Recruiting the right talent is crucial – especially in the fast-paced, dynamic world of events. As the UK’s number one events specialist recruitment agency, Live Recruitment works closely with clients to ensure their hiring processes are effective, fair, and candidate friendly. Drawing on the experience as Senior Candidate Manager, Jenny McCarthy gives us her practical guidance to help you refine your recruitment approach and avoid common pitfalls.
Communicate promptly with candidates
One of the biggest frustrations for candidates – and a frequent client misstep – is failing to get back to applicants promptly, or sometimes not at all. Timely communication demonstrates respect and keeps candidates engaged. Remember, top talent often has multiple options and won’t wait around indefinitely.
Use structured interview questions
It’s tempting to let interviews become free-flowing conversations focused heavily on one part of a candidate’s CV, but this can unintentionally create an incomplete picture of their skills. Structured questions ensure all relevant areas of experience are explored fairly, helping you make more informed decisions and avoid missing hidden potential.
Ensure fair and consistent interviews
Every candidate deserves a fair shot. Interviews should be consistent and unbiased to avoid disadvantaging applicants or creating a skewed narrative. In the events sector, personality matters – candidates need to fit the energy and culture of your team, so be sure to assess this explicitly during interviews.
Provide constructive feedback
Simply saying a candidate is “not right” isn’t enough. Honest, constructive feedback – even if it’s tough – helps candidates improve and respects the time they invested in applying. It also reflects well on your company’s professionalism and care.
Move candidates through the process swiftly
Delays are costly. Waiting for every candidate to finish a stage before moving anyone forward can cause you to lose engaged talent who don’t want to wait around. Aim for a streamlined process that keeps momentum and maintains candidate enthusiasm.
Evaluate team fit thoughtfully
Team fit is crucial but it’s important to dig deeper into why someone may or may not fit in. Don’t let unconscious biases, or concerns around diversity, equity, and inclusion influence your assessment negatively. Instead, focus on the candidate’s ability to complement and strengthen your team dynamic.
How Live Recruitment supports your hiring success
At Live Recruitment, we don’t just connect you with candidates; we partner with you to design recruitment processes that work. We provide:
- Expert guidance on structuring interviews to fairly assess skills and personality as well as supporting candidates to be best equipped ahead of all interviews.
- We take care of all candidate communications in a timely manner to keep your talent pipeline engaged and onboard.
- Feedback coaching so you can deliver meaningful, constructive insights to candidates and maintain positive attitudes towards your business and its recruitment process.
- Candidates are pre-interviewed by our dedicated team of candidate managers, effectively removing the need for a first-stage interview. Our candidates are pre-vetted and approved by our team, saving you valuable time.
- Most of our account managers aren’t just recruiters, they’re experts with hands-on experience working in the events industry, so they truly understand your needs.
- You gain access to our 43,000+ strong network of candidates on a fully coded, searchable database, ensuring you get the best talent matched to your specific requirements in the quickest way possible.
Our goal is to make hiring smoother, faster, and more effective – that’s why we are the UK’s leading events recruitment specialist. Working with us can build event teams that deliver outstanding results.
If you’d like to learn more about how Live Recruitment can help optimise your recruitment process, get in touch today – hi@live-recruitment.co.uk