How unconventional hiring works for us

Whenever we post a job advert, we get more than our fair share of applications. We think Cliniko is a great place to work and it seems others agree, which means we often have some fantastic candidates without using fancy tools or recruiters. Over time, we’ve honed our hiring and it’s now pretty smooth—for both us and our applicants. We’ve applied these methods countless times across many different roles, finding some brilliant new team members along the way. Our process has its quirks, but we’ve learned what works for us!

1No CVs

We never ask to see CVs. In fact, we actively discourage folks from sending them and even sometimes disqualify applications that ignore this. Most CVs are curated to such an extreme that they have very little bearing on whether a person is good at their job. Cover letters are the same—they’re usually full of buzzwords and waffle, and we’re not interested in that. Instead, we ask applicants to write a short, friendly summary about themselves.

These summaries are a way for people to shine a light on their most relevant experience. Basically, it saves us a lot of faffing about trying to comb through 8-page CVs. We’ve also found that these summaries are an effective initial gauge of personality. Whether someone is an avid rock climber, a dog lover, or always ready to swoop in with a pun, we want to know! Authenticity is important to us at Cliniko; rather than a work persona, we want to get a feel for someone’s real personality as soon as possible—as well as whether they understand what we’re looking for in the role

2Using ChatGPT is more obvious than you think

We don’t use any recruitment software to sift through our applications; every single one is assessed by at least one member of our team. So when we’re reading through literally thousands of applications, it’s immediately evident when someone has used ChatGPT. “I just use it to generate a rough outline and then I tweak it to be unique,” people sometimes say. But ChatGPT has a recognisable and distinctive tone of voice, in much the same way that you can identify the music of a particular band even if you haven’t heard the song before. You also can’t fine-tune a generic script enough to come across as original and fresh, especially when a bunch of other people have also used the exact same base for their own answers.

We don’t explicitly tell people not to use AI in their applications and we don’t disqualify on this basis, but is using ChatGPT really helping you put your best foot forward? Does it make you look efficient . . . or just kind of lazy?

3A five-minute chat goes a long way

After sifting through the applications, the strongest ones get put through to a five-minute chat with our founder Joel. Rather than a prolonged formal interview, the chats are casual and brief. Joel has good instincts about who could be a good fit for the team and five minutes is plenty of time to get a feel for what someone is like and whether they’ll click with the culture.

We’re picky about who progresses to this stage, which is essential given the volume of applications we receive. Our most recent hiring round for a designer set a record for us, when 3284 people applied for a single position. Of these, 33 went through to the five-minute chats.

4 Passion over experience

Passion for one’s work is a quality we value very highly at Cliniko. We’re a fully remote team without managers or meetings, so if someone isn’t passionate about their work they’ll struggle to be accountable and autonomous, which is fundamental to our team functioning well. We want to see enthusiasm shining through a written application and reflected in someone’s manner when we talk to them, and we prioritise this above setting arbitrary experience requirements. Experience can be gained, but passion can’t!

5We pay people for their time

After Joel has had his five-minute chats, he selects a small number of applicants to proceed to the next stage. This is usually a test of some kind that’s related to the job in question (a design task for a design role, a mock support task for a customer support role etc.). This isn’t so unusual—but what makes our testing stage a bit different to a lot of other companies is that all applicants are fully paid for their time if they choose to do the task. We believe in fair compensation and this is part of our ongoing commitment to being an ethical business.

6We don’t leave people hanging

We don’t ghost anyone. Everyone gets notified of the outcome of their application, regardless of whether they’ve been successful. To us, that’s just good manners. In later rounds we also offer feedback if requested.

We’ve found that these somewhat unconventional hiring processes lead us to find the creative, talented, and self-directed new team members that we’re looking for. We take hiring very seriously, recognising that our business can only succeed with the right kind of people on the team.

If you’re applying for a job with us, hopefully this has given you an idea of what you can expect. If you’re an employer, perhaps some of these outside-of-the-box ideas could be implemented during your own hiring rounds. And, if you’re neither, hopefully you don’t think our work culture is any weirder and wackier than you already did!