From time to time, I am delighted to share the thoughts of others and their views on the future of work. Today I have a new contribution from my friend David Hunt. David's provided me with this widely and independently evidenced commentary on the real nature of recruitment in the US today as experienced by job seekers.
Something is stirring in the jobs jungle...
 |
| Photo: Khao Yai News Facebook page |
Let’s cut to the chase.
On one hand, companies claim they can’t find skilled people for the positions they have open; they claim there’s a shortage. Yet I see the same positions open for month after quarter – and in multiple instances still open after a year… an observation seconded by both job seekers and recruiters I know.
Clearly something is preventing the “pulling of the hiring trigger.” But the opportunity costs of unfilled positions are the ability to pursue new initiatives, develop new products and services, and handle new and existing customers. Let us not forget the stress toll on employees working 60+ hours a week for months on end.
Clearly something is preventing the “pulling of the hiring trigger.” But the opportunity costs of unfilled positions are the ability to pursue new initiatives, develop new products and services, and handle new and existing customers. Let us not forget the stress toll on employees working 60+ hours a week for months on end.
On the other hand, we have – across America – untold millions… record numbers!... un-or-underemployed. We have a labor force participation rate near record lows. Networking groups, like local-to-Boston groups Acton Networkers and WIND, are overflowing with skilled, competent, accomplished, and educated people who are perfectly capable of stepping into new roles successfully. As are, doubtless, such groups across the country.
Clearly there is an enormous mismatch, a dissonance in the perception of reality between people seeking to fill jobs, and people wanting jobs. Each side has their own points, but – to cite a Vorlon proverb – “Understanding is a three-edged sword; there’s your side, their side, and the truth.”
We need to talk, the two sides, candidly but without rancor, to burn away the irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product, the Truth. Only then, when both sides are in agreement about the real nature of the problem, can solutions then be proposed and tried. But the first step is to admit there is a problem. And since employers indisputably have the power, let’s talk about them.
Multiple
Elephants in the Recruiting Room
Elephant
the First: Hiring managers do not believe they need
to compromise on what they want from candidates. Per a DeVry University
survey (bolding added):
*Sixty-seven percent of hiring managers don’t feel like they have to settle for
a candidate without the perfect qualifications for the job
As one hiring manager told me, “I want what
I want, and will wait to get what I want.”
This desire for the fantasy date
leads to a huge list of requirements, often impossible
requirements, which feeds into:
Elephant
the Second: ATS portals reject up to 75% of
qualified candidates; e.g., from Applicant tracking systems – the hidden
peril for job applicants (bolding in original):
Some
sources quote that as many as 75% of applicants are eliminated by ATS
systems, as soon as they submit their resume, despite being qualified
for the job!
Paraphrasing Suzanne Lucas, “The Evil HR Lady”, when the
impossible is set as the filtering criteria, it shouldn’t surprise that only
the impossible – i.e., nothing –
comes through. Reinforcing this is
another data point, specifically an interview
with Wharton School Professor Peter Cappelli whose
research focuses on employment (bolding added):
*One employer told me that 25,000 people had applied for a
reasonably standard engineering job in their company and that the hiring
systems indicated that none met the
requirements.
And a recruiter I know told me that, as a
test, a company put together what they considered to be a perfect resume. Yup. Didn’t get through the ATS. As Careerealism’s J.T. O’Donnell observed, ATS
portals are where applications go to die.
Elephant
the Third: My own experience with trying to network
into companies indicates that more and more companies are blocking the networking that hitherto has been one of the best ways
of making contacts with decision makers.
For example:
*I … made contact with the hiring manager
on LinkedIn. Despite having made contact through a mutual connection and
(theoretically) a trusted source, they said they could not communicate directly
with me, and that HR would have to pass my resume to them before they could do
anything. (Nor could they request my resume even knowing I was in the system.)
Another company I know has, per multiple
people I know working there, outright
forbidden any networking contacts with
hiring managers. Even current
employees can only bid for new positions through the ATS.
Elephant
the Fourth: Terrified of making a (cue dramatic music) BAD
HIRE, companies have signed up to conduct personality testing to determine fit
to some idealized personality profile, despite many potential downsides, e.g., The Problem with Using Personality Tests for
Hiring and The Lazlo Emergency Commission Report. And it’s become a responsibility
dodge:
When there's a test to fall back on,
managers inevitably step back from responsibility and surrender
to the test, instead of asking the tougher questions. Like "the
claw" in Toy Story, the test "decides who will stay and who will
go."
A personality test will never encourage
your managers to have the kinds of flexible thinking you need, because the test
makes the ultimate decision. No test will save you from the hard work of
developing an intelligent hiring process. It takes effort to distinguish the
drivers for performance in a job, and real thought to understand who will fit
into your culture.
Elephant
the Fifth: There is no pushback on the ability of hiring
managers to play Goldilocks to wait forever, and no difficult
conversations had with those hiring managers by their superiors about their
Quest for the Purple Squirrel. For example, blogger Aline Kaplan had a
critical observation in her blogpost Hiring the Perfect Candidate: The Problem
with Finding Goldilocks:
Had I ever taken this long to fill a
position … my managerial competence would have come into question. I would have
had to provide a very good reason why I could not find one decent candidate
among the horde of technology marketing people let go by numerous companies
when the Great Recession hit—and beyond.
Hidden in this lack of correction to such
levels of indecision is an implicit message from upper management that
indecision is tolerated. That tacit approval of indecision in hiring
will leak to other topics also needing decisions.
Elephant
the Sixth: Despite the fact that the economy has
sucked canal water since 2008, with – as mentioned above – untold millions (by
some estimates over 100 million) not counted in the American labor force any
more, there is still a perceptual bias against those who are unemployed,
especially those who have been out for longer than six months. Thus, I observe a lack
of empathy or “EQ” for such people based on no allowances made for the
current economic reality.
Elephant
the Seventh: Something like 80% of companies search
for candidates on social media and the internet, with no guidelines
or standards. Thus, any post –
whether on LinkedIn, Facebook, twitter, or anything found with a google search
– can potentially be viewed as disqualifying.
Now, companies are also scouring posts by people with whom you are connected, and searching for your image to see if you are in others’ pictures. Yet on the flip side, having no social media
presence is also seen as disqualifying, thus creating a social media presence is a Catch-22.
Elephant
the Eighth: The only shortage is of people willing
to take pennies on the dollar (and in parallel, a dearth of training dollars to
fill in small gaps). They keep looking
for, quoting
J.T. O’Donnell, “Bi-lingual brain surgeons for $10 an hour”. Ask The Headhunter Nick Corcodilos wrote – read the whole link, it’s really eye-opening:
"The
McQuaig Institute (a developer of talent assessment tools) recently polled over
600 HR professionals. The #1 reason they lose job candidates — reported
by 48% of U.S. companies — is because the offers
they make are too low.
HR
knows where the talent shortage comes from: Lousy job offers."
Elephant the Ninth:
A standard complaint by job seekers is the treatment they receive. This is not
the carping of “angry job seekers” but observations by multiple “big
names” in hiring and recruiting. Job seekers talk and share stories, leading
to companies getting bad reputations. (And in parallel, sweatshop 12-plus-hour-days
companies gain bad reps.)
Elephant
the Tenth: Ageism and the parallel fear of hiring
someone who is a threat to the hiring manager’s position. There are a lot of very experienced,
accomplished, and savvy people looking for work. Given the youth-philia of industry these days,
I opine that many younger managers are not just concerned about having to
manage someone older than they are, but are worried that those seasoned people
might become their replacements, or even superiors.
Elephant
the Eleventh: Companies have invested untold
millions in ATS software, personality testing, etc. Nobody wants to report upward that the software they’ve pushed, the policies they recommended, may in fact be creating the very shortage they decry. Yet… sooner or later, as the inability to
fill positions noticeably affects the bottom line, company leaders will turn their eye to the
situation. CYA maneuvering only works
for so long, and doesn’t generally end well for those who hid bad news.
Elephant
the Dozenth: Interviewers have certain expectations
of behaviors and personality types. In Fuzzy Limits, I outlined this
situation related by a recruiter:
They described a person they were attempting to place at a company. Their
client rejected the candidate, citing that the person came across as "too
aggressive". Upon being told that feedback, the candidate altered their
presentation to be more low-key… and was rejected at their next interview as
"not dynamic enough".
One person's confident is another's
arrogant; humble vs. uncertain, low-key vs. disinterested, enthusiastic vs.
desperate, delegator vs. slacker? And so on.
For example, I tend to think before I
speak. After one interview I got the feedback that they thought my
"engaging brain before putting mouth into gear" made me look slow and
indecisive. Had I known that, I would have adjusted. But since interviewers
don't come with meters above their heads so we can get instant feedback on how
our presentation is perceived by a total stranger, applicants are forced to
gamble.
All these elephants lead to one inescapable conclusion – echoing a
comment you will hear in almost any networking group meeting and often online
in comments on LinkedIn essays: “The hiring process is broken”.
Destroying
the Message
Across the board, corporate decision makers
ignore the chorus of such observations, and even excoriate and label as
“uppity” those who point out these elephants.
I suspect this tendency is an application of The Emperor’s New Clothes. It’s one thing when a “job search /
recruitment expert” points things out.
It’s another when a hoi polloi
plebe points these things out – because then the elephants might actually
have to be addressed as they’re visible to all.
But problems don’t get better because
they’re ignored.
So
What Will We Talk About?
In 2002 my retired
Harvard Business School professor father passed away suddenly at age 93. Needless to say my mother was shattered. Eventually she climbed out of her hole and
resumed life, though not unchanged. We
talked daily; I also was going through multiple and simultaneous life crises.
My mother was the first woman to get – by a few months – a Doctorate of Business
Administration from the Harvard Business School. Incredibly intelligent, highly insightful, and
scarily intuitive, she would grill me wanting to know what was going on in the
life of her only child in the hopes of guiding me to constructive actions. I would sometimes be forthcoming but, more
often, attempt to evade the conversation through various tactics. She would have none of it, and would scornfully deride my evasions of serious
issues with “So, we’ll just talk about the weather.”
So
What Are We?
Let me be absolutely, completely, blunt in
asking this – because people interested
in solving problems ask penetrating questions and brush aside evasions just
like my mother did…
Are we a
nation of problem-solvers, rolling up our sleeves and willing to discuss the elephants in the
HR lounge candidly? People are suffering
from lack of work, and companies are losing from all the opportunity costs of unfilled
openings.
Or… are we a nation of shirkers, avoiding talking about these difficult issues
because they make us uncomfortable, are brought up by the “wrong people”, or might
necessitate that companies admit “The Shortage” might be because of the decisions and policies and programs they themselves have
made and enacted?
(pause)
Sigh. Yeah, I thought so.
It’s been a surprisingly cool spring and
summer here, very possibly because the
sun’s gone quiet. How are things
where you are?
David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.
David Hunt is a Mechanical Design Engineer in southern New Hampshire looking for his "next opportunity" that allows him to design new products and shepherd them to stable production. His LinkedIn profile is: www.linkedin.com/in/davidhuntmecheng/; he blogs at davidhuntpe.wordpress.com and tweets at @davidhuntpe.
