Recruiting done badly
If you’ve been around the Israeli hi-tech scene recently, you’ve heard many talks about the lack of great people. This can be simply seen as companies are straggling to recruit and retain great talent. Truth to be told, companies are straggling to recruit and retain even mediocre talent. Based on official estimations we lack between 7,000–10,000 employees in the industry.
There are many opinions to what we need to do as an industry, employers and even the government. However, I wanted to share with you the following story that I’ve recently heard and emphasizes some employers’ ridiculous behaviors at the current situation.
A company, I was told, is seeking for a product manger. It’s seeking for this role for more than a year now (>1 year). A product manager isn’t a tough position to recruit. The demand is low and the supply is high. There are plenty of good candidates to recruit from. However this company struggles to hire because it claims the (many-many) candidates it has interviewed lack its’ “special DNA”.
Seeking for more than 1 year, doesn’t make your DNA unique — it makes your DNA incompetent:
a) Maybe the role isn’t needed at all? If you are whining about unsuccessful recruitment on one hand, but don’t actively recruit on another hand, I seriously question the need for this role.
b) If the role is needed, then how you succeed in meeting your business objectives, without recruiting for the role for more than 1 year?
c) Are you truly seeking for this role? Have you really interviewed many tens of candidates (the real number will stay with me for now) over the last year?
d) I find it hard to believe that NOBODY met your “unique DNA”. It means that you are searching for impossible.
e) More than that, it means you don’t understand what is the DNA about…
The company’s culture and DNA are important. All the great places will have cultures/DNA to help them to meet their business objectives. And no, you don’t need to accept mediocre or bad candidates. More than that, you don’t need to accept candidates that won’t or can’t fit your culture/DNA.
The difference is though, that candidates that can meet your DNA (but don’t meet it now) are exactly the candidates that fit you! These are the candidates that with the proper training and mentoring will be the right hires for your company.
I find the story of this company absurd. it’s hard to believe that a company doesn’t succeed in finding a candidate for a standard role for such a long period, which with a proper training and mentoring won’t meet their “unique” culture/DNA.
My suggestion is to stop whining about the lack of candidates — it sounds that there is plenty of time to do it badly over and over again, but really no time to do the recruitment in the right way.
In this case, recruit a good potential and invest in training and mentorship to “create” the perfect employee that fits your DNA.
