Take a leap of faith & hire these groups of people your ATS will likely miss out on
For decades now, the recruiting industry has been calling for a more critical review of the Applicant Tracking System and more fair ways of seeking out candidates. Over 75% of resumes are cut off by ATS that use keywords to sieve people out fast. With large volumes of applications being received for jobs, recruiters are faced with an ever-growing need to get the best talent in the shortest possible amount of time using limited resources. But at what talent cost?
Richard Branson on LinkedIn has previously stated how his company Virgin Atlantic has consciously picked out candidates who didn't 100% meet the criteria outlined in job ads e.g they continuously discard education nowadays in their selection process. And this trend is picking up slowly in the big valley with Google also ditching educational requirements as a Must-Have for their job ads.
As recruiters continue evaluating what works and doesn’t work in hiring, a lot of holes have been poked at job requirements. For instance, reports have shown women are less likely to apply for jobs unless they check off 100% of the job requirements. This has led some companies like Lever to change how they write job ads and the choice of words they use. Having a list of MUST HAVE requirements e.g. an MBA is a lazy way to screen candidates and your ATS will likely miss out on good people because of algorithms that just pick out keywords without adding a human touch to the process.
Wharton School Management Professor Peter Capelli recalls a story in his book, Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It, about a “company that had 25,000 applicants for a standard engineering position of whom the staffing people said no one was qualified.” Capelli himself experimented with applying anonymously for a job at his own company and failed to pass the screening process. Another large firm disguised the resumes of their top five engineers and put them through their own ATS screening process. Two of the five were screened out.
So apart from this clearly showing that your ATS could be doing you hiring injustice, it shows you have to use your human sense more and look further, including at groups you would not necessarily check out.
So who are some unlikely picks of candidates that could be the next best thing for your company but you’re overlooking?
Fresh Graduates & Interns
Fresh grads are buzzing with ideas and energy that some ol’ folk may not have after 20 years of experience. Do not shy away from people with zero experience except for internships. A human face will know that the number of job seekers surpasses by far the number of jobs available. It’s thus unfair to look at the previous experience as a must-have for an entry-level job. The key skill to look for at this stage is the willingness to learn and how fast the incumbent can learn and adapt. Everyone started from somewhere. For more on how to supercharge your internship program, read this.
Returnees
Does an employment gap mean something or it’s just a lazy way to weed out people? There are numerous reasons why someone could have a gap in their years including;
i. To pursue further education
ii. Personal reasons e.g taking care of an ill relative, overcoming a big life challenge eg accident
iii. Healthy break to re-energize and get new ideas
iv. Parenting i.e new parents, children's health issues, divorces
v. Job search because we all know how hard it can be to get a new job after retrenchment or redundancy
Do not be quick to dismiss this group of people. Give someone a chance to explain gaps in their resumes while focusing more on their attitude and strengths during the said period.
Veterans
Yap! Do you know that veterans possess a wide range of transferable skills that could be useful in the workplace? Veterans are taught among other things working with others, working under pressure, resource allocation, leadership, discipline, etc. It may just be one of the best life courses offered for free that you could tap into as an employer.
Boomerangs
Your former employees could be your best bet for an active pipeline or form very good referral networks. Referred candidates are 10X more likely to get hired compared to candidates from other sources, are up to 3X more likely to stay around, and come in 55% faster than those sourced through career sites. Who better to hire than a previous colleague? They already know the company culture and processes. They also possess new knowledge from working for other companies & industries that could prove valuable to you now. For more on this & how to get the most out of your alumni employees, read our latest piece here.
Which other groups of people do you feel recruiters are missing out on? Comment below.
Still looking for more? Check out https://medium.com/jobonics/how-to-hire-technical-talent-in-2018-part-1-sourcing-92f81d2d38c7
