I know it is a little late to play matchmaker. After all, Valentine’s day was last week and I’m not usually keen on the comparison between dating and hiring candidates. Between various dating shows (The Love Connection or, my personal favorite, Blind Date) though, could there be some crossover from the dating and the job type matchmaking?
One Bay Area company has revamped that idea of matchmaking and taken some inspiration from a reality TV show in the process.
A founder of cloud storage company Box was recently on Bravo’s The Millionaire Matchmaker, a show that matches up men with money and women who want to be with men with money.
Maybe not the most creative show ideas in the world but Box got more out of it than just a founder who may be more occupied during nights and weekends. As Joel Cheesman reported from JobScore’s HireCamp, their recruiting department has used one of the elements of the show to its advantage:
One of those candidates was Allie Covarrubias, who joined the Box recruiting team. Describing herself as someone who embraces risk, Allie convinced Mendes and Levie to run a sales recruiting event that mimicked the mixers from the popular matchmaking show.
“A lot of the marketing behind the event was word of mouth,” said Mendes. “We asked our employees to attend and invite peers they respected in the space.”
Box also invited candidates who applied previously and told them it was an open event and to bring friends who might be interested in learning about Box. Moreover, recruiters performing passive candidate outreach used the event to start conversations.
Kenny Mendes, Box’s director of recruiting, estimated that nearly a third of their sales hires came from events like this. While I’m guessing this might not work quite as well for other professions, it certainly seems to help make a match for this sales team.