Screening: Narrowing The Choices

Screening is the step you do before scheduling interviews to keep the strongest candidates and filter or screen out those that may not be a good fit.

Don’t interview who you don’t need to. Create ways for employees to opt out, or for you to filter them out early. You want to save the precious time interviewing for only the best candidates.

Let potential employees self-select themselves OUT of working with you.

This amusing cartoon by Belgian artist Canary Pete shows an applicant being tested during the interview!

Show your brand, culture and style in all you do – including your job application. If you are a company that wants to stand out from the crowd, why wouldn’t you look at all the different ways to share who and what your business stands for?

Job Application Forms are a Missed Opportunity

Everyone remembers their job interview, but few remember the job application they fill out. Too many times the job application a potential employee fills out is a boring template with absolutely no personality.

Your job application needs all the fundamental information from work experience to availability to an emergency contact. However, what if you added some fun questions to the job application, such as:

If you were a superhero, who would you be and why?

If you could invite two people (past, present, fictional or real) to lunch, who would you invite and why?

Zappos

Zappos, recognized as an employer of choice, asks those two questions on their job application form. If it’s good enough for Zappos to do, it’s good enough for you to do.

Here’s the real fun part of the Zappos job application form, the cover is a crossword puzzle. Yes, a crossword puzzle. Clues include Zappos-related information every job candidate should know. (One of the clues is: The cost of Zappos standard shipping?)

Check out the application below, click to see it larger.

Zappos Employment Application (front)

Employment Application (back)

Take a look at the PERSONAL INFORMATION section, they ask on a scale from 1 to 10 how lucky do you consider yourself? This question is a clever way to ask if you’re an optimist or pessimist. Chances are an employee who ranks themselves as “bad things always seem to happen to me” is not a good fit.

The point is simple; your job application form is one of the first touchpoints a potential employee has to learn about the culture of your company. If you use a dull, template job application, then people begin to think your business has a boring company culture. However, if you weave in a few fun questions in the application form, then people will get a reliable clue about your business’ unique culture.

By using a fun job application, you’re also guaranteed to give prospective employees a story to tell their friends and friends of friends about your business. And who knows how far and wide that word of mouth story will travel.