Recruiting is broken. A humble look at the future.

Challenging the recruiting status quo.

Having experienced several recruiting processes as both applicant and hiring manager I strongly believe the way the world approaches recruiting is inefficient, time consuming, money wasting and non value creating. Yes, it’s been always like this and it’s fundamentally broken.

Here is a view on some basics and what I have to say on each side when it comes to the recruiting experience.

Why people choose to work for you?

One of the most important (barely reminded) reasons why hiring managers hire people is: to solve a problem.

During the hundreds of interviews I conducted over time my conclusion is that most people apply to jobs for reasons that rarely have to do with the need to solve a problem. People tend to go for status, class or monetary reasons like company name, job title or salary expectations.

In the current situation, hiring managers will seek to find someone to solve their problem while applicants will try everything to match job requirements even if they are not qualified. They will do anything possible to look good on paper. This objective miss alignment is not constructive, it’s nonsense and is defined on what I call the ‘White Noise of Recruiting’ (WNR), the always present spiral of half-truths, vague contexts, inaccurate facts, impersonal descriptions of jobs roles and applicants ‘telling’ experiences… all this forms part of the standing inefficient recruiting process.

On the other hand, it’s shocking to see so many articles and quotes from famous leaders asking you to connect what you love (passion) with your job to have a fulfilling life. Others even go further by stating “If you don’t love it (your job) you are going to give up”. How can hiring managers succeed acquiring highly skilled talent, better quality of hire and employee retention if they don’t manage to show people at first glance how meaningful it is to work for you?

As millennials are becoming the biggest generation in the US and start demanding for new job motivators, companies continue to invest on brand to attract talent, however there seems to be an increasing communication gap with this generation. The fact is that companies continue to fail on aligning what people love to do with the problems a company has to solve.

I hate CVs. Don’t you?

Applicants. Ever since I started working, the CV (curriculum vitae) has been the most important document for job seeking. This fact sheet explains were you have spent your time and ‘what you have been doing’ (in a wide stand of things). Normally is accompanied by a‘cover letter’, but sadly and according to the latests studies you would be lucky if someone will read it on the other side.

In my experience CVs cannot explain well what you are good at, nor what you are passionate about. Maybe because the last job you took was not something you really like? If you ended as a programmer in a bank you are likely to receive offers to work on the next bank. CVs tend to frame you by industry not by your problem solving skills/strengths.

CVs can tell many stories but in reality they cannot precisely demonstrate what you are capable of doing and at what level you operate. Many times I told myself… “I wish they would give me a chance to show what I am capable of”.- CVs help you becoming a ‘teller’ not a ‘doer’. When you are working and it comes to results you can differentiate from other ‘candidates’ for what you do, not what you tell.

In the world of recruiting applicants are obsessed over getting the right credentials and being able to tell how qualified you are on paper. Don’t you think that great story tellers have more chance to be called to an interview than hands on people? I never found that fair. We end up looking more at the format of things rather than the content itself.

Hiring managers. 200 is the average amount of CVs recruiters/hiring managers screen to find someone that could qualify for a job. At 3 minutes per CV you will end up with 10 hours of work and that’s just to get started. Most annoyingly many of the CVs I screen are full of buzz-words to match the job post, this makes even more difficult to understand who is the right candidate.

There is an interesting wave of companies that reduce WNR by collecting CVs of applicants first so they can match the companies after and send candidates job offers. In this way applicants cannot change the CVs to match buzz words from the job post. The other approach I’ve seen is the semantics one but they still have to qualify CVs containing imprecise/vague information. Both approaches are a step forward but I think we can do better than that.

Posting and applying for jobs is too EASY.

Applicants. I’ve found over the years that due to the lack of precision in the process, applying for jobs is an easy task. If I so wish, I can apply (send my CV) to jobs that I was never qualified for. But heck! don’t blame applicants! Most job posts are generic and lack information about the job so it seems to be ok to shoot CVs like a machine gun. All this inefficient communication is also part of WNR, due to the low barrier of entry everyone is capable of deciding personally if they qualify or not for a job. This leaves all the work on the company side to cut through the tremendous amount of noise.

Hiring managers. How about posting a job? As I mentioned most of the job posts generally lack differentiation, uniqueness and attractiveness. In fact I am pretty sure that if you grab 3 “Product Manager” job posts from 3 different companies you will find the requirements and job descriptions very similar to each other.

Last week I had an interview were I was sure 10 minutes into it that the candidate wasn’t going to make it. Did you ever experience something like that? This is again another symptom that the process is extremely inefficient. If a candidate was good enough to invite him/her on an interview, and was interviewed by two other colleagues previously, why did it last me 10 mins? Blame the WNR my friend.

A humble look at the future.

So for a better world of recruiting here is my wish list.

As an applicant:

• Job posts should allow me to detect talent in companies so I feel an urge to work for them. They should make me understand it’s meaningful work and I can make an impact.
• I want to compete for a role by showing my capability.
• Job posts must have enough information to know what the job will be about. And most important, I want to choose a job based on what I love to do.
• I want to be able to show my work portfolio with the stuff I’ve done, for example if I am a programmer I want to show my GitHub profile.
• I want to apply for a job where my CV is not the most important document.

As a hiring manager:

• I want to jump directly into my problem. Finding a candidate should be constructive towards a solution of my problem.
• I want the recruiting process to add value to the company.
• I want ‘Doers’ to be more prompt to apply than ‘tellers’.
• I want to detect applicant strengths at early stages of the process so my interviews are more productive.
• I don’t want to screen CVs as the initial step, no more wasting time and money.

At zealpath we work to solve all of the above. Our passionate team wants to bring the future of recruiting closer. Our mission is: to become the hiring managers’ most efficient people sourcing method by attracting candidates that seek jobs from their passion. Hire(d) Unconventionally.

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