“You would not believe the quality of the applicants we heard from when we posted our Director of Marketing ad,” an HR buddy told me. “I wouldn’t believe how great they were, or I wouldn’t believe how horrifying they were?” I asked.
“Horrifying,” said the HR guy. “Typos, misspellings, no experience, unrelated experience, you name it.”
“And yet…” I began, and my friend cut me off. “And yet the unemployment rate is nine percent. I know. Where are all the people when you need them?”
“I can think of four people who’d make incredible DIrectors of Marketing for you,” I said. “You won’t hear from them.”
“Why not?” asked my HR pal, and I said “Because they’re done with Black Hole recruiting. They won’t lob their resumes into one more yawning abyss. They’re through. They’ll get their next jobs through friends, or they’ll consult. The better the candidate, the more strongly s/he feels about that. People are sick of being abused and disrespected in those bureaucratic, unfriendly systems. It’s like getting chewed up and spit out.”
“Ouch!” said my friend. “I know, it’s hard to hear that, because you think you’re getting a good sampling of the labor pool when you run your job ads,” I said. “But you’re not. Tons of the most capable and most rockin’ people aren’t even in the mix. You’ll never hear from them.”
“It’s easy to forget how daunting and discouraging the typical corporate hiring process is,” I continued. “Try it. Fill out an application for an open job at your own company, one day. You’ll be amazed. Those things take hours to complete. They strip any creativity or humanity out of your history and background. They ask the most ridiculous questions — the name of your supervisor and what you got paid at every job you ever held – instead of asking you things that a hiring manager really needs to know, like how you view the role and what you’ve already accomplished at other jobs. If you get an interview, you’ll wait weeks to hear anything. If you interview multiple times for a position, you may get a two-sentence email ‘No thanks’ as a reply.”
“But we have a hard job to do, responding to all the applications,” said my friend. “But that’s because job-ad marketing is so lousy,” I replied. “We don’t market our companies’ products and services on the side of a barn, so why would we think that a job ad splashed all over creation is going to get us great candidates? Also, have you read a job ad lately? They’re awful! They say things like ‘The selected candidate will possess yada yada and this other thing, have a taxi driver’s license, speak Greek and tap dance.’ Why do we talk about The Selected Candidate? Who refers to their next wonderful employee, the very person they’re trying to reach in the job ad, in the third person? It’s crazy. We’re pushing talent away.”
“I see what you’re saying,” said my friend. “Employers can’t get great people because the system itself is broken.”
“It’s broken,” I said. “Employers run ads. They’re not happy with the caliber of the responses. They run another ad. Meanwhile, job-seekers are disgusted. They don’t want to take the time to customize their resumes for every situation, because they’ve been burned before. It’s a vicious cycle.”
“What can be done?” asked my buddy, and I said “Employers have to fix this one. Some of them already are, abandoning the Black Hole system for a simpler, friendlier, more human recruiting style. It’s not rocket science. They need to look at their hiring processes objectively, and ask ‘Why would anyone want to work here?’”
“That seems like a worthwhile question to answer, even if you weren’t having trouble snagging talent,” said my friend.
I couldn’t agree more.