The endless creativity of task-based interviews we have witnessed

We know that you can only understand someone's value once you have experienced their skills and attitude at work. This is why, with each of our work placement programmes or external recruitment project, we have kept perfecting a hiring process that reflects this understanding, both based on the feedback of the interviewees and the hiring panel.

One of the main ways in which we do this is by allowing applicants to show us their skills through completing a paid task our interview conversation is then based on. There are many reasons for using this approach, from attracting a diverse pool that otherwise would not have been able to go through a lengthy and rigorous hiring process due to other jobs, caring needs or disabilities, to ensuring those who are not natural performers and entertainers also get a chance to showcase their talent by having their work to talk about in depth.

As an example, on our last work placement programme, we set our applicants (18-24 year old unemployed and underemployed young people) a task with creating something, anything, we could use to raise awareness of our CV-less recruitment processes. The brief was vague purposefully - we didn’t want to focus on just visuals - and we offered many examples to spark creativity.

With each interview, our team was inspired by the creativity our interviewees have put into the tasks. Here’s just some of the outputs that were created by both successful and unsuccessful individuals:

Anne-Marie, our 2021 intern created a series of social media assets for Instagram following Collaborative Futures branding, with engaging accompanying copy. She also pitched a podcast idea as a spin-off from these assets.

One interviewee created a video of herself talking about the textiles she creates, pitching it as something which could be used as an video alternative to a CV in recruitment that makes the process less stressful for the candidates, and which makes it easier for the hiring panel to get to know the individual.

Tommy, our interviewee created a set of illustrations and social media assets following Collaborative Futures branding to illustrate the stresses of online recruitment in COVID times, and illustrating the diverse community our CV-less recruitment attracts.

Jane, our 2021 intern created a moodboard illustrating an animation she would have created if she had more time - at the interview she talked us step by step on how the animation would unfold.

Our team used Jane’s animation skills to embellish our branding - you can see her work featured throughout our website and on Lizzie’s story blogpost. Our Collaborators, such as Graphic Change also used these on their social media.

Becky, our interviewee spent her set three hours completing research by getting together a focus group of young people, and engaging with them on the topic of job hunting and using CV’s to show their skills or experience. She then neatly showcased her findings through graphs and stats.

Nuriya, our 2021 intern pitched and created templates for a collaborative series of IGTV interviews with our interns and businesses.

This idea was used on our IGTV to show our Founder Tess and intern Shanice talking about completing D&I project together - see it here.

Hannah, our interviewee recorded a podcast episode titled “Have we been wrongfully hired?“ where, with two other individuals they together discuss their experiences of looking for jobs, and delve into (and take apart!) Collaborative Future’s approach to hiring in detail.

Shanice, our 2021 intern wrote a blogpost for her task about her experience of job hunting, taking apart each element of the process which might knock one’s confidence. She said about the experience: “I really enjoyed creating the blog post as part of my real life task. We were only set 3 hours to complete it, which showed me how much I can achieve in a short space of time. It also made me feel more confident about returning to the world of work and that CF were genuinely interested in learning about my and the other applicants’ skills so that they could tailor their programme to us.”

Shanice’s copywriting skills were used regularly by our Collaborators on the programme - such as her blogpost on “Gender-specific spaces in Tech” for Women In Tech Nottingham.

A key element to mention about using a task to base an interview on, is that we are not expecting an output we can take and run with - we are not even expecting a finished product - it’s the process of planning the task, the learnings and challenges encountered throughout that we really want to learn about. After all, the interview is the first time the candidates are finding out more about the organisation, and us about them as a person, so let’s let go of the ridiculous interview standards we have set as a norm that they should know about and mirror the latest project your organisation has worked on.

Want to use our approach for your next hire?

We can support you with implementing this, alongside other approaches to ensure you hire the best people with diverse perspectives to enrich your organisation. You can email us at hello@collaborativefuture.co.uk, or book in for a 15min chat via our Calendly link here.