Beyond the Resume: 8 Nontraditional Approaches to Hiring

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• July 6, 2011
• By Tatiana Christian
• 11 Comments

Hiring processes can be some of the most frustrating professional experiences for both candidates, who have to ensure their resumes stand out from the pack, and hiring managers, who have to comb through that pack.

But every once in a while, a company takes a risk and adopts a creative approach to hiring. Here are eight instances where some part of the hiring process wasn’t completely standard:

1. Crankset Group: When the firm needed to hire a chief results officer, it posted a four-page ad on Craigslist specifically asking that applicants not send resumes. Instead, job seekers answered questions about “culture, life, ambitions, motivation, fun, etc.,” Chuck Blakeman, founder of the organization, wrote on his blog. And in case you were wondering, the 45 who sent resumes did not get a call.

2. I Love Rewards, Inc.: When the consulting firm received a whopping 1,200 applications for nine jobs, it invited applicants to attend an open house. Just 400 attended. In this instance, just showing up was a large part of the application process. Attendees mingled casually with employers on one floor, while on a different floor, individual candidates got 5 minutes with an interviewer.

3. Google: One would expect the search giant to master the job hunt, and the multi-billion dollar company knew what geeks it was looking for. Google plastered California- and Massachusetts-area billboards with complicated mathematical questions, and figured whoever could solve the puzzle would be a good fit, NPR reported.

4. Quicken Loans: For this mortgage company looking to hire 200 mortgage bankers a month, job fairs weren’t realistic. Instead, Quicken took to the streets in “road rallies,” where employees recruited from malls. So what stores made the list? Best Buy, Circuit City and TGI Fridays.

5. Sunglass Hut: Talk about a cool blogging gig. The winner of a Sunglasses Hut contest for fashion bloggers landed a six-figure salary, a fully furnished apartment in New York and a $1,000 clothing allowance.

6. Electronic Arts: The video game company used American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) to create a job advertisement for potential programmer applicants to decipher. To attract high caliber candidates, they placed billboards with the ad in front of competitor offices. Some applicants responded by providing their resumes in ASCII.

7. 37 Signals: When the web design company decided it was time to hire an office manager, it posted a rather atypical job description on its blog. “Instead of a boring list of skills—this software, that many years of experience, ‘team player,’ etc.—we wrote a list of 26 things that this person would have done in a week had he or she been working here,” company founder Jason Fried wrote in Inc.

8. Southwest: During first-round group interviews at the airline, applicants are asked how they’ve used humor to defuse tense situations. It’s part of a series of ways Southwest tries to identify candidates who have a great attitude. The company has a long history of using offbeat interview tactics to screen for mindset.

Tatiana Christian has had a lot of experience with job ads recently as she searches for a job. She blogs about that and other topics at ParisianFeline.

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