We live in a world where we increasingly expect familiar, cosy businesses to be disrupted. From the cabs we take (Uber), to the people we date (Tinder) we are increasingly encouraged to log on and – swiping right – get the experience we want.
Given that, we were wondering at Hook Research whether there was an opportunity to disrupt qualitative recruitment. We’ve all been through it before – the tortuously long screener, the recruiter’s reasons why this is an extremely difficult project, and the moment of truth during the introductions in group. Valentine’s Day seems like an appropriate time to potentially fall in love with a different way of guaranteed, good recruitment.
Bringing Disruptive Tech to Recruitment
Traditional recruitment often results in stress and hand-wringing because of the number of layers that have to be gone through. What the agency thinks, what the client thinks, and what the recruiter thinks is possible all have to be navigated. Instead, we at Hook Research thought it might be easier to strip back the complexity and take back control.
In short, we would propose to take our database of respondents and have them complete a number of questions about their lives (in terms of demographics, location, key products, media and attitudes) and then place that information onto a central platform that clients could browse. Could swiping right help us provide our clients with better respondents?
The benefits of swiping right
Imagine this scenario: rather than worrying about the wording of a screener or arguing about key personality traits, agencies or clients could just swipe right on key options. They could gradually narrow down the available individuals before then being left with a selection of perfect respondents. This model has the benefit of not only giving control to the client, but it also allows us to gamify recruitment and make it a more satisfying experience.
By disrupting recruitment in this way, one could also have more of a handle over what incentive to pay, and where one went for the research. Importantly, the recruiter/client would also have an idea of who they were going to meet, potentially allowing a knowing nod in the corridor outside the viewing room rather than a shifty shuffle past an anonymous face.
Is this recruitment model actually a reality?
We realise that this swiping right model of recruitment does not exist yet, but we can still dream. Until we come up with an app that allows this to happen we will continue to rely on a mixture of traditional and modern methods (such as the ability of social media to reach previously untapped, powerful audiences) to secure the perfect respondents for our clients. At the same time, we will continue to think about different ways we could disrupt the field in future…
If you want to learn more about how we recruit for projects why not get in touch? To keep up to date with the latest goings on at Hook Research, be sure to sign up for our newsletter or follow us on LinkedIn.
