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'Open Hiring' can rebalance the recruitment process
Editorial by Christian Saint Cyr
National Director / Canadian Job Development Network
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Competition kills in when you place someone with challenges in obtaining employment up against an employer's 'ideal candidate'. It's not to say employers won't drop hiring criteria, but they typically do it when hiring someone from their own personal network.
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This leaves many of us wondering, what we can do to market clients and students who may lack Canadian experience, be new to the job market, need to accommodate a challenge or for those with a variety of barriers that typically prevent them from getting an interview much less a job offer?
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The answer is: 'Open Hiring'
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Open hiring is a recruiting method where the first person to apply gets the job. First-in, first-hired. No questions asked, no resumes, no interviews, no background checks. Regardless of a person's past, educational background, or experience.
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Granted, this an extreme approach to open hiring, but there is a segment of employers who are adopting at least a modified version of this approach.
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The idea behind open hiring is to give people who usually face barriers to employment a chance to work. Think of people with a criminal record, a history of substance use, or homelessness, but also people with a disability, a lack of work experience, or simply a fear of job interviews.
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So, I know what you're thinking. There is no way any employer I deal with is going to consider this approach.
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Not so, I can think of one major employer who has already been doing open hiring and they're enjoying a lot of success with it.
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While their Canadian careers page is currently being updated, The Body Shop has been actively engaged with open hiring internationally.
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In 2021, The Body Shop used open hiring to recruit more than 1,400 Customer Consultants in the United Kingdom, Australia and in North America. They converted 30% of those consultants from temporary to permanent employees.
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When asked for their feedback, 89% of Body Shop Store Managers said they would rehire their Open Hired Customer Consultants and 87% of Open Hire employees recommended The Body Shop as a great place to work
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According to The Body Shop, 'Open Hiring' means the first candidate to apply gets the next available opportunity across entry-level positions, at their stores and distribution centre. When a hiring manager is recruiting, they select the first candidate on the list (in order of application date) for an in-person chat. During the chat, candidates are informed of open positions, company history, and roles and responsibilities.
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From there, interested candidates are asked three simple questions to confirm they are eligible and physically able to fulfil the requirements of the role.
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These efforts aren't just limited to hiring. It focuses on promoting jobs as well. Starting in 2021, The Body Shop has taken purposeful action to attract and accommodate candidates that may face barriers to employment.
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According to one candidate hired for a retail role through open hiring, “it was a really great feeling to not feel like I was going to be surveyed or screened in detail because that can feel intimidating. Sometimes anxiety gets the best of me and I trip over words, but this method of hiring was not as intimidating and made me feel more confident.”
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When analyzing the success rate of this initiative, The Body Shop found that their monthly turnover decreased by 60% when they ran their initial open hiring pilot.
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According to the Academy to Innovate HR, open hiring provides a number of benefits but also provides several disadvantages. Benefits include:
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Access to a Bigger Candidate Pool
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The fewer requirements you have regarding a candidate, the larger a candidate pool will be. Naturally, if employers don’t demand a certain degree or level of previous experience, this will open up their vacancy to a lot more people.
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Having a larger talent pool can be particularly useful for (entry-level) positions that are hard to fill, require little to no experience, and for which people can easily be trained by the organization itself.
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Greater Diversity
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Opening up vacancies to virtually everyone is likely to increase the diversity within an organization. If an employer's only requirement is the order in which people apply, they’ll have applicants – and eventually employees – from all walks of life.
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Fast Recruitment Process
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A logical consequence of having (almost) no candidate requirements and, by extension, no lengthy recruitment process, is that things tend to go faster. It’s good to note, however, that open hiring doesn’t mean that no screening is done at all.
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The Body Shop, for instance, asks candidates three questions: “Are you authorized to work in the country? Can you stand for up to eight hours? And can you lift over 50 pounds?”
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Improved Retention
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Open hiring gives everybody a chance to work. It’s an approach that doesn’t look at people’s past or things they can’t do, but that focuses on what they can do instead. It’s a real opportunity for those who often face barriers to employment such as, for example, people with a disability or a lack of work experience.
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Offering them a chance to prove themselves by giving them a job also means that they’ll be more loyal to their employer and less likely to leave. The Body Shop found that their monthly turnover decreased by 60% when they ran their initial open hiring pilot.
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Positive Impact on Society
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Having a job is important for everybody. It’s what pays our bills and gives us a sense of purpose (or a reason to get up in the morning). For someone who’s often overlooked or disqualified in advance because of what they’ve done in the past having a job is much more than that. It’s a chance to turn their life around. An opportunity to truly start over, not just for them, but for their families too.
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Reduced Bias
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While this is an often-named benefit of open hiring it also is a controversial one. Yes, it can be a great way to open doors to an entire group of overlooked jobseekers. And indeed, recruiting people on a first-come basis hence skipping an in-person interview does eliminate (unconscious) bias from interviewers. But that doesn’t necessarily mean there is no bias at all.
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Just like every other recruitment method out there, hiring on a first-come-first-served basis also has its disadvantages. Here are a few of the disadvantages noted by the Academy to Innovate HR:
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Safety Risks
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Cutting out all due diligence regarding applicants can be risky. Especially if those applicants will end up working closely together with colleagues and customers. Knowing something about a person’s circumstances – for instance when they’ve been convicted of crimes but also if they haven’t – only seems reasonable in that regard. A simple background check can save an employer a lot of potential trouble.
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Different Bias
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While some say open hiring doesn’t discriminate and eliminates human bias, others claim it replaces one bias with another. Critics say that when you hire on a first-in, first to be hired basis you penalize people who, for example, don’t have access to a computer or those who were busy doing other things when the vacancy opened up (taking care of their children, picking up groceries, you name it).
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Unsuitable for Many Jobs
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The philosophy behind open hiring – helping people who face barriers to employment and reducing hiring bias – is great. And for many jobs, experience is actually not that important and a lack of it can easily be solved with on-the-job training. So for those positions, and the organizations that have them available, hiring on a first-come basis could be an option to explore.
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There are, however, tons of jobs that do require relevant previous experience and a degree. It’s hard to imagine someone become a brain surgeon simply because he or she was the first one to apply… (and yes, this is a bit of an extreme example). For this large category of jobs an open hiring approach obviously won’t work.
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And while you might read this and think to yourself, we have 'The Body Shop' in our local mall, I'll need to market my clients there, I'd like to encourage you to think bigger.
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Having an international chain like The Body Shop is a great way of drawing in employers to consider this hiring alternative. Perhaps you have local employers who are willing to try this once to see where it goes. Perhaps you can create your own case example in your town that you can share with other local employers and build a trend.
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We’ll be discussing 'Open Hiring' at our #MotivatingMondays meeting of the Canadian Job Development Network, Monday September 29th at 8:30am Pacific; 9:30am Mountain; 10:30am Central; 11:30am Eastern; 12:30pm Atlantic and at 1pm in Newfoundland.
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On the morning of Monday September 29th 'Click this Link' to join the session LIVE.
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'2025 Labour Market
Year-in-Review Workshops'
December 2025
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Registration is open for our Labour Market Year-in-Review workshops, taking place respectively in British Columbia and Ontario. We have a 20% discount for everyone who registers early. To learn more:
BC Workshop Link | Nov. 28th / Dec. 1st
or
Ontario Workshop Link | Dec. 5th and 8th
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'Leaders in Job Development'
OPEN TO CHARTER MEMBERS UNTIL OCT. 14TH
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We are looking to work with leading career development organizations to help highlight and promote their work in effective job development. Organizations that sign on as Charter Members by October 14th will benefit from a perpetual 25% discount on their membership.
Learn more about: Leaders in Job Development
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