Bringing potential employers to life by using a gaming technique could be the way forward for recruiting graduates Looking to revolutionise the way graduates engage with potential employers, Debut, the job-hunting app for students, has put together the top ten interview faux pas. Charlie Taylor, the founder, thinks that it is about time businesses caught up with the millennial generation.
The app allows students and graduates to quickly engage with employers, completely free of charge. The process is gamified, encouraging graduates to engage with company culture and educate themselves on the intricacies of employment through games, blogs and interaction.
On the employer side, the process is streamlined to help them find relevant candidates and connect with them directly, offering internships and interviews as notifications on their phone rather than lengthy email exchanges. Employers no longer need to sit through one candidate at a time, like a tinder for recruitment, wasting time, it is all expedited and made simple for both parties.
Taylor got the idea for app at university, when he quickly realised that students do absolutely everything on their phones, from ordering food to finding a date. He found it absurd that even todays leading technology companies were not interacting online with potential graduate employees.
Todays undergraduate was 11 years old when the iPhone was released. They look at their phone on average 214 times a day, they don’t know any different to this mobile atmosphere. The career industry needs to flex and engage with this shift.
After some investment pitches, the app launched with 40 FTSE 100 companies and in 12 months they raised £2.2 million; the last round being with three very strong venture capitalists and one big Angel called Paul Forster, the former CEO of Indeed.
Debut is based in Old Street in London, with what will soon be 20 full time staff members. It’s customers range from Rolls Royce and Tesla, to Microsoft, EY, the NHS and the Police service and many more.
So how do they market and engage with the millennial generation?
Students are bombarded with marketing and advertising but if you create something you can trust and that works, doing something that this generation loves which is convenience and speed on mobile, you stand a good chance of capturing their attention.
Here are the top ten interview faux pas from Debut:
- Swearing, being rude or talking about illegal activity
- Using a mobile phone for something unrelated to the interview
- Being late
- Not doing the right amount of research on the company
- Getting the name of the interviewer wrong
- Not having examples when responding to a question
- Forgetting what you have said on your CV
- Not having any questions to ask the interviewer
- Misunderstanding the dress code
- Going red or blushing
Some of these faux pas are pretty obvious, but it does happen in interviews and Debut wants to raise awareness of this and it’s helpful for students to understand this as they step into the world of work.
20 per cent of UK millennials don’t own a computer, they only use mobile – sowing the seed for the idea of Debut. If you are not speaking the language that your audience is speaking, already you add a layer of friction. Every time you deviate from the way of life of the people you are targeting, you make it harder and put up a hurdle. You ultimately see a reduction in engagement.
Taylor says one of the reasons that students find it difficult to find employment is that the recruitment industry lacks structural changes that each generation has gone through; the way they operate, communicate and engage with companies. The job industry hasn’t moved on along at the same speed as these generations. LinkedIn for example isn’t suitable for students but great for mid-career workers.
Employers need to recognise and support the shift in focus but, unfortunately, we still live in a day and age where employees struggle to be supportive of backgrounds and situations. That is something that Debut sincerely wants to change.
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