We Have Really Blown It
I know this topic has been written about and talked about endlessly over the past few years, but I think it is time to examine it again as it is the most voiced issue within recruiting today.
We have failed miserably to connect to and communicate with candidates effectively. The Talent Board and competitions like the CandE awards have worked hard to encourage and assist organizations in improving the candidate experience. Yet, despite this and with numerous tools to help, candidates’ complaints and dissatisfaction with the entire recruiting process are growing.
Candidates are disappointed in the lack of meaningful responses from most recruiting departments if they get any at all. Job postings are inaccurate and often downright misleading. Selection criteria are obtuse. And career sites are often poorly designed and generic.
Recruiters, especially in large organizations, often have no personal contact with candidates unless they are selected for an interview. And after the interviews, candidatures are usually kept in the dark about their status. Candidates also find that recruiters often cannot answer their questions because they have no deep knowledge about the positions. Feedback is elusive and, when given, generic and meaningless.
Our technology allows too many resumes and candidate inquiries to flood our backend recruiting processes and overwhelm recruiters. To some degree, technology has actually made the way we treat candidates worse than it was in the paper resume era. Because of the pressures created by quantities of resumes and poor use of technology to screen for skills, we neglect and miss important candidates and often spend precious time with candidates who do not meet our needs. We search the Internet for candidates when we have the very person we need in our database but cannot extract from hundreds of others. We pay for research when we have rich veins of information and data untapped in these same databases.
Relationships are the foundation of every business. Shopkeepers and salespeople go to great lengths to satisfy their customers, have a sense of their likes and dislikes, tailor products and services specifically for them, and use technology to build and enhance their relationships. Corporate sales functions utilize sophisticated tools to market to customers, communicate with them, and analyze their responses to campaigns and messaging.
I will grant that recruiting is different from the typical sales function. We are not usually counting on return candidates/customers, nor do we have candidates who have long-lasting relationships with us. We are in a transactional business of placing a candidate in a specific position and, once placed, having no additional contact. This is more akin to online sales of one-off software, an app for our phone, or a product purchased only once.
But, if we look at the most successful of these firms, they go to great lengths to woo you to buy. They use data to determine which messages will most likely get you interested. If you ask for more information or explore the product or service by clicking through their website, they follow up, often relentlessly, until you put their messages in your spam box or buy their product. Their sites offer demos and free trials and often have extensive videos explaining the product and its benefits. We can achieve a better relationship with candidates by learning more from both sales and marketing functions and using our technologies more effectively. ChatGPT and other AI tools are opening avenues of communication that have never been possible.
Most recruiters agree that the better you know a candidate, the better your decision will be about that candidate’s skills, cultural fit, and abilities. We all realize that everyone has different interests, skills, and uniqueness, most of which will not be found in a resume and often not in an interview.
It is also true that the more you communicate with a candidate, the more you learn about them, and they learn about you and your organization. One reason candidates other employees have referred are perceived as better is that the referring employee recognizes the person’s traits and skills because of their relationship.
The level of possible personalization has grown with the appearance of ChatGPT and the integration of AI into the tools we use for search, screening, assessment, and engagement. The diagram below shows the elements that might make up an increasingly personal and effective recruiting process.
Stay tuned for Part II. Next week I will lay out a more detailed strategy for arriving at the highest level of reasonable personalization today.
Unless we find ways to make finding and getting a job friendlier, more accessible, and more satisfying, we will lose many highly talented people to the contractor and consultant workforce.
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If you are looking for guidance or help in becoming a more strategic leader, we may be able to help. For the past twenty-five years, I have been helping recruitment leaders in major corporations, non-profits, and NGOs to redesign, improve, or transform their talent acquisition functions. I work with you as a partner to assess and improve your processes, find and remove constraints, create more engaging career sites, and choose the most useful and relevant technology. I will work with you as a coach, mentor, or consultant – whichever meets your needs. I have only one goal – to make recruiting strategic and pertinent to your organization. Let me know if I can help. Send me an email at kwheeler@futureoftalent.org.
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