extra responsibility, often at the expense of their personal time.

Once you have identified these people, you need to make sure that they are competent interviewers. There are several courses and YouTube videos available which can help to improve people’s interviewing skills. These are also the people that you need to work with to raise their online profiles. At this point a lot of people would argue that if they raise these people’s online profiles, they will be headhunted out of the organisation themselves. I assure you that this will not happen if you are looking after your employees and providing them with everything that they need on their career journey.

I also feel that your interview team would benefit from quarterly meetings to discuss any challenges they have encountered during their interviews. They could also look at what has worked really well in interviews and what “hooks” have worked in encouraging candidates to join the team.

As an in-house recruiter, I always encourage my candidates to have a look at the people they are meeting with for the next interview stage’s LinkedIn profiles. Most of them give me the impression that they would have done this anyway, which is a good sign. I then also encourage them not to mention too much about the interviewer’s profiles during the interview for fear of coming across as a weird stalker type! I actually have more success in encouraging candidates to view the interviewer’s LinkedIn profiles than I do with getting the interviewers to keep their online profiles up to date!

In conclusion, you can clearly see that your best brand ambassadors are the people that you want to have in your interview process. They will naturally sell your organisation and instil confidence in your candidates that your company is the place for them to be in order to be successful and happy in their jobs.

Vanessa Raath is determined to bring the “human element” back into today’s recruitment process. With more than 10 years’ experience in the recruitment industry, she is currently in an in-house recruiting role which allows her to focus on her passions for employer branding, tech sourcing and social media marketing. She loves presenting about these topics and sharing her knowledge and experience with others. She co-hosts South Africa’s longest running Twitter chat, #JobAdviceSA, helping youths construct CVs, improve their interview skills and find jobs. Connect with her on Twitter and Instagram, @Van_Raath