Siliconmilkroundabout is known by its attendees as a casual and informal process. We fill an old brewery in Shoreditch with free coffee & beer, art installations, live music and London’s favourite food vendors. We do our best to make our attendees feel relaxed, and so they’re able to rid themselves of the usual pre-interview jitters and meet their ideal employers in a stress-free, enjoyable environment.
In the last 20-30 years, the average 9-5 has changed dramatically. For starters, it’s no longer a 9-5. Flexi hours are becoming a norm, and 10am starts are not uncommon.
The rise of startups has fed a whole new culture into the workplace, with remote working and a top of the range coffee machine a common feature wherever you look.
And whilst these dramatic changes have done great things to our workplaces, we can’t help but notice the hiring process has remained pretty stagnant.
We met up with employees of TrueUp who’ve all been hired through siliconmilkroundabout, to discuss what’s wrong with the recruitment process.
The problems with Assessment Centres
A recurring feature in many recruitment processes is the dreaded assessment centre – much like getting your staff photo taken, assessment centres are disliked by many and enjoyed by few.
Whilst they may work for identifying some skills, it leaves the shyer and less vocal candidates in a pickle, and often on the end of a rejection phone call.
An assessment centre is often put in place to analyse behaviour, and for someone to be great at their job, it may not be necessary for them to be the most confident person in the room. This is where an assessment centre falls short, as those with skills such as being a hard worker or a great problem solver won’t quite come through during this process, despite a lot of jobs requiring these skills.
Finding the right companies
Another problem we spoke about with our TrueUp employees was the difficulty in finding the right companies that were also hiring for a suitable position.
As we mentioned earlier, the tech revolution has done a whole world of good for business, including allowing entrepreneurs the tools to set up their own companies. However, this has made the process of finding a job extremely noisy.
Using popular job-search sites is becoming more of a hindrance than it is a help. Right now, a search for a “front-end developer” in London returns over 2,500 results, and it’s impossible for job seekers to research all of these companies to see which ones are the right fit for them.
Even when a candidate finds a company they like, how sure can they be that it’s the right one for them? They haven’t spoken to the employees, found out the company culture, or even learned more about the job on offer.
As a company that meets over 10,000 job seekers at our bi-annual event, we hear endless stories about how effortless the standard recruitment process is, and how it’s almost impossible to find the right job in a list of endless companies.
Introductions are dead
One problem that was echoed throughout these interviews was that it’s difficult to get across who you are in the early stages of the recruitment process.
Often, a job seeker’s first interaction with a company is via an email in which the aim is to impress them enough in order to earn a phone call, or better yet, an interview.
But in a (relatively short) email in which you’re trying to cram as much information in to impress the employer, it’s pretty damn difficult to get across who you are and what you’re interested in, and so there’s not a chance you’ll be assessed on whether or not you’ll fit into the team dynamic.
A few of the people we spoke to found that they often fell at the first hurdle because they either found themselves writing too much in their emails or not putting enough info in to get across who they are.
Time to fix these problems
When speaking to the employees of TrueUp it seemed as though the same problems were being repeated time and time again – they seemed pretty frustrated with the way things had work worked out in the past and they’d quite frankly had enough. We created siliconmilkroundabout to fix everything that was wrong with the current recruitment process.
Express yourself
We don’t allow recruiters at our event for multiple reasons, but the main one is attendees don’t come to have normal interview-style conversations. Instead, they come to speak to a handful of the 200 companies in attendance about what they do, what jobs they have on offer and whether or not they’d be a good fit. During this time, each attendee has the opportunity to be themselves and allow the hiring company to see them for who they truly are.
Find your dream job
Throughout the weekend there are around 2000 jobs on offer at 200 different companies. Before the event, we have a page of all the companies and invite them to populate it with information and videos so that our attendees can get a good idea of whether this company is right for them. It’s then simple for our attendees to log on, browse the attending companies, and ‘star’ their favourites in preparation for the event.
Make a proper introduction
Siliconmilkroundabout is known by its attendees as a casual and informal process. We fill an old brewery in Shoreditch with free coffee & beer, art installations, live music and London’s favourite food vendors. We do our best to make our attendees feel relaxed, and so they’re able to rid themselves of the usual pre-interview jitters and meet their ideal employers in a stress-free, enjoyable environment.
We’ve just concluded our November event, but we’ll be back next year with #SMRmay18. It’s never too early to apply and get your name on the list.
You can check out our conversation with TrueUp in the video below: