Your job application process is boring: Here's why you need to care, and fast.

You want interesting, cool people for your business? People who will challenge the status quo, ones who get excited by fresh, new approaches to challenges, or who will inject new energy into your team? Is "creating a culture of innovation" high on your to-do list?

Same. So why are we all using recruitment process that reflect the total opposite?

Boring, tired, process-heavy — let’s face it. Traditional recruiting experiences just don’t make you attractive to the exciting talent.

We have a lot of conversations with CEOs and managers who want to know how to attract great people to their businesses and teams. Some of them don’t have the cool, quirky brands or the budgets that other businesses do.

There are tonnes of things you can do find to snag top-talent attention, with just a little bit of time and money: Increase social activity in the places that these interesting people live, write and circulate great content, ask your work force to refer like minded and skilled individuals, always be recruiting etc.

All this is very well and good BUT is anyone actually changing the job application process itself once someone is introduced to your business? Or is it still “please send me your CV and cover letter”.

Businesses seem to be going to great lengths to showcase their appeal and relevance yet the application process has not changed in a gazillion years.

Potential applicants see great careers sites, advertising, videos etc and then get the same message they always have about emailing their cv.

Surely this is the biggest and easiest opportunity any of us have ever had to stand out and create a better job application process. What if we said something like:

• We want you to engage with us a bit more before you invest all that time in your CV and cover letter.

• Do you have any questions for us before you apply?

• Is there something that you’d rather send us (than an CV) as proof of why you should work for us?

• Send us a 30 second video outlining why you’re a great fit for our company

This frustration is one of the things that originally drove us to create Weirdly. Removing the CV road-block and instead, building a recruitment process on something simple (like a quiz), seemed like a good idea. But the real clincher was flipping the process and looking at it from the job applicant’s side.

See, the big, boring recruitment model we’ve all been operating for forever is based on the idea that I (the company) hold all the power and you (my adoring public and job-applying minions) are desperate for my affections, my attention and the paychecks I can bestow.

Here’s a bit of napalm to go with your morning coffee: That’s not how the top talent view employment.

They’re looking for work they can believe in. They want to be part of a movement, or at least, part of an organisation that doesn’t treat them like a number. They’re driven by exciting challenge and higher purpose. And they expect transparency and curiosity from you, the same way you’ll expect it from them.

Picture your recruitment process like a gate this talent has to walk through. Does your gate look like something these people are excited to knock on?

Does it show them how different you are, or does it show them that actually, despite all those dollars you spend on marketing campaigns and ping-pong tables, you’re actually just like everyone else in your market.

Injecting a bit of fun and interesting isn’t rocket science. We’ve tried to make it super accessible as a simple start towards making your process engaging, candidate-focussed and on brand. But there are other ways. Even if we DO have snazzy and informative analytics to back it all up.

So, whatever you do, why not try out something a bit different. Spice up that application process. I dare you.

Want a quick, easy way to make your own recruitment process feel more fun and attract better talent? Book a Weirdly demo and see how painless it is to  improve your existing workflow.