Branding and Selling Positions

By Frank Mulligan, Talent Software

Here is an interesting quote from Joe Calloway who wrote a book called ’Becoming a Category of One’.

People don’t just buy products anymore. They buy an experience. The whole experience of doing business with a company is much more than simply the product they buy. It about the experience the buyer has as he becomes the owner of the product.

Joe is talking about products, and probably services too, but he could just as easily be talking about hiring a new employee in China. As the candidate is brought through the hiring process the experience he has is essential to hiring success.

Unfortunately, the results are often disappointing. So what kind of process are we offering right now?. Do we lose many of them as they go through this process? This may represent your current hiring process in China:

- After the candidate emails a Resume there is no contact from your company. The Resume enters a Black Hole.
- The candidate gets a call suddenly, 3 weeks later, to be invited in for interview.
- At the interview you quickly try to assess the gap between the candidate and the job.
- After the interview there is another week long gap.
- Then the line manager calls the candidate and makes an offer.
- The candidate negotiates the salary too much and the process fails.

In the process above there are many place where you can lose a candidate. For example, at the interview stage the HR department is trying to assess the gap between the candidate and the job. This is too late and it should have been done before the candidate ever sets foot in the hiring company’s office.

Equally a 3-week wait in China is far too long. Many companies will respond to candidates within a day of their application and these are the companies that the candidate will want to work for. Finally, at the last stage above the company is making an offer without testing it first. This is fatal because it positively invites the candidate to negotiate.

Over the last few years some companies have established a better hiring process in China. One that is faster and more comprehensive than the current method. They measure how this process works and make adjustments that improve it. They continuously improve the quality of their hiring and try to make it closer to a selling function like the one that Joe Calloway describes. In the end, this improves the quality of their Hiring Brand, and their hiring results. They generally don’t lose candidate, and if they do they figure out why and change the process.

You don’t have to go electronic to achieve this system described above but it is hard to see how it could be done manually. A system that delivers this functionality is normally described as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) or a Talent Management System (TMS). It’s fully online and has additional features that cannot be detailed here. Some companies in China are currently using one but the big ATS companies have only recently entered the market.

Watch for the arrival of these systems soon. To prepare yourself please go here, here, here, here, here or here.

Comments to: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com