The benefits of open hiring

Introduction

Why is there such a thing as open hiring?

There are a thousand and one reasons people are rejected. Sometimes there are valid reasons, often they are not. Everyone knows the feeling of rejection for a very silly reason at least once.

Furthermore, the Netherlands has changed so much in 40 years and government activities (including the 1980s, everyone wearing a tie, Balkenende who wanted to transform the Netherlands into an education paradise) have contributed to the fact that more and more people are not coming to work because they have not fit within the culture diploma.

Add to this the fact that since the year 2000 the Netherlands has been automating extremely hard, as a result of which the need for low-skilled personnel is falling sharply. Moreover, the Netherlands has become a purely tertiary and even quaternary working environment and that does not help to get people back to work. On the contrary, it makes the group of long-term unemployed bigger than ever.

Everyone agrees that it cannot go on like this. And one of the methods to solve it could be open hiring.

The idea

What is the idea of ​​open hiring?

The idea behind open hiring is that everyone can have a fair chance in the assessment process. The company does not know anything about the employee except your name and your email address and this reduces the assessment process to what it is all about: “can the employee perform his role yes or no”.

  1. Imagine you are applying for a job at an open hiring company. Then you only have to provide your name, place of residence, and email address and you wait until you receive an invitation.

  2. When the company has a vacancy, they take a list of people who have applied and select the first registration and send them an invitation. Roughly, they wait 24 – 48 hours for the person’s answer before moving on to the next.

  3. Until then, this invitation from the company was entirely without obligation. If you can’t or don’t want to, you can safely say no. You will have lost your place on that list.

  4. But, let’s assume you say yes to the invitation, then what happens?

In general, you will be asked to join a day within 48 hours and you will also be told where to go and with whom. This person is your point of contact and employee for the entire day. At the end of the day, both the worker and yourself will give an assessment. If that is to the satisfaction of both, you will come back tomorrow, but then in service.

What is open hiring currently facing?

Open hiring is diametrically opposed to the current culture diploma in the Netherlands. That this suddenly does not matter anymore meets with resistance, especially among the educated people. Furthermore, many Dutch people have in principle become accustomed to the image that a diploma was necessary to find and keep a (good) job.

The Netherlands is also a trading country, with many diplomatic relations. While our country is progressive in thinking, we also do a lot of business with more conservative countries (I’m looking at you … Germany) that enforce a degree in culture. In short, if the Netherlands would like to change, it will be under pressure and it will provoke a work culture clash, something we cannot afford.

Legislation in the Netherlands requires employers to know a lot about employees. Passport, location, bank, tax information and how about the well-known favorite Declaration of Good Behavior (DoGB). Although this does not have to be a problem indirectly during the follow-up day, it can hinder hiring.

The problem

Coordinating verbally, by telephone, or by e-mail until a date and time are found that is favorable for both, is the daily routine. It is not very efficient and it seems as if this way of communication is used as a covert form of social talk (read: cumbersome).

Maybe that’s nice if only one appointment a week has to be scheduled, but no one lives such a quiet life. So we are burdened with these inefficient ways of making appointments and especially when a lot has to be made per week or when many different parties have to come together, this is really a time-consuming hassle.

In short, if we only could look into each other’s agenda in advance.

The goal

Why do we start about this?

The founder of Noodzakelijk Online sympathizes with the target groups for which open hiring can be very useful. Nobody should be unwanted unemployed and if there are methods that can solve unemployment, Noodzakelijk Online seizes it. This is a good example of corporate social responsibility for us.

The conclusion

People who for whatever reason are excluded from paid work get a second chance with this hiring method. This is also interesting for companies because it requires candidate employees to assess purely on quality delivered, which simplifies the hiring process.

The only drawback, many professions, especially in the service sector, perform actions that are left or right sensitive in nature. Pretty soon rules are imposed by law that can be obstructive. The fact that there are no longer any ‘open recruitment’ days in regular employment does not make it any easier for open recruitment to fully flourish.

G: A promotion video about open-hiring

Credits

Time: 6 hours
Written by: Robert Velhorst & Mariëlle Pax