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5 Unconventional Recruiting Methods You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Recruiting has gotten seriously complicated. It’s no longer simply about finding the person with the right skills for the job. Today, recruiters must solve several complex business problems via one new hire.
Modern recruiting now funnels into company diversity, equity, and inclusion goals—employers are making strides to make their hiring programs more objective and fair.
Today, recruiters also need to consider—in addition to skill and experience level—whether a candidate will contribute positively to the kind of company culture they’re trying to build.
Additionally, amid an ongoing labor shortage and record-high employee turnover, hiring teams need to factor in retention up front by finding employees who are more likely to stay and by creating a retention-friendly candidate experience that sets a positive tone from the start.
In the face of all these new challenges, HR and hiring teams are getting creative with their recruiting tactics and finding new ways to drive multiple goals at once. In this week’s episode of America Back to Work, expert guest Ross Cadastre discusses those unusual tactics—some you’ve probably never heard of.
Hiring Hackathons to Evaluate Hard and Soft Skills
In the tech world, a hackathon, also known as a codefest, is a social coding event that brings computer programmers and other interested people together to improve upon or build a new software program. The goal is to promote creativity and encourage employees to develop out-of-the-box ideas in a low-risk environment.
Cadastre encourages recruiters to bring the ethos and structure of a hackathon to the hiring process, arguing that they provide recruiters with innovative ways to assess candidates—even in non-tech roles—since they account for more than just hard skills.
“Hackathons are events where individuals and teams collaborate to solve problems or create solutions within a set time frame. It’s not exclusive to coding or technology; they can encompass business challenges, product ideation, and creative problem-solving.”
According to Cadastre, they’re great for assessing teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, rapid ideation, and task execution—in addition to the hard skills necessary for the role.
While skill assessments are great because they simulate real job tasks, hiring hackathons help recruiters understand how well a candidate will fit into the company.
Games to Promote Fairness and Enhance Hiring Decisions
Similarly, gamified assessments can help recruiters take skill assessments to the next level and provide a more life-like, objective environment for evaluating candidates.
“Gamified recruiting uses game-like elements such as scenarios, challenges, or quizzes to evaluate job skills and competencies. You can put candidates in roles like a customer service situation, a simulated customer interaction, or a decision-making leadership scenario.”
Beyond measuring skills, gamified assessments promote fairer evidence-based hiring since they’re often developed using advanced psychometrics (to measure cognitive ability), industry-standard guidelines, and data from thousands of test completions to ensure accuracy and reliability. Not to mention that all candidates are measured against the same standardized rubric.
Virtual Reality to Attract Top Talent
Leading companies, like PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), are now using virtual reality (VR) to attract young, tech-savvy talent and identify top talent. In 2017, the company began deploying VR headsets at campus career fairs to “show” rather than “tell” students about PwC culture, give virtual tours of offices, and deliver immersive day-in-the-life experiences.
PwC’s recruiting teams now use three to five VR headsets at each university where the company recruits since about 80 percent of students with one VR experience immediately ask for another.
According to Cadastre, the VR tactic also works the other way around; it helps employers evaluate candidates in an environment as close to real life as possible, leaving less room for error.
“It could simulate a very life-like manufacturing environment or a customer service interaction,” says Cadastre, “in a way that an interview or skill assessment can’t.”
Supercharged Referral Contests to Uncover Passive Candidates
There’s a reason that 88% of employers rate employee referral programs as the best source of applicants. Candidates referred by current employees stay 70% longer than other employees. The cost-per-hire of employee referrals is $1,000 less on average than other hiring sources. Referred candidates are 2.6% to 6.6% more likely to accept job offers. Referral employees are 25% more profitable. The list goes on.
Today, employers are finally taking employee referral programs to the next level and supercharging their effectiveness through referral contests where current employees can tap potential candidates for high-priority roles within a given time frame. Successful referrals are often rewarded with bonuses, prizes, and public recognition.
Referral contests help employers quickly identify qualified candidates who are pre-vetted for culture fitness and dig up top talent that otherwise might not have applied on their own.
Social Media Targeting to Expedite Recruiting Goals
When companies want to get razor sharp with recruiting and hone in on one specific skill, job title, or even gender, Cadastre recommends turning to social media—especially LinkedIn.
LinkedIn has powerful tagging and search capabilities, meaning recruiters can look explicitly for candidates with specific skills, job titles, previous employers, and demographics—reducing the time it takes to find qualified candidates and helping them attract better-quality candidates for their roles.
Beyond targeted search, Cadastre also urges recruiters to use the paid ad function on LinkedIn (and other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok) to make recruiting more streamlined, especially when the company has a specific hiring goal.
“For one of our clients—a tech company aiming to increase female representation in engineering—we used targeted ads highlighting inclusive culture. We got a surge of applications from women and were able to hire a few,” says Cadastre.
Learn more unconventional recruiting methods by checking out this week’s episode of America Back to Work with Ross Cadastre. He’s the founder of BIPOC Jobs, a tech platform that connects diverse talent to job opportunities specifically designed for BIPOC professionals.