We’ve all heard and understand how the process of dating equates nicely to the interview process. Hell, someone even wrote a book about it. As a recruiter I’ve used the dating process as an analogy for the interview and offer process with candidates for over twenty years. Mostly because it works so well to help candidates understand the emotions that they are going through and deal with them more effectively so they won’t interfere with their decision making process. However, in working with a new client company, I used the same analogy, but with a twist, to give the HR recruiter that I’m dealing with a better understanding of what information I needed from them and why.

The situation is that they’ve had a successful telephone interview with my candidate and want to bring him in for an on-site interview, but to this point they’ve only told him a little bit about the job and what they did say, after a good conversation, was that they weren’t sure that he was a fit. Now my intuition says that their thinking has evolved and that the extra skills he brings to the table are valuable to them, and that’s why they’ve requested the on-site visit. Unfortunately this is all speculation as HR has provided me with ABSOLUTELY NO INFORMATION. So moving forward I decided that I needed to have the dating conversation, but from the perspective of the first blind date moving to second date… The basics being that everyone in a blind date situation is nervous (candidate and company) and while they may have thought it went well they are all looking for confirmation from the other party before moving to the next date (interview). So here I am as the friend of both parties (3rd party recruiter) needing to get the information from one and pass it along to the other so that they are all comfortable enough to meet again.

Of course, it works like a charm. After my conversation with HR I’m able to get the information about what they thought of his skills, his personality, how good a fit is he to the job and if he’s more (or less) than they’re looking for as well as what concerns/questions they have about bringing him onto the team? Now with my knowledge of the candidate’s situation I’m now better able to tell them if they should continue to invest their time and money into this interview process and if it’s off track I can start recruiting more on-target candidates. Of course, it’s all good and hopefully they will fall in love on the second date (interview) and a proposal will be forthcoming along with a nice salary and benefits package.