Careers Advice & Resources
How to Design an Ethical Recruitment Process
5 min read
Top candidates now have elevated expectations from their interactions with companies, creating intense competition for organizations to secure talent.
Led by the global talent shortage, candidates are often engaged in numerous hiring processes and presented with multiple offers. Prioritizing ethical considerations during the hiring process can help organizations stay ahead of the competition.
Fair and equal treatment
Ethics in hiring is based on transparency, honesty, fairness and objectivity that exceeds legal requirements to help ensure all candidates are treated fairly and equally.
Operating ethical recruitment practices can result in better quality hires, promote an organization’s diverse culture and protect reputation its by standing for the best hiring practices.
Organizations can demonstrate their inclusivity by establishing an ethical hiring process which positively engages and supports candidates and wider stakeholders to motivate future leaders to stay with the company. Conversely, talent could be easily discouraged if they do not agree with the hiring experience or if they are not treated in a manner they were expecting.
To help ensure the very best candidate is appointed, we advise our clients to demonstrate they have designed their hiring process in a moral and ethically respectful way.
The candidate recruitment experience is further optimised by incorporating the methods below.
The hybrid hiring experience
Candidates want and expect blended online and in-person interviews. Initial interviews may be online and should present a flawless image of the company. Online interviews are an opportunity to convey brand and culture, and companies should consciously decide how they want to represent themselves. A professional image is presented during the interview by building a rapport through good introductions, referring to the candidate by name and being aware of ‘tone’ to set the candidate at ease.
Interviewers should also consciously project energy and enthusiasm, listen actively, speak slowly and take care to avoid excessive or distracting movement. The aim is to convey high engagement and so the panel should pay attention to posture and behaviors; for example, nodding and smiling as appropriate to the conversation and taking notes with care to avoid looking distracted.
Throughout, there should be clear direction from the chair or interview lead, obvious flow to the questions with follow-ups and time allotted for candidate questions at the end.
Thorough interview preparation
Preparation and structure are also crucial in developing an engaging candidate experience. The panel should prepare ahead of time, agreeing on questions, protocols for fielding those questions and follow-ups, and identifying leads for potential question areas.
Offering flexibility around online and in-person meetings also demonstrates an organization’s culture of agility, and candidates will remember those companies who accommodate them.
Likewise, providing candidate information packs with curated content as well as offering opportunities for both sides to judge ‘cultural fit’, demonstrates attention to detail and the desire to find the best person for the role.
Post-interview assessment
While candidates can’t ‘see’ a company’s post-interview processes, ensuring they are in place means a greater likelihood of building a strong candidate experience.
Post-interview wash-ups should identify cultural fit gaps from the candidate and the company, assess the practicalities of working with the candidate in the short and mid-term and agreement on potential adjustments to the business and its strategy.
Psychometric testing
Our psychometric testing, which was designed following best practices as well as professional and legal guidelines, provides a consistent and objective framework for identifying each candidate’s strengths, developmental needs, and risks relative to the role, team, and organizational contexts. By providing additional insights and their associated implications for success, our testing complements data collected through interviews and other assessments.
As a result, we are able to “triangulate” leadership behaviors, motivations, and personalities, which helps inform hiring managers about each candidate’s likely impact, performance, and potential.
The importance of each candidate’s experience of professional and respectful interactions at every step of the hiring journey cannot be overstated. To attract the most compelling candidates, leaders should commit to ethical considerations, aligned to professionalism, courtesy, thoroughness and honesty.
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Get in touch. Follow the links below to discover more, or contact our dedicated leadership experts from your local Odgers Berndtson office here.
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