The Realistic Job Preview is Back
There’s a classic interview question “Tell me one of your weaknesses.” Of course, no candidate wants to answer with a weakness so they come up with a weakness that can also be considered a strength. Like “Oh, I work too much.” Or “I have perfectionist tendencies.”
The same goes for companies. No organization wants to show off their weaknesses during the interview process but today’s candidates want a realistic preview of the organization they’re applying to. And that goes double for the job they are interviewing for – they want the good, bad, and ugly. Just like companies want to learn the strengths and weaknesses of a candidate.
Realistic job previews are actions taken in the recruiting process to give candidates a sense of what it’s like to work at the company. They are not only designed for the company to see how the candidate handles certain situations but for the candidate to understand what working conditions are like. An example of a realistic job preview activity is the inbox or in-tray exercise.
With technology, companies are doing some innovative things to provide a realistic job preview to candidates:
Photos and video tours of the office environment
Video of internal meetings (here’s an example from Google)
Testimonials from current employees
Social media sharing (via Facebook pages, Tweets, LinkedIn company pages and Google +)
Consumers today, especially Millennial consumers, are doing research prior to making a purchase. In many ways, finding a job can be of much greater importance than a purchase. It makes no sense to spend 5 hours reading comparisons between the iPhone 5s and the Samsung Galaxy S4 to then spend 30 minutes checking out your next place of employment.
Smart companies are looking for ways to share the employment experience before a person ever decides to apply. And it doesn’t mean sugar coating the work. Finding a candidate that embraces the company (warts and all) is key to creating engagement.
Image courtesy of HR Bartender
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