During the recent break I got to watch a ton of of TV, and I noticed that dating websites ramp up the commercials during the holidays! I also saw The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which had a running dating site gag going through the whole thing. It got me thinking, I wonder if I could join a dating website and then recruit those folks for jobs versus asking them out for dates? I’m happily married, and wouldn’t think of going on a dating website, so I reached out to some HR folks I know who aren’t happily married and on dating websites to find out how miserable their holidays were! Also, to ask the question I really wanted to ask— could you use a site like Match.com to recruit talent?
Here’s my assumption about guys who use dating websites: Mostly techie types who have low interpersonal skills. Computer dating = guts enough to speak to girls they normally wouldn’t. For the ladies, I’m guessing it’s a bit broader, but the plus/minus on cats is probably +2.7. Also, great for single moms who can’t get out on the normal dating scene because most people look down on you leaving your 6 year old in the car of a bar parking lot. Single dads use the kids as a bait for younger girls who think it’s “adorable” that he’s such a “good” dad and working so hard to take care of his children. For some reason, single dads are adorable, but single Mom’s are a train wreck—not sure how that happened in our society.
Here’s what I found out:
– No, these sites don’t list “job titles” of the folks who are members, but apparently you get pretty savvy in figuring out what they do based on their written profile. Many will say what they do in the written description of themselves.
– You do find out quite a bit about the person based on these interactions, which could make for better cultural hiring fits.
– You can find out how crazy someone is,which also might help in finding out a bad hire—before you hire them.
– Specialized dating sites like Black People Meet, etc. could offer a great pool for diversity hiring.
The big question—could you use a dating website to recruit talent for your company?
I’m going to say yes, but it comes with some really big perils! First, if you thought recruiting on Facebook could get creepy, dating websites will take this to a whole other level! You could catfish the whole thing, but that seems like more work than you would really get out of the entire thing. Catfishing is rampant on LinkedIn right now… unless you actually know the person you’re connecting with, chances are you’ve got some catfish in your LI pond. I’m sure you might upset some folks who came to the dating website to find love; instead, you are just trying to get them a job they’ll love! (See how I flipped the script on that one?That’s 20 years of recruiting folks!)
It really depends on how desperate you are to reach a new talent pool. In some metro-tech centers, I can definitely see putting a sourcer on this gig and seeing what happens. Worse case scenario it bombs, but it’s a very low cost of entry pool to fish in. It’s really no different than any other network you use to recruit. We tell our recruiters to go to their religious organizations and use that network to recruit. None of those people asked to be recruited. This is no different.
So, what do you think, would you use a dating website to find talent for your organization?
If you Google “Tim Sackett” you’ll find our Tim, and a truck driver chaplain. Our Tim is NOT the truck driver chaplain, although how awesome would that be if he was!? He is a prolific writer in the HR and TA space who just happens to also run an Engineering and IT contract staffing agency (HRU Technical Resources) out of Michigan. He also writes every day at his own blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Weirdly, he’s known as an expert in workplace hugging, which was kind of cool years ago, but now seems painfully creepy, but we still love him and he’s fairly harmless. Tim is also on the board of the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals (ATAP), lifetime Michigan State Spartan fan, husband to a Hall of Fame wife, 3 sons, and his best friend Scout. He also wrote a book with SHRM called The Talent Fix, you can find it on Amazon.