Are you “Tindering” your Way to Recruiting Incompetence?

Swipe right. Swipe left.

Being a married man long before the thought of a software tool that would allow me to connect to the lady-folk Tinder has never even been installed on any of my mobile devices. But the concept of quick and superficial inspection to assess a person’s “value” has become something I find intriguing in today’s culture of social brevity. 

And the fact that Tinder has built an entire business around such digitally skin-deep assessments for social and “discreet” introductions amazes me. But who am I to judge. In fact, I have seen many of the acclaimed millennial generation so enthralled with Tinder and swiping right (a positive review of a person’s profile) or swiping left (a similarly negative review) that Tinder had to put a swipe limit on the application earlier this year. If you were swiping right less than 30 times a day you’d be charged $9.99 a month and if more than 30, then it would cost $19.99 a month. 

What a business model! Lest I digress. 

Here’s the question: what does this have to do with recruiting? 

A lot actually. With today’s society living and loving the short skin-deep social media hits I feel that this quick-glance tendency is running over into the recruiting world. The average recruiter spends less than 6 seconds looking at a resume. And companies average 75+ resumes being submitted for mid and high profile searches. If there wasn’t a disposition to quickly move through candidates profiles, then the sheer volume of profiles to review almost necessitates quick glances. 

Hiring managers and recruiters are moving through candidates profiles these days at such pace that even the most active Tinder-user might blush. The quick-hit, quick-glance culture of recruiting can ironically create a blindspot in a company’s hiring practice. Just like with Tinder the short superficial reviews of candidates can lead to overlooking a person’s weaknesses, but in many cases, the big issue is companies will overlook a candidate’s strengths. 

How do we stop “Tindering” our way to recruiting incompetence?

1. Clear set of search criteria from the outset – define the role in detail and have all stakeholders unified and read-in on the search needs. This process might take a few iterations and its ok to pivot after the search has begun. But the key is the clearer the defined role the easier it will be to chart your course. 
2. Define your search and interview processes – often a candidate gets overlooked because the company or recruiter don’t have their resume review and interview process laid out. This is the easiest step in the process, but the one that is most often over-looked because we all assume we know how to interview just like every Tinder user “knows” how to date. 😉
3. Keep your process brief – defining the process doesn’t mean that you create steps or layers of tests for the sake of having them. Define your needs. Define the process and make sure that process doesn’t encumber the candidate or company with unneeded steps. Companies will lose candidates to an over-regimented process. Play to your hiring strengths–e.g. leaership team, product, process, brand, etc. 
4. Last and certainly not least – leverage a smart, respected outside and/or internal recruiter. Not just a vain plug here, but more importantly, in a competitive environment the screening and sourcing process should be outsourced to a reliable recruiter that knows his or her veritable “stuff” that can filter through the fluff saving you time and your company wasted cycles on swiping left on the bad candidates. 

Today’s landscape of recruiting is competitive to say the least. Don’t make the mistake of overlooking good candidates by quickly sifting through them as we’ve become programmed to do. In other words, don’t “Tinder” your way to recruiting incompetence. 

Happy hunting!

This article first appeared on LinkedIn Pulse on December 9, 2015