My Experience as a Candidate

Before I joined Darwin Rhodes, I worked for one of the largest medical service providers in Hong Kong as an Assistant Account Manager. I served a lot of large corporate HR managers back then and had a very good relationship with them. From time to time, I would hear HR managers complain about their difficulties in recruiting candidates. I didn’t understand too much about recruitment at that time and therefore I didn’t have many opinions.

Shortly after this, I decided to leave the company and to start my own job search process with different organisations. During my job searching period, four employers expressed an interest in me. I was lucky enough to attend the interviews with each of them. This resulted in three official offers in one day and I decided take up the opportunity offered by Darwin Rhodes. From my real-life-experience, as a candidate/job seeker, below are the major factors why I chose Darwin Rhodes instead of other employers.

The Interview Process

Prior to the interview

It is very common for job seekers/candidates to send out dozens of CVs when they are looking for opportunities. Candidates often have very little or no idea about the company and/or the nature of the job when applying for the position. Ideally, Recruitment Consultants, should call the candidate back within 48 hours of receiving the application. This is because the candidate should still have a fresh memory of the job he/she applied for and a fast response will increase their interest towards the role. Furthermore, this will show the sincerity of the company to the potential candidate as well. In my last experience, all four 1st rounds of interviews were arranged within the week of my application, and I was quite impressed with their prompt responses. The first impression of one company was relatively high because of the flexibility on the interview arrangements.

During the interview

In a recent article from Recruitment International, it states: 41% of candidates stated the most important part of being successfully recruited was a clearly defined recruitment process. Client and Candidate Interview is a critical part that leads to the success of securing the job. Nowadays, it is a candidate driven market because the employers are losing their talented people. Candidates with specialised skills are in high demand. It is no longer a one-way interview from the employers’ side by asking/questioning the background and knowledge of the candidate. Today, it is a two-way interview, where the candidate will gather information from interviewers in order to determine whether the job itself is a match for them. Therefore, interviewers should elaborate on the information that a candidate is most concerned about. To me, the job nature, job scope, team structure, team and company culture, reporting line and career development are very important.

From my previous experience, one of the positions I applied for was a new position. I understand that the employer would find it more difficult to give me substantial details as it was a new role. However they were not even able to inform me who was to be the reporting manager. This was my first big hesitation with this company.

In another company, I had a concerns during the interview. I asked about the job nature and duties of the position and the line manager basically just read out the Job Description to me. How many candidates will take an offer if their manager does not even have a clear understanding of the role?

Offer Period

Almost all (96%) of workers view the speed of a job offer as a decisive factor when choosing between job opportunities at competing companies. – Recruitment International

The turnaround time of a job offer can determine which opportunity the candidate chooses. This is especially true for those who are out of the workforce for quite some time. After one month of job searching, I managed to have a final round interview with Company X and Company Y when compared to my two weeks process with Darwin Rhodes. I did not receive any feedback from those two companies after my final interview, which led to my assumption that I was not selected by the employers. Coincidentally, all three employers extended their offer to me on exactly the same day, and therefore I had to analyse each of the opportunities.

During the interview stage, two other companies were unable to provide me with concrete information about the role; in contrast Darwin Rhodes provided me with a full picture on the scope of the role. They provided me with balanced opinions on the risks in this career change. The talk did not focus on the current benefits but the long-term career development. I appreciate how Darwin Rhodes treated their candidates with a widened-vision of their self-development instead of lopsided and biased information, which led to my decision to join Darwin Rhodes.

Today, I like to use this personal experience to inform my clients that that candidates (especially the high performing ones) will use their experience during the interview process as a benchmark to determine whether the position and company are suitable for them, and they would assess whether the company can actually give them a career path and development prior to making a decision to accept an offer.

Kind regards
Mandy Sung