Open Hiring? – I Think Not 😱 | @RobinSchooling on the #SocialRecruiting Show

What is Open Hiring™?

The principle of Open Hiring™ was first established by Greyson Bakery in 1987 and this principle has been adopted by other leading retail brands; however, what is Open Hiring™ and why should we be interested?

This week’s Guest, Robin Schooling, joins us to illustrate why this model of open hiring is important and how we can learn from it regardless of the industry sector we recruit across. As she tells us, Greyson Bakery started with a simple idea – “let’s make it as easy as possible to connect people to the job”.

More recently, it’s been reported that another retail brand has used the principle of Open Hiring™ for their distribution centre hiring too much success as Robin says, “they measured the impact of this and their turnover was down dramatically”.

Naturally, we touch upon the subject of COVID-19 and it’s impact on the employment market and Robin thinks this is “the perfect time of companies to streamline their processes and get people in”.

However, never one to be satisfied with an assumption, she did some due-diligence herself on a major US brand where she found “a beautifully branded website” and then an application process that took “an estimated 26-30 minutes to complete!” – in her opinion, “that would have been one of the first things I’d fix!”

Getting your organisation ready for change

Following the theme of recruitment processes and changing to adapt the current climate, Robin expands her opinion and tells us, “this is providing the greatest living case study” and “what we thought was impossible, out of necessity, we’re learning is possible!”.

We also talk about the current virtual recruitment process that is being enforced on all companies, and Robin comments it could have real benefits as, “we might get rid of the Hiring Managers, because they do exist, who like to form their opinion on whether the person has a firm handshake or not” – which is a nod the on-going conversation about unconscious bias.

In contrast to this, we talk about digital adoption and she tells us her thoughts – “the digital divide does exist” and she illustrates this through the fact that in her home state of Louisiana, “40% of households don’t have access to broadband or wifi”.

The final question we pose Robin is to get her thoughts on implementing Open Hiring™ into a business or leadership team and she thinks, “you have to make sure your organisation is a learning organisation”.

If that wasn’t enough, you’ll hear Robin talk about:

• The merits of the Ban The Box campaign 
• Is it time to review your application and recruitment process?  
• Addressing systemic unconscious bias
• Is virtual recruitment going to be the new normal? 
• How is the digital divide impacting applicants? 
• Training Leaders to be ready for Open Hiring™  

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Glenn Martin - Talented Talent Acquisition Professional

Glenn Martin is a talented talent acquisition professional with over 14-years experience in recruitment projects, strategies and sourcing techniques. With both agency-side and now in-house experience, Glenn partners with a portfolio of clients to help them deliver their people-centric objectives and ambitions.

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