How to Avoid Receiving Unqualified Job Applicants

I recently took a trip to the movies to see the World War II thriller, “The Imitation Game” about the group of brilliant people that worked to crack the German Enigma code. Alan Turing, who was highly influential in the development of computer science, led the team that worked to crack the code.  His team was made up of geniuses and recruiting the top talent seemed as if it was going to be daunting, but Turing’s recruitment method, while unconventional, was actually quite brilliant (not surprising) and actually quite simple.

Turing published a difficult crossword puzzle in the newspaper and invited those who finished the puzzle in 12 minutes or less to apply. This way he automatically weeded out those who weren’t qualified and had the opportunity to select the best of the best.

With so much competition out there, we at Beyond often hear from recruiters that one of their biggest challenges is sourcing the right talent. Perhaps an unconventional recruitment method is the way to go.

Here are some other unorthodox ways companies have hired talent.

1. The candidates fix something in order to submit the application. For instance, if an organization is looking for Software Developers—have them fix a bug on the page that then allows them to submit their application.
    
2. The applicant solves a brainteaser before getting to the application page. The user has to solve a brainteaser or take a quiz before applying to the job in order to weed out the candidates that won’t be able to live up to the tasks of the job.
    
3. Looking for a certain personality type? Have the applicant take an online personality test before granting them access to the application page.

What’s great about these few examples is they are relatively maintenance free. After the process is set up, these obstacles should basically run themselves. One downside—recruitment is a numbers game and employers like to see that their jobs are generating interest from candidates, so the way success is measured in the recruitment game would have to change.

Image Courtesy of Google.com