Hey Companies! Stop Screwing Yourselves By Screening Out The Best Candidates.

I am so tired of hearing about the so called talent shortage happening in Austin right now. We do NOT have a shortage. We have some awesomely talented people here in town and more and more are graduating from local universities or moving here everyday. So where’s the disconnect? Where are these people? Why are companies having trouble finding them?

Let’s start with the easiest thing to fix — the job description and job ads! The design of a job description is based on tasks and duties rather than the answer to this question: What business problem will the arrival of our new employee solve?

Job ads are written in a way that drives the best candidates away. First, the job ad is a laundry list of everything that this person may or may not do in the day-to-day. Oftentimes, they are outdated. And more often than not, they are written by HR or someone outside the actual hiring department who knows nothing about the needed skills; they get a list from someone in that department and then try to compile something that sounds relevant.

Moreover, everyone in town seems to be looking for this golden 3–5 year experience unicorn that does not exist. Companies know this. Unfortunately they are not willing (aka do not have enough time) to step back and identify what they really need. So they keep moving forward with these terrible job postings and hope they find someone that meets some percentage of what they are looking for.

From the job ads, let’s move onto one of the things I hate most about the recruiting process, the ATS. The only reason Applicant Tracking Systems exist is because recruiting and HR departments suck at marketing. If companies understood the overlap between recruiting and sales/marketing, they wouldn’t be overwhelmed with applications in the first place. These systems were developed out of necessity and inefficient processes…too much time was being spent on filtering through applications.

What were we thinking? If we really cared about talent, there are three things that would not happen:

• We would never have come up with the terrible idea of screening out candidates based on keywords.
• We would not respond to the terrible online application by sending them an auto-response that tells them nothing as to why they were passed, OR by ignoring their application altogether.
• We would never quantify a candidate by looking at only a few nominal skill-sets; instead we would examine the full picture — taking a holistic view of a person’s strengths and backgrounds.

What if we took the time to develop deep and meaningful relationships? What if we got to know people in addition to their resume? What if we saw people for all the things they could bring to a job and the company? If we could make the mind shift from recruiting to talent acquisition, we’d all be better off.