There’s something fundamentally wrong with the hiring system in the United States, and it has nothing (at least not everything) to do with COVID-19 or who is or isn’t sitting in the White House.
It’s much more basic than that.
Whether by design or happenstance—or perhaps due to both—much of the “human” element in human resources has disappeared over the past decade.
Here are several problems that plague the process, as well as ideas for improvement.
An over-reliance on technology.
Job boards like Career Builder, Indeed, LinkedIn, Monster, and ZipRecruiter have made it incredibly easy for employers to post—and job seekers to find and apply for—openings whenever and wherever they might be.
And therein lies the rub.
With what often amounts to hundreds of résumés flooding in for a single position, internal corporate recruiters and HR representatives typically spend less than a few seconds reviewing applications before making an initial judgement. Many submissions fail to even receive that much human engagement; instead, they’re fed through digital systems that automatically accept or reject submissions based on select keywords and software algorithms.
The applicants fortunate enough to make it past these initial gatekeepers can expect to engage in a protracted process that includes countless emails, pre-employment tests and questionnaires, perfunctory screening calls, and automated one-way video interviews.
Those who are really lucky will have a “personal” conversation with a hiring manager or HR representative via Zoom or another video conferencing system.
Only after a potential new hire has run a veritable gauntlet of electronic decision-making hurdles might he or she hope to be asked in for an in-person interview.
It’s a vicious cycle that leaves many qualified jobseekers discouraged, if not downright disgusted, while positions remain open for weeks to months on end.
A lack of reciprocity.
Few, if any, long-lasting personal relationships begin with one side making numerous demands of the other person’s time, attention or energy without giving an equal or greater amount of themselves in return.
When it comes to recruiting and vetting new employees, however, the vast majority of hiring managers forget that interviewing, recruiting, and hiring is tantamount to a courtship.
Instead, they grill candidates with questions about their background, interested only in what that person can bring to the company in terms of experience, results, and problem-solving.
Little, if any, time is spent making the case for what the job hunter might receive in return for his or her commitment to the organization, save for the three to five minutes reserved for questions at the end of an interview.
Consequently, many professional partnerships get off to a rocky start, some doomed to fail before they ever move past the honeymoon period.
Unrealistic expectations.
Quick question: If you were seriously in the market for a house and had a budget of $250,000, would you spend hour upon hour scouring online listings for homes priced at $500,000 and up?
Of course not. You’d be wasting your time and setting yourself up for disappointment. Unfortunately, many hiring managers approach the hiring process with these types of unrealistic expectations.
It isn’t uncommon for a job posting to include a laundry list of bulleted prerequisites and a position summary that reads like: “To be considered, candidate must have X years of experience with Y degree(s), Z professional accreditations, and X technical skills in Y industry located within an Z-mile drive of X city.”
Even if that unicorn exists and the company looking to fill the position somehow discovers him or her, they’re often only willing to pay a fraction of the person’s market rate compensation requirements.
And so the search drags on.
Countless qualified candidates are ignored, the position goes unfilled, resources are stretched thin, and the company fails to hit goals in certain areas. All because the hiring process began in pursuit of an outcome that was highly unlikely—if not downright impossible—to attain.
After more than a decade of interacting with the C-suite and senior sales and marketing leaders at hundreds of high-growth medical device, diagnostic, and technology companies, I’ve found there are several things that any organization looking to fill key positions can do to improve its chances of success.
They include:
Using technology judiciously.
Online boards are great for generating interest and getting résumés into the hiring funnel, but relying solely on technology to solicit and review applications virtually ensures qualified candidates will be overlooked.
So, too, does entrusting the entire prescreening endeavor to an inexperienced HR professional who doesn’t have an intimate knowledge of the job or is too overworked to dedicate the time needed to thoroughly vet candidates.
Truth is, no one (and certainly no software program) is better equipped to determine which applicants would fit a department’s culture than the hiring manager who’ll be overseeing the person who’s ultimately hired.
Combining the sophistication of technology with the practical experience of the appropriate hiring manager—and for critically important roles, the expertise of a trusted external recruiting business partner—can reduce the likelihood that worthy candidates slip through the cracks and go unnoticed.
Streamlining the application process.
Rather than insisting that jobseekers meet dozens of requirements and respond to a litany of questions before even being considered, pick three non-negotiable qualifications for the role you’re seeking to fill.
Then, as part of the pre-screening process, ask applicants to describe, in two sentences or less, how they satisfy these specific criteria. This exercise alone will cull many applications and eliminate the jobseekers who reply to most any type of posting, whether or not they have relevant experience.
Once you have a pool of applicants who meet your non-negotiables and provide the best answers to your questions, you can arrange live conversations, thereby bringing the human element back into the equation.
Hiring on potential.
It’s an art that has all but disappeared. However, identifying and selecting someone who may not check every box for a particular position but who has innate positive attributes that can’t be trained is a strategy whose time may have come—or, more appropriately, returned.
Sports of every ilk are littered with “can’t miss” athletes who have all of the physical gifts needed to excel yet lack the commitment and work ethic to achieve greatness. Consequently, they never reach their full potential, and the whole team suffers.
On the other hand, it isn’t hard to find lesser-skilled players whose drive, integrity, and professionalism more than compensate for their shortcomings in exact previous experience and skill set. These intangibles, coupled with a positive attitude and the ability to mesh with others, make them a great cultural fit for a team and, more often than not, help to propel the group to new heights.
The same principles apply in companies. When you hire for potential and other highly desirable personality qualities, the collective synergy of the individuals within the department and throughout the organization produces returns far greater than the sum of their parts.
It’s important to note that the strategies mentioned above apply primarily to active candidates, the men and women who, for a variety of reasons, are currently unemployed and/or are committed to finding a new job as soon as possible.
If you’re trying to attract passive candidates—those who are presently employed but would consider moving to a new company for the right opportunity—the process is even more nuanced. It also requires a different approach and, quite often, the help of an external third-party search partner to contact and recruit these high-caliber individuals on your company’s behalf.
Given the uncertainty generated by the pandemic, it’s hard to say what the future holds in terms of staffing, unemployment, and the national economic outlook.
One thing seems certain, though: Any company, regardless of the industry they’re in or what types of products and services they deliver, would do well to apply a few lessons from the past when it comes to hiring for the future.
Lee Kester is the CEO and founder of Kester Search Group LLC, a consultative talent acquisition firm that specializes in executive search and commercial expansion projects for diagnostic, medical device, and healthcare technology companies throughout the United States. He can be contacted via email at lee@kestersearch.com.
