Time are a Changin' – are you?
So things are picking up and people are hiring – you can see it everywhere if you look hard enough! The Help Wanted signs are starting to go up, the online job boards are picking up and the economy is slowing starting to chug along.
Companies are excited – “Now that we are hiring we’ll just throw our job up on Hcareers and we will have dozens of great people to choose from.” It’s that easy – or is it.
What you are probably learning is that all of those great candidates for your middle management positions already have jobs and are not apply to yours. But I bet you are getting a lot of international applicants, people who you consider over qualified and people with no experience in your market sector. If you are looking for resumes you are probably getting a lot of them. If you are looking for qualified people, well… not so much.
The truth is that most candidates are as frustrated with the job boards as you are! The people you are trying to catch with your online ad are now swimming in another pool. The online job boards have been so abused by companies and applicants that both sides have lost confidence. Most companies are posting because they don’t know what else to do or where else to go. Candidates are leaving in droves and trying other avenues because they too are frustrated at the inefficiency of the system.
Believe me I know. I cruise these job boards daily and I am frustrated with what I am finding. Virtually 50-60% of all of the people posting their resumes on the job boards are what I call “regular users.” This means that they have posted their resume and/or consistently post their resume. Just to put this in perspective – if 100 people post their resume today, I will have 50-60 of them in my database already. I would bet you are seeing the same things with your job posting, familiar names applying time and time again.
I have been talking about how to change the system, make it better for everyone, educate employers on what the expectation of the applicant are and where to find them for the past several months. But sadly there seems to be resistance to the fact that things HAVE changedand are changing daily. If you don’t except it you will continue to have trouble recruiting – that is a fact!
I applaud the companies that have kept informed about what is going on out there and have adapted or changed their systems to be current and attract talent. You know who you are and good for you. I can only hope that the movement catches on everyone starts to take the steps required to attract and maintain talent!
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I know several managers in the hotel idustry and thier biggest complaint about finding qualified candidates is thier own internal HR department.
In many cases they feel that the staff in HR are largely unqualified for their positions and thus rely on the “system” to find candidates. The result, these managers are feeling, is that they system seems to weed out the good candidates and catches the ones they aren’t particularily keen on.
Also, from my own opinion I think that if a hotel wants a good candidate they need to take more of a sales approach to finding them. If you want great candidates, they generally don’t come to you, and the company needs to sell it’s benefits to attract them.
Just my 2 cents.
Great insight and another “drum I have been beating.” I don’t want to comment on a particular position but in most cases it is the system that is broken. I hear too often that “we have forwarded the resume to the department head or manager and are waiting to hear back.” When they do hear back – the candidate is gone! The truth is you have 5 days to respond or you are damaging your chances of hiring the individual and your reputation.
The other side of this argument is that managers put WAY too much value on the resume. Can you really judge a persons ability to do thier job and fit in with your team by words written on paper?
Corey, Im finding that these days you get called in for multiple interviews and then employers say that they will ‘call you by the end of the week’… and that NEVER happens. this really makes the employer look bad.
Thanks for the comment. I agree and so would most employers. What I ahve learned is that it can really effect your candidate pool for future opening. Approx 40% of people who never get called back will never re-apply either. Who can afford to lose 40% of thier applicants.
Even thought you may not be the right fit now – you may be in the future and it is important to maintain those relationships!