I read this post and liked it:

So what does all this have to do with recruiting? A lot actually. An candidate will begin to form an idea of who you are as an employer over time, your employer brand, through articles, tweets, consumer ads…etc….maybe even a friend who already works there.

When she walks into your office for the first time, all this could come crashing down or on the contrary, it could live up to the hype.

…

Take a minute and think about all the candidate touchpoints from inital reachout to 1st day of work? What are they? What happens in each? Is your brand being reflected in each one? Do you even have an employer brand?

I also think that, for the recruiting process, all those details are very important, and there is a huge opportunity in those terms for recruitment. Of course, it should be sincere. Just trying to look cool does not make you cool.

Nice try, Tony, but no

4 years ago, I did two interviews for positions on Dublin with a difference of a few days.

My first interview was done in a Hotel’s bar, as I was just arriving from my plane. It was for a position on a small startup company. The ones conducting the interviews were technical people (CTO and technical lead). I had a phone interview with them a couple of days before. It was funny to each a sandwich while I was hearing about the role and the company history. I also had to do a couple of programming exercises on paper. They were interesting, and I felt like I was collaborating, not like doing an exam. After the interview (which was not very long), they said that they’ll be making me an offer, and send me the details by email (the CEO, which was in charge of it, was sick that day). So –they ask me — do you want to see the office? So I went to see the office. Then it was — do you want to see the new office? An I saw the new office. Then we went to the pub, when we were joined by a couple of people working on the company. After that, they invite me for dinner, and then we went to another pub. All the “post-interview” process was “off the record” (or so they said, and if I had done something really inappropriate they could have reconsidered, but it was quite relaxed). We talked about a lot of stuff, mostly not related to the job (including things like Star Trek and other nerd subjects) and everyone was quite smart and amicable. It was an enjoyable evening, really.

The second interview was for a more established company. The company was locate in a business park. I had an interview initially with an HR person, then with the manager, a technical interview (which included some coding), and then again with the manager. The technical interview was interesting, but the rest was a quite standard interview process. Nothing fancy or particularly bad, but a lot of the kind of questions that you feel are just not very relevant. At the end, the manager asked me if I’ll be interested in coming back to do another interview. Please note that I was coming from Spain, which mean two 2.5 hours flight, plus getting to the airport, etc, etc.

I guess I don’t really have to tell that I accepted the offer from the first company (Jolt Online) and I was quite happy while I was there (unfortunately, I closed two years ago. You know, startups). Probably that’s quite extreme example of this kind of “Wow factor”, and I think that bringing someone to the pub is not necessary for a job interview (Nice touch, though). But most of the interview processes are, well, quite dull.

For example, I had a lot of problems with phone interview times and reschedules. With scheduling interviews at reasonable times (meaning reasonable times for someone that is already working somewhere else). With interviews that are supposed to take 1 hour and take way more. With questions that requires “aha moments” and doesn’t look remotely similar to what real work looks like. Or with processes that are just one interview after another, with no clear view on when will it end.

They have never been deal breakers for me, to be honest. Most of the time you understand that it’s the way it is. But I think that anyone that tries to be careful about all those details and sincerely works on delighting the interviewees can get a huge advantage.

Again, this needs to be sincere. This needs to reflect who you truly are, or it won’t work. There are already to many places pretending to be cool, looking for ninja rockstar developers. But there are also a lot of nice places that are not showing their best (and real) face.

Being cool is really about believing in it