Want to Make Great Hires? Kill These Obnoxious Recruiting Practices!
Years ago we used to hear "Staple yourself to an order!" It means "Pretend you are trying to buy from your own company. See what that process is like from the customer's point of view!"
You learn a lot when you staple yourself to an order. You see what your customers see -- pointless delays, extra steps that don't help the customer, and other client-repelling problems in your sales order process.
Imagine what would happen if you stapled yourself to a job application, instead! Then you'd really get an education.
You'd see the pointless delays, bureaucratic logjams and technology glitches that plague anyone who applies for a job with your company.
You'd see something much worse, too! If you stapled yourself to a job application you'd see the petty and insulting way your company speaks to, ignores and puts down the awesome people who've stepped up and offered to join your team!
You'd be ashamed, and that would be a very healthy and appropriate reaction, because the state of recruiting is shameful.
Most medium-sized and large employers drive away much more talent than they reel in.
Here are instructions for stomping out five of the most obnoxious recruiting practices in your organization.
Getting rid of even one of these insulting practices will make your recruiting task much easier. Nuking all five of them will make it easy to hire great people -- the way Mother Nature intended!
Stop Writing Talent-Repelling Job Ads
Why would you write a job ad in such a way that it insults the job-seekers who read it?
Job ads with verbiage like "The Successful Candidates will possess..." talk right past your reader in a way that suggests that whoever the Successful Candidate turns out to be, it won't be their sorry ass!
Talk to your candidates in a human voice. Use a conversational tone in your job ads and tell us what's interesting about the job - not the ten thousand requirements you hope your imaginary super-hero new hire will bring with him or her.
And for God's sake, tell us the salary range! Otherwise you're wasting your time, and ours - and that's rude.
Nuke the Applicant Tracking System - or Humanize It, at Least
If you can't get rid of your brainless, lumbering, archaic Applicant Tracking System in 2016 because no one has figured out how to replace the beast, at least friendly it up with kind words and human encouragement instead of finger-wagging admonitions like these on every page:
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Applications left incomplete will not be processed.
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Any field left blank will subject the applicant to immediate disqualification.
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You suck, and we barely have time to read your application even if it's perfect, so watch yourself!
Why should applying for a job with your company feel like paying a traffic ticket online? The more human your application process is, the more interesting people you'll attract - isn't that obvious?
Tell Me If You Want to Interview Me, or Leave Me to Live My Life
There is no excuse for leaving a job applicant to languish after he or she has completed a job application in response to a job ad you posted - especially if the job ad included a deadline.
You owe an answer to everyone who took the time to inquire about a job with you, whether you intend to interview them or not.
Give up on the namby-pamby "If we want to talk to you, we'll call - we really can't say right now" auto-responders and make a decision about each candidate - yes or no.
Let the no-thanks candidates off the hook and get the people you want to interview into your building quickly, within two weeks.
What higher priority do you have than filling open positions?
Interview Candidates Like Humans Do
The canned interview script and the check-box interview protocol are holdovers from the Machine Age. They have no place in today's Knowledge Economy and you embarrass yourself by sticking with them.
If you don't know how to interview people while looking them in the face and chatting with them in the manner of humans everywhere, ask someone for help.
Don't hide behind your weenie clipboard. Don't expect good people to sign up for interviews at your company when you treat job-seekers like pieces of meat.
Don't Lowball People Just in Case They've Been Living in a Cave for the Past Decade and Don't Know their Value
Cheapskate managers say things like this: "I'm going to offer Tony the job at forty-five kay, just in case he accepts!"
Tony told you early in your four-month-long recruiting process that he needs sixty-two thousand dollars per year to consider your offer.
That's what his living expenses cost him. What's he supposed to do - take your job offer at forty-five kay and immediately pick up a bartending job on the side?
I hired thousands of people and I can count on one hand the number of people who declined our job offers. Why is that? It's because our job offers were fair.
Do you really want to save a few thousand dollars a year on salary and lose out on the talent your hiring ecosystem offers -- or keep your employees distracted from their work worrying about how to make ends meet?
Employers who delude themselves that they have the upper hand in the employment equation will slide into unprofitability and failure one disappointed new hire at a time.
If you're reading this and you work in a company that treats job-seekers like dirt, leave this article lying around (and make sure the colorful dancing weenies are visible!).
Talk about the state of your recruiting system every chance you get, whether you work in HR or not. Everybody suffers when an organization's recruiting practices fall behind the times.
You and your co-workers waiting for help, your customers and the job-seeking community around you all deserve better. None of the steps I've recommended costs money. You can begin humanizing your recruiting process today!
Want to talk LIVE with Liz Ryan about your career situation? Call in to Lindsay Woods' Tuesday Talk Show TONIGHT, Tuesday, August 25th and chat with Liz Ryan on the radio! Here are the details!
Questions and Answers
Where can I see an example of a Human-Voiced Job Ad?
The recruiting process in my company is definitely guilty of some of these. How can I learn how to recruit in a more human way?
Reach us with your questions here!
Project Manager at Jacobs
6yIt's frustrating when you have to retype the same information in an on-line application that is already in your resume and reference list you're uploading. It can take 1-2 hours to apply for one job that you hope will not go into a black hole. There are some higher education institutes and government jobs that want a recent reference letter as well as college transcripts just to apply. Seriously... many great candidates will stop right there and go on to another job listing.
Editor & Non-Profit Founder/Advocate
7yATS are actually getting a lot more personalized! Recruitee (https://recruitee.com), for example, allows complete customization of the hiring process. It actually BENEFITS the candidate experience. I do agree that you should get rid of your clunky ATS, but getting rid of recruitment tools altogether is a mistake!
Helping to restore the body's capacity for self-healing by treating root causes
7yTerrific, straightforward article, Liz. You have nailed exactly what job seekers are dealing with! I know, I had to endure that after being laid off and in the job market. Thank you for your boldness and plain-English article.
In search of new opportunities
7yThank you Liz! Great post!
Great article is current to a recent experience. After a half hour of "Why should we hire you?", I asked " What makes you the employer of choice in this county"? Why does everyone around want to come here and work? They were taken aback and could only respond about the new machinery they were putting in. There was no thought about the candidate's perception.