The Job Search Process Is Broken From Start To Finish
Imagine you are in line for a popular ride at a theme park. Right before your eyes, the passengers on the roller coaster fly off when the roller coaster goes upside down.
The operator screams out, “NEXT IN LINE!”
You have two options:
- Say, “NOPE, not getting on that thing.”
- Say, “Let’s give it a go. I’m sure the track will be fixed in the next 25 seconds. #YOLO.”
The obviously correct answer is #1. “NOPE” your way out of that ride and theme park.
For inexplicable reasons, job searchers around the world choose #2. They choose to get on a roller coaster that they know is broken. They know that as soon as they sit down in front of the computer to look for a new job they are in for a ride. A ride where they will likely be thrown off, or be stuck several times on different parts of the ride.
The job search process is broken. Really, really broken.
Here are the seven things that are broken about the job search process:
1) NO ACCOUNTABILITY
Ever experience a recruiter or hiring manager that doesn’t call you back after promising an interview? Happens all the time, but what website can you use to give him a bad rating?
Yelp? Nope! LinkedIn? Nope! Twitter? Sure, you can bash them on Twitter but you can’t make it anonymous, and doing so will only make you look bad.
You know who does accountability, right?
Uber and Airbnb. They are the poster children for doing accountability right. Uber’s passengers rate their drivers and the drivers rates their passengers. It keeps everyone honest without being too intrusive.
The job search process has nothing like this.
Ratings can change behavior.
Uber sends weekly emails to their drivers to let them know them how they are performing based on passenger feedback. Below you’ll find a copy of the chart they send to their drivers to remind them how important their rating is.
At June we’re creating a similar accountability rating platform for recruiters. Candidates will provide ratings on recruiters based on their interactions with them.
2) NO SALARY TRANSPARENCY DURING NEGOTIATION
The dreaded, “So what do you make at your current job?” question that most job searchers are asked is a circus. I’m looking forward to the day when we can get past the dog and pony show of salary negotiation, because right now, we’re just playing games with one another. The recruiter doesn’t want to say what their client’s maximum salary is and the candidate doesn’t want to anchor herself too low by telling her current salary.
I acknowledge that negotiation is healthy, but the current system is set up so that the candidate loses and leaves money that he could have gotten on the table if he’d just asked the right questions.
I believe that full salary transparency within a company is something the world isn’t completely ready for, but there are a few companies who have implemented salary transparency and seem to be doing okay. It requires extreme discipline and a lot of thought to implement it properly without causing a revolt.
At June, we believe that our rating system will allow the candidates and recruiters to play fairly with each other and ensure that the candidates’ best interest is kept in mind.
3) NO SINGLE DATABASE OF OPEN POSITIONS
I’m starting to think I’m asking for too much. Just close your eyes for 10 seconds and imagine a world where all open positions for every company in the world were in one single place, and every time somebody wanted to apply to a position, they could do so with just one click.
In that system we could see the status of our applications and job notes in real time, and the recruiter would follow up with you daily to give you an updated status.
I’m asking for too much. I know it.
For now it’s a pipe dream but I do believe one day we’ll get there.
4) JOB APPLICATIONS ARE STILL MISERABLE AND INEFFECTIVE
Have you ever been interested in a job based on a job description, then taken a quick look at all of the fields on the job application website and convinced yourself that being homeless isn’t as bad as everyone thinks it is?
Yes, LinkedIn and other sites have made the process easier, but their are still a bunch of job postings out there where you’re asked to recite every single aspect of your life for a job application they probably aren’t going to read in the first place.
Here is a great quote from Liz Ryan from a Forbes article that she wrote:
“I took about an hour and a half to fill out the online job application. I hit the SUBMIT button at nine-fifteen last night and sat down to watch TV. Before I went to bed around eleven, I checked my email, and sure enough there was a response from the company I had just applied to. It was one of those auto-responder messages.
“It said ‘Thank you for your application for the Technical Project Manager job. Unfortunately, your background is not a match for our requirements. We will be sure to let you know about other openings that are closer to your area of expertise.’”
The system is broken.
What’s the solution?
The solution will be a system that incents candidates, recruiters and clients to look carefully at every job application submitted. This means that the applications submitted should only be allowed if they systematically match the job requirements. Of course, that opens up a whole bag of worms as well in terms of what defines “qualified,” but I believe that this is the first step.
5) RESUMES ARE AS USEFUL AS FAX MACHINES
The resume should have died at the same time AOL stopped reproducing those 7,000 hours free CDs.
This is one area where I think LinkedIn is right on the money. It is no longer useful to tell everyone your experience; it is mandatory that you SHOW them your experience.
Don’t tell me you have 6 years of experience in Javascript. SHOW me that you have 6 years of experience. SHOW me your github profile. SHOW me the cool projects that you’ve created. SHOW me the framework that you built from scratch.
Resumes are all about telling and not showing.
That’s why the resume always skipped show-and-tell day at grammar school. Sorry, bad joke.
Resumes still serve their purpose, but I do believe that the traditional resume will eventually disappear.
6) NO TIMELINE / MISSED TIMELINE
This is probably the hardest thing for a job searcher to handle.
You ask the question, “When are you looking to hire this person?” Nine times out of ten the answer is, “Yesterday.”
Two months later they still haven’t made a decision on moving forward.
I also think there’s a massive conspiracy to have recruiters say that the decision maker is away on vacation when you need her the most.
7) THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS A BLACK BOX
“Hi John, following up on my job application. Let me know if there is anything you need from me.”
How many types have you typed a variation of that sentence? It makes me sick to my stomach.
I wish we could just type how we really feel.
“Hey, A**hole John. You said that you liked me and needed to fill this position yesterday. You went from responding to my emails immediately to falling off the face of the earth. Where in the world did you go?”
Candidates are left in the dark day in and day out.
8) CANDIDATE AND RECRUITER RESPONSE RATES ARE LOW
This is one area where both candidates and recruiters are not happy.
In-demand candidates get a LOT of emails and phone calls from recruiters looking to fill positions. Because of this, candidates ignore recruiter emails like the plague. Their biggest concern is whether the recruiter has their best interest in mind and is actually qualified to speak intelligently about the position they’re calling about.
Hiring managers and recruiters also get a lot of emails from candidates looking for gigs, and the same issue exists for them. Candidates are often nowhere near qualified to be applying to the open position.
HOW DO WE FIX THIS?
These problems can’t be fixed all at once, but at June we think we’ve built the right foundation to solve most, if not all of these problems.
June is a platform that connects elite talent with elite recruiters. Talented people get paid for listening to recruiters make a 15-minute pitch on a job requirement.
The first problem we’re solving is accountability. We believe that all parties have a duty to be respectful to each other, and that means responding to emails, being transparent about salary and being fully transparent about what is happening behind the scenes.
Don’t get on another broken rollercoaster. Instead, Join June and get paid to talk to the best recruiters in the world.
