On paternity leave & gamification for better Candidate Experience

Welcome (back) to The Tea On Recruiting! You might be new, or already a big fan of this bi-weekly video series for recruiters. One way or the other, we hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Let yourself unwind and watch episode twenty three of The Tea on Recruiting below. We also have a written version enclosed, for those who enjoy reading!

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Transcript

Today we’ll talk about playdates! Well, close enough. We’ll talk about how you should gamify your hiring process and let your employees bond with their children by encouraging paternity leaves! Welcome back to the Tea on Recruiting, where we share insightful and thought-provoking content that can help you shape your recruiting career!

Here’s our first article!

How Gamification Can Enhance Your Candidate Experience

As you folks know, we’re still living in a candidates’ market, and I doubt that’ll change any time soon. We’ve read “How Gamification Can Enhance Your Candidate Experience”, and we learned a thing or two. 78% of people claim that the gamification of the hiring process makes an employer more desirable. Here’s how gamification can help you:

Build your employer brand

Provide candidates with immediate feedback

Be consistent with your communication and transparency

Allow an accurate evaluation of your candidates, and help them let go of their nervousness and intimidation

Provide a familiar and fun environment, helping candidates show their skills and abilities while they’re entertained

Aligned with your DEI efforts, working as a blind audition

What’s not to love?! Some examples of companies who are already gamifying their hiring process? Marriot, and Siemens.

Are you ready for our second article?

Paternity leave: Benefits extend beyond the personal

Hey, have you thoroughly looked into paternity leave? We read McKinsey’s “A fresh look at paternity leave: Why the benefits extend beyond the personal.” Here’s some eye-opening information. So, let’s start by saying that 90/187 countries across the globe offer statutory paternity leave. Actually, 38% of organizations provide paid paternity leave above the statutory minimum, and adoptive parents and LGBTQ+ parents also get offered parental bonding leave. And yet less than 50% of men take advantage of their full paternity benefits. So, what’s going on? They studied some men who’d used their paternity leave:

100% of them were glad they took it and would take it again.

90% noticed an improvement in their relationship with their partner. In fact, paternity leave can also mitigate postpartum depression.

20% felt that their career setback was the major downside, but the benefits outweighed the worry.

But there’s more. These men went back to work more motivated and they considered staying in the organization longer. Also, their sense of priorities was renewed and some made positive changes in their work lives. Keep in mind these 5 things. You should:

Give fathers the same benefits given to new mothers.
Create an encouraging culture embracing leave.
Clarify the impact that leave will have on one’s career.
Help with reintegration once the leave is over.
Establish family-friendly policies to help retention and longevity.

Cool, huh? Now onto the…

CandE Crash

The more barbaric your treatment of candidates, the more demonic their reviews on your Glassdoor page. Shoutout to a company we won’t name. I hope the audience is hungry because I’m about to roast you.

I’m sorry, what did I just read? Haha get ready for this excerpt, it’s wild.

“The actual interview was horrible. They sat me in a conference room for 30’ all by myself with the door closed. I was actually shocked when someone walked in.

There was no apology, we just jumped right in. After about 5’ the guy had to leave (horrible). After he left it was another 30’ of the same business with me AAAAALLL BYYYY MYSEEEEEELF in a closed conference room before the next person came in. The next guy was going to be my direct manager, so he was interested in feeling me out more than the others. He began to quiz me on certain items, but I guess he was so busy or had so many other important things to do that he didn’t see a need to formally end his portion of the interview. I give him more credit though because at least he gave me more than 5’ of his time. He left because of a cell phone call. He said he’d be back later in the day to speak with me but I guess he just forgot about it. *SCREAM*.

At the end of the day the HR person took me out of the closed conference room and into the concession area for a drink of water.”

I just… I can’t. We’ve read enough. This was just one of the myriads of reasons why this candidate was extremely dissatisfied with what you did. It was a long review. But this excerpt alone… You guys sound more like a group of kidnappers than a hiring team. What’s with the cartoon villain power trip, have you watched Die Hard one too many times?! Well, your candidate was the John McLane to your Hans Gruber, and this was their roaring “”Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”

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