The Problem: Traditional recruitment is very hit and miss, so often the wrong people are hired.
The Solution: Instead of interviews for jobs, set a series of briefs for good causes for people to complete.
Recruitment is always a problem, since without actually working with someone for at least a few days, if not a few weeks, you have no idea if they will be a good employee. Hiring 30 or 50 applicants for a few weeks for one job opening will be outside of the budget of many firms, so some middle path needs to be found.
I suggest setting creative briefs for good causes, which prospective employees will complete in their own time and submit to the company they are applying to. This might be, for example, a new social media campaign for a charity such as the ice bucket challenge idea, or a communications plan for a start-up social enterprise.
A creative employer such as an advertising agency would advertise the briefs and ask for submissions from prospective employees in stages; an initial brief and then if that was accepted, a more in-depth proposal.
Such an approach would enable hundreds of people to showcase their creative capability on a series of taskings, helping those that were not good at writing CVs, answering standardised questions, or interviewing, to get noticed, while also giving the company a chance to assess their work.
Where a brief was successful, the prospective employee would be invited into the company to work alongside existing employees for a few days to deliver the project, giving the employer a chance to see how they fitted (or not) with corporate culture and how good they were at working with others. Even where the brief was unsuccessful, the person would still receive feedback to enable them to improve in future, ensuring the exercise would never risk being wasted effort.
Those who submitted good proposals and demonstrated they were a good fit with the company would then be hired.
This is a win-win for all, since for the company it reduces the cost and risk of employing new personnel, and also expands their capability to deliver impact work for charities and social enterprises, either pro-bono or at reduced cost, as they have a wealth of crowd sourced ideas for free. For charities and social enterprises, they get access to great minds and creativity for free or a significantly reduced fee. And for prospective employees they get to work on fun, impactful briefs in their spare time, akin to volunteering for a charity but with much more impact than most standard volunteering, and if they do well they get a job out of it.
Indeed, there is a wider idea in here; that creative companies should not just employ staff, but should also have a pool of creatives they send briefs to and pay on results. They would get a lot more ideas, all at little extra cost, and could also identify talent for future hires.
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