Go Apply Online . .

Those words are the bane of any job seeker who has taken the time, effort and plucked up the courage to call an employer directly to genuinely talk about a role. Too often these efforts are met with stiff resistance by an unknowing gate keeper, inexperienced recruiter or stressed out HR manager. What they have failed to realise is that person on the other end of the line, could very well be your most competitive candidate, and you have asked them to (sometimes rudely), join the rest of the pile.

As a business owner, you would like to attract the best people and the best people tend to be proactive, and take an extra step in order to secure a role. By making that phone call, they are pitching themselves above the competition and asking for your attention. Why? Because they have something to say, they have researched your company, your role requirements, possibly have some ideas to discuss and genuine questions to ask you. And instead you have asked them to apply on Seek — and go join the rest of the pack who simply click a button and hope for a response.

Of course, no one is willing to receive a barrage of phone calls from every Tom, Dick and Harry looking for work, but this is where the quality of your job ad plays to attract your ideal candidate. Include enough details in your description to deter time wasters, and interest your target candidate. They do not call unless they are willing to discuss the intricacies of the role.

Our reliance on technology has taken away the human element to the job search process. From a time where you could walk up to your local factory, have a chat with the manager and start a job tomorrow. This process has turned into, going to your local factory, being redirected to another company, who will ask for your identification, licenses, tickets, birth certificate, passport, and all other forms of proof of existence on this planet. Followed by a barrage of interviews to assess your suitability, to place tooth picks into box, and a psychometric assessment to judge your motivation to perform this role for the next 25 years. You will then be told that you are no longer suitable because the role has been filled by another agency.

Just imagine the process job seekers have to go through to source a job in this modern world, when they are not computer literate, having come from a working class background, poor and went straight into blue collar work to sustain their families. Or cannot pass an interview because from the moment they arrived in Australia, the agency that was supposed to be servicing them never had the funding from the Govt to do anything apart from ticking the box at every appointment.

We are living in a world where the marginal point of utility for technology is passing the bell curve and this applies heavily to the hiring process. You are no longer allowed to make any human interaction with those who are making decisions. You must follow a strict and regimented process designed by someone who has never worked in the role they are hiring for. What this leads to is a highly inefficient recruitment model, where you do not attract the right applicants, the duration of recruitment takes far too long and the wrong people get hired.

There are of course recruiters, HR Managers and hiring managers who do the right thing, and allow these chains to be broken, and the communication to flow through. But I speak to all of you gate keepers who maintain these barriers, you are one of the primary reasons why there is unemployment in this country (Australia).

We cannot change our current model yet, but the least we can do is acknowledge that our system is not perfect, there are flaws and realise that that one day, it could be you on the other end of the line!