BREAKING NEWS – It’s 2017 and the Hiring Process SUCKS!
There are a record 6.2 Million job openings in the United States right now. This number is slated to grow as the last leg of Baby Boomers exits the workforce for a spot poolside in Margaritaville over the next few years. What does this mean for corporate recruiting?? Hell on Earth.
But wait, there are currently 7 million unemployed Americans. What the?! How? That’s almost one job available for every available candidate. There’s two sides to every story, though – CEOs are saying there are simply not enough qualified applicants left in America, while workers are complaining that their pay isn’t stacking up. Regardless of what side you are on, this means war, literally. The talent war is already starting to leave many companies wounded on the battlefield, where the lack of workers, not jobs, is the problem.
With a shift in supply and demand, we’ve now morphed into a talent choice job market. Candidates are in higher demand to fill positions than a Trump cabinet post. This leaves them with the power of choosing like LeBron, where they want to “take their talents.”
Where does this leave Recruiters??
You’ve now become the most important salesperson in your organization. Your hiring practices may be responsible for passing up great talent ready to fill your roles, if you’d just see it through a different lens and loosen up a bit! After all, without talent, there is no bottom-line to protect, nor products and services for your sales team to pitch to customers. And even if your company soon adopts Artificial Intelligence to screen initial candidates, your human touch will still be required in the final steps of hiring.
Each of you has the skills and ability to fix what’s fundamentally wrong with the hiring process, while maintaining and restoring your company’s reputation. A helluva lot of power for one team to have. If your squad is already operating like this, great, mucho gracias. If not, it’s not too late for a quick remodel to this old creaky HR house…
THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE – It’s Time for a “Fixer Upper”…What in the Shiplap?!
Out with the old, in with the new – your reputations as recruiters, leaders, and entire organizations depend on it. Here’s a few reasons why:
- Please end “Do-not-reply/noreply@” email garbage: C’mon, seriously? We spend infinite amounts of time and energy to build culture, and engage employees, yet don’t pay enough attention to a candidates first exposure to a company. You’ve just been given a collective Robert Downey Jr. eye roll by every job candidate in America who’s ever received this impersonalized load of digital dogshit.
- Staff Up: If your talent acquisition team is spread too thin and can’t handle the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), daily emails or phone calls – pitch harder than an oil lobbyist to leadership, trying to squeeze a few more salaries out of the C-suite. Your team is worth the investment and vital to finding the BEST candidates for a myriad of reasons.
- Social Media should scare the living shit out of you: If your executive teams saw the daily trashing of your hiring process filing up the comment sections of articles on Linkedin, Facebook, Glassdoor, Vault, and Reddit, they’d need to up their blood pressure meds! Millions of active “voices” co-exist in a unified, unfiltered public forum of corporate bashing – and if you want to improve your employment brand you better start communicating hiring statuses to candidates – all of them!
- BFF Word-of-Mouth: A bad candidate experience can ignite an open-sourced social media dumpster fire, there’s no question. But you also can’t control what candidates are saying about your sub-par hiring suck-fest at local gyms and happy hours to their besties that have also considered applying.
- Axe “Quick 45 minute Personality Tests”: Do you ever ask anyone if they like answering 100 redundant multiple-choice questions to see if they match your company standards? Get off your high-horse. To me, this backwards thinking follows a similar logic to the SAT scores – just because they scored lower, isn’t a predictor of long-term college or career success! These are a mind-numbing waste of time. If you’re gonna do it, make it short and sweet.
- Human Decency: Does shooting a quick email or calling a candidate to inform them you’ve moved on seem like a huge deal? No. But it’s a big deal to the candidate, plain and simple. The candidate experience can be greatly enhanced with the simplest of actions and will reap HUGE rewards for the preservation of your corporate reputation. It may take a little more time, but think of not having to respond to growing numbers of nasty online reviews.
- Apply to your company and a few competitors: radical thought here…actually go through the whole process. Is it easy? Did it take too long? Does it piss you off? Did you feel recognized and appreciated as a candidate, even if you didn’t get an in-person interview? Experience change through candidate empathy!
- Shorten Wait Times: Nothing infuriates candidates more. If you don’t like a candidate, just tell them! If you like them and want to hire them, offer them the job ASAP, before a competitor scoops them up!! Remember, we are in a talent WAR. This means you no longer have the luxury of time to hold offers at bay for 2-5+ weeks for top candidates.
- Call every interviewed candidate: Whether it’s 2 or 20, call each of them explaining why they weren’t selected. It’s the only way they will know how to learn from the experience and work on things you presented in your feedback.
- Simplify your ATS: Candidates should be able to apply in 5-10 minutes, max! If they already have a resume and cover letter, why the hell do you make them fill out a full candidate profile, duplicating the EXACT same information?! You show me one candidates who’s ever loved filling that out, I’ll show you my mailing address at the North Pole. You could be 45 minutes in, on page 12 of 15 , then it decides to toss up 5 red errors, leaving you pissed off and ready to toss your laptop out the window. You’ve just disengaged potentially great candidates in an electronic display of bureaucratic BS.
In Conclusion:
Be HUMAN AGAIN. We used to act like it before the advent of computers, software systems and template emails.
With Love,
Every candidate you’ve ever passed on
*P.S. / Final Thoughts: I’ve worked in multiple HR departments, alongside very smart, likable people. I’ve advised hundreds of college students and recent grads on the nuances of the hiring process, and how to best approach companies big and small. I’ve also personally been on the receiving end of hundreds of “do not reply” emails throughout my career, including being ignored entirely. I am the first to admit I suck at a LOT of things, but human communications is not one of them.
I won’t mind your negative reactions, they don’t bother me. I care about your ability to contribute educated, thought provoking dialogue that allows us ALL to move forward in a positive manner. For the amazing recruiters out there already doing these thing, you are awesome. Keep leading the way. Let’s improve on behalf of all qualified, talented candidates who deserve our attention, even if we don’t hire them. Please take the time to respond to their texts, calls, DMs, or emails within 24 hours. It’s just human decency. No excuses.