Job dating: opt for professional love at first sight!

By Inès Ikar

Published: November 8, 2024

In recent years, job dating has become one of the most popular recruitment methods used by recruiters. Inspired by timed love encounters, the objective is no less misguided: to find the ideal candidate! 🔥

The candidate has 10 minutes to convince you! As for you, you have to choose from around twenty candidates at the end of the day.

Ideal if you don't necessarily have the time to conduct a traditional job interview, Appvizer gives you all its secrets for creating a successful job dating!

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Job dating

Definition

Job dating is a more informal type of interview than the usual on-the-spot recruitment. It usually takes place at a trade show or even in a café.

Job dating emphasizes the candidate's human values by encouraging dialogue and the simplicity of a meeting over coffee to get to know each other better, rather than the dull reading of a CV. Pôle emploi, APEC and specialized recruitment agencies have all recognized the potential of this technique and have already adopted it! So why not you? 😉

The benefits of job dating for recruiters

Save time and money

In a traditional recruitment process, you interview your candidates for 30 to 45 minutes. In the same amount of time, you've already met 4 candidates during job dating! 💡

All these steps, while necessary, are time-consuming and require you to incur certain costs on your company's part. Even if job dating is followed by an actual interview to confirm your choice, the fact remains that you save a considerable amount of time.

And saving time means saving money. 💸

Improve your visibility and employer brand

Job dating is a great opportunity to improve your image and employer brand. These are generally friendly events with a good atmosphere, enough to leave a good impression on candidates and your partners alike.

💡 Don't hesitate to promote your job dating event on social networks!

Good surprises

When a candidate has only a few minutes to introduce himself, he puts his communication skills, his ability to synthesize and his spontaneity to the fore. It's during job dating that we discover talents we might not have known about if you'd read their CVs first.

You're free to discover the candidate in a different way, and he or she isn't reduced to a few lines on a piece of paper. Some candidates even find it difficult to highlight the skills they list on their CVs, so being able to share them directly with you for a few minutes is a real advantage for them as well as for you.

How to organize a successful job dating event?

Step 1: Communicate the position to be filled

Once you've carefully selected the positions to be filled in your company, communication is the first thing you need to get right. Poor communication could result in a total flop, with candidates who don't have the profile you're looking for, or even no one at all attending your event.

To prevent this from happening, your communication strategy needs to be organized around several points if you want to increase your visibility with candidates:

post a detailed advert on your career site or on a recruitment site to which you are linked. This is one of the best ways of letting potential candidates know that a position is available! Include all relevant information, such as city, sector, position, etc. ;
include a mention on your home page to maximize your chances of attracting candidates;
make extensive use of social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and other platforms where you see fit to mention your vacancy;
use other communication channels such as radio or the press.

💡 Tip: you can use recruitment software to not only organize your job dating, but also promote it.

Step 2: collect applications from participants

Bravo, you've got candidates who are interested in your position! To organize your event as professionally as possible, you can use an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the applicants.

On this table, you should indicate :

the candidate's first and last name,
candidate number,
time of arrival,
city,
the position he/she is interested in, if you have several to fill,
an email address or social network on which to contact him/her,
a blank space for taking notes after the interview.

Step 3: Invite your candidates and colleagues

At a job dating event, you're not the only one interviewing. Choose trusted associates to conduct the interviews too. The aim is to make the process quick and efficient, so that as many candidates as possible can be interviewed on the same day.

There are also job dating events with other partner companies, to attract even more talent to the event. Each company is then free to receive the candidates it wishes, and the candidates themselves are free to choose the positions for which they have come.

Step 4: Use software to track participating candidates

If you want to save even more time, and not have to deal with the organization upstream, you can also use specialized software that takes care of everything for you.

Most of these solutions are not free of charge, but you can be sure that you'll be able to organize a proper event that will give your company a good image and, above all, relieve you of additional stress.

Step 5: Make your choice

The day is finally over. You've interviewed each candidate and made sure to take notes at the end. Go back to your table and establish an order of preference. Remember, your first impression is often the right one!

It's only at the end of the day that you can review the CVs and cover letters of the candidates who made the most impression on you. If you're still convinced, contact them directly to tell them the good news.

And above all, don't forget to thank them for their presence in a joint email, even if you don't intend to hire them. 👍