Free Range Thinking: Our Journey to Disrupt the Job Interview 2.0

We recently held the second event of our experimental "Free-Range Thinking" series in partnership with NYC’s “HR Disruptor of the Year”, Kristin Dudley, the Founder of Co-Create: an employer brand and storytelling agency.

We were joined by 10 new participants to continue our journey of "disrupting the job interview", creatively collaborating without boundaries.

At Elliott Scott HR we are always encouraged to think outside the box and we wanted to bring this approach to our candidates and clients, along with the personal touch we are known for. This is how our event series was born, small, exclusive sessions, tailored to our audience where we can challenge conventions in the HR world.

The purpose of this series is multi-fold:

• first, we seek to shape a stronger local HR community;
• second, we are intent on sparking creativity amongst this community;
• and ultimately, we are out to generate some really fantastic, disruptive, and innovative ideas to share with one another.

Our events occur within a 3-hour window and work within a framework that leads us from connecting with one another to generating ideas together. This year, we have a hero topic that we’ll continue to explore out throughout our 2018 series: “Ways to Disrupt the Job Interview”. By January 2019, Kristin and I will have brought together 40 HR professionals to work on this topic. 

Our special guest, Alexis Smith, Director of Employer Branding & Digital, North America at Anheuser-Busch kicked off the session. With her marketing background, Alexis brought a new perspective and as a previous DisruptHR speaker herself, delivering a talk in May 2018 "Recruiting Is Boring AF", she was the perfect addition to really get our guests feeling motivated and ready to disrupt. 

We began by looking into the standard job interview process that most HR professionals are well versed in. The group shared their experiences which got the conversation going and ideas flowing; LaToya Lyn putting forward mind maps as a good alternative to the traditional resume and Alyson Zeitz highlighting the use of group interviews, the pros and cons of a panel format, and the possible efficiency of developing an almost "casting call" scenario. 

Our members, working against the clock then began formulating their own ideas to answer the question: How might we replace the “interview” as the centerpiece of the recruitment process? This is a no pressure "Free Range Thinking" exercise with no rights or wrongs, where our community is able to get creative and experimental, while learning from one another. We then came back together and voted on the top 3 ideas.

 Top 3 ideas from July’s Free Range Thinking Event:

 1. Improve the hiring manager experience by creating a curated “Tinder” of candidates. 

 2. A candidate “field trip” where they go to visit different employees and clients. The trip would show how the company is connected to the product, client and community service.

 3. A choose your own adventure game in a mobile application. Games are specific per role and will test for capabilities and skills before getting to the recruiter, in an effort to screen for the right candidates. 

We have already had amazing feedback from this session and it’s great to see everyone really getting stuck in and the willingness to learn and grow from one another. We are so excited about building this new HR community.

In our next two sessions we are looking to generate even more ideas and continue to challenge conventions. This is a movement where our guests can take this creative courage and learnings back to the workplace and enact real change, enhancing their ability to problem solve and look for a solution in a way they might not have before. 

Thank you to our innovators from this session for your input and ideas:

LaToya Lyn, Bethany Perkins, Renee Kaspar, Malik Simmonds, Xina Feldman, Courtney Farrell, Nicole Amodei, Alyson Zeitz, Tania Zivkovic and Denise Dominguez-Gonzalez.

We look forward to seeing who will be joining us next and continuing this journey, maybe we’ll see you at the table!