Candidates: Are you interviewing and need support?
Candidates: Are you interviewing and need support?
A great potential candidate just landed on your career site. What determines if they stay and apply, or bounce back to what they were doing before?
One of the best ways to sell a role, particularly to potential applicants who are already employed, is the realistic job preview.
A realistic job preview is any video or simulation designed to teach prospective applicants about a job’s duties, expectations, and daily activities. They can take several forms, depending on the goals of the recruiting organization.
Realistic job previews are beneficial for both the job seeker and organization because they achieve early alignment, preventing either party from wasting time if the job is not appealing to the candidate. With a realistic job preview, the candidate can determine early in the process if the job is appealing and address any concerns from the job preview. From the employer’s perspective, they don’t spend time on applicants that are going to say no at the end of the process or churn quickly once they start. Ideally, the job preview will have candidates excited about the job opportunity and eager to join the team.
These are the four main types of online realistic job previews, and how to make them work in your organization.
Recorded employee testimonials are one of the most valuable pieces of content for prospective applicants. Created correctly, they can also form the basis for a realistic job preview.
The value of these previews comes from their authenticity and specificity. While traditional scripted testimonials are a useful tool for promoting your organization as whole, they don’t really give much insight into specific job functions.
Most employee testimonials focus exclusively on what it’s like to work for your organization. To take them a step further, don’t tell your employees to describe your company - let them explore what they do in their current role.
The goal here is give candidates an accurate understanding of what the role is and what will be expected of them. To make it work, let your most passionate employees share what their day-to-day looks like.
Once you have these job-specific testimonials, the sky’s the limit as far as where you use them. The great thing about video is its shareability. Here are some ideas to get you started:
Interactive simulations are often the first thing people think of when envisioning a realistic job preview. They can be a great way for potential candidates to imagine themselves performing the role’s day-to-day tasks.
Simulations that preview a job usually take the form of a game. Game design best practices play a huge role in creating a compelling tool for candidates. You’ll probably need to partner with a third party to create an engaging simulation.
Interactive simulations require more intensive budgeting than their video-based counterparts, which can be created on a range of budgets. To make the most of any partnership with a simulation vendor:
Build off feedback once it goes live. Involve job seekers in the tweaking process: ask them how well the simulation described the job’s day-to-day, and if they felt more confident applying for the role after completing it.
In a recent survey by Lighthouse Research, 43% of job seekers indicated they would prefer to see a video from the hiring manager over any other video type. In close second was the job preview, at 31%. Done right, you can get the best of both worlds.
Functionally, the hiring manager testimonial is very similar to the employee testimonial - though with a few key differences.
If the hiring manager is giving a realistic job preview, they are selling themselves as much as they are selling the role.
Learn How to Get Hiring Managers to Film Themselves
Interviews can also act as a sort of “realistic job preview.” While interviews at a later stage of the hiring process should be geared toward screening, interviews near the beginning of the process can be used to inform and sell the role.
There are a couple different ways to go about using the interview as a realistic job preview.
Giving job seekers or candidates a realistic preview of a job's day-to-day is one of the best ways to draw them in - particularly if they are already employed. On the other hand, they also help reduce turnover for difficult, high turnover roles, since potential applicants can screen themselves out if they don't like what they see. A great realistic job preview both incentivizes candidates to stick with you through the hiring process and improves retention.