Trevor Vas interviews candidate experience guru, Gerry Crispin, at #ERE14

Welcome to the ATC TalentTalks Q&A Hot Seat where we’ll be bringing you a series of interviews that will pick the brains of the world’s leaders in all things recruitment and talent management. This is the first of many, so sit back and enjoy!
This week Trevor Vas (@trevorpvas), Director at ATC Events, and Gerry Crispin (@GerryCrispin), Co-founder of CareerXroads, sit down at the US #ERE14 Conference to talk about global recruitment changes, and the importance of the candidate experience.

Lessons from Gerry Crispin:

• With so much technology available it can be overwhelming for recruiters and most of the time the tools available don’t fit together. We need to try and simplify the whole process and get back to basics;
• Part of going back to basics is recruiters realising that the candidate experience is a critical aspect of recruitment;
• Recruiters need to remember that the candidate is a potential ambassador, and so no matter the outcome of the process, if the experience was positive they’re more likely to reapply, refer their friends and continue to buy your goods and/or services;
• The key to giving a candidate a positive experience is ensuring they were able to demonstrate their skills and talents fairly; and
• Ensuring this fairness can be as simple as finishing an interview with: “Have you been able to tell us everything about your skills, knowledge and experience that you think is important in order to compete for this job?”.

Watch the interview on YouTube or read the transcript below:

Trevor: We’re here for ATC Talent Talks with the inimitable Gerry Crispin. Good morning Gerry!
Gerry, what do you think is the major trend sweeping recruitment globally in terms of recruitment these days?
Gerry: I think there is a struggle about how we’re going to take technology and simplify it. To be honest with you I think we’re overwhelmed with too much, too many tools that don’t fit together, that don’t do quite work well, and I think an awful lot of people are trying to figure out how to simplify this whole thing down and get back to basics.
Trevor: Gerry what is it that you’re personally most passionate about?
Gerry: [laughs] It’s what I’ve always been most passionate about, which is the candidates! I’m convinced we still have a ways to go, in terms of empowering candidates to make better choices, so that employers and candidates are making great choices about what they do, but I don’t think we’re far from it, and I’m convinced that we’re gathering the data that allows us to move forward on that.
Trevor: What’s been the most astonishing finding that you’ve uncovered as a result of your research in this area?
Gerry: None of it is rocket science, but there is one issue that stands out in terms of the correlations that we’re looking at. That is that at various points in the recruiting process, it’s important for us to have complete information as employers about that individual so we can make a better choice, but what we’ve often failed to do is to ask the candidate whether they think, and perceive that they were able to share with us everything that was important for them to compete for the job. What we’re uncovering is that if they do believe that is true, then all the other things related to recruiting that might annoy the hell out of you go by the wayside, and people are extraordinarily positive.
But if they don’t believe they fairly got up to bat and swung, then they are much more likely to tend negative, then that means they’re not going to reapply, that means they’re not going to refer others, that means they’re not going to buy your damn products, and so we start moving in a totally different direction. That single practice which at the end of an interview for example, saying to someone “Hey I’ve had a lot of time talking to you but have you been able to tell us everything about your skills, knowledge and experience that you think is important to compete for this job?”. I think that is an extraordinary finding and it’s so “duh” because this is not rocket science. The question is when we think about the work that we do as recruiters; do we lead others for ourselves? Do we do this for every candidate, every time? I doubt we do. We all know how to do, it’s just as we haven’t embedded that as a critical part of how we conduct ourselves as recruiters.
Trevor: Gerry thank you very much it’s been a most enlightening interview and I wish you a happy ERE.
You can learn more about the simplification of recruitment technology at this year’s Australasian Talent Conference in Sydney on 21-21 May 2014.
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