Article: Candidates Are Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt.
This is a good article to read. It speaks truth the chaotic cycle of recruiting.
Here are some of the biggest problems in recruiting, and recommendations for fixing them:
Job ads are ridiculous. They list endless "Essential Requirements" that few if any living people possess. To fix job ads, HR people who know the talent market should make sure that job ads are realistic and that the jobs they're hiring for pay the right amount. No job ad should ever be published unless it's based in reality. Every job ad should have a salary range in it.
Job ads are written as though their principal aim is to keep people from applying (in case they're not perfectly qualified)! Anybody who posts a job ad that refers to The Selected Candidate -- addressing prospective candidates in the third person as if to signal to them "The selected candidate couldn't possibly be you!" should not be writing job ads. The way we "invite" candidates into the hiring process is repulsive. We make them fill out online job applications loaded up with warnings about leaving any field blank or misrepresenting any tiny detail. In short, we treat job applicants like criminals. Your application process is a window to your corporate soul. To fix this enormous problem, we need to move away from Applicant Tracking Systems as a screening tool, and evaluate resumes and LinkedIn profiles instead. The way we treat candidates in the pipeline is disgraceful. Fearful HR leaders hide behind pointless and insulting pre-employment tests and questionnaires instead of reaching out and engaging with real people who could help the company thrive.
To fix the candidate-neglect-in-the-pipeline problem, every company needs to examine its recruiting process from the candidate's point of view. There are unexplained and unacceptable gaps, delays and talent-repelling steps in nearly every corporate and institutional hiring pipeline. Find and eliminate the roadblocks in yours! The way we communicate with candidates during their recruiting process is horrible. We would never treat a customer, vendor or friend of the company as badly as we treat candidates every day. We make them wait weeks between communications. We send them terse email messages with new instructions to follow and no encouragement that their efforts will be worthwhile.
To fix this problem, we need to examine our candidate communications and stop assuming that talented people will wait forever while we slog through the thousands of bureaucratic steps in our outdated recruiting systems.
Recruiting is easily the most broken corporate practice (with performance review a close second). It is shameful how badly most medium-sized and large employers treat the talented people who apply for jobs with them. If managers don't get the message, their competitors will leave them in the dust.
It's time for employers to wake up and smell the new-millennium talent market coffee. Unemployment is down. Talented candidates won't tolerate being treated like dirt anymore. Can we blame them?
Looks like common courtesy and professionalism are also bringing down the quality of the candidates experience. Ivory just posted a bad phone experience with a recruiter on her conversation Discrimination by recruiter. What do you think... is this behavior due to lack of training in the Human Resource department or flat out Unprofessionalism?
I agree that the ATS isn't "fair" asking with the profiling assessments. This triggers applicants to answer the questions in a manner that they believe the company wants to see and ends disqualifying them in the end-thus marking them as a toss out. Leaving candidates wondering why they never get a call back from the employer.
Hi Veronica, I agree! These are some serious issues currently affecting the hiring process and common pain points for applicants. I've heard from more than one Human Resource contact mention that many of the job descriptions found online are outdated and not inline with the realistic needs the company's looking to fill. This has been going on for some time but I don't see a fix happening in the near future unfortunately. The Application Tracking System, ATS doesn't make it any easier for job candidates either.
I think many of the fixes you suggest are on point and doable at companies who have a need for workers. Careful Strategizing is key in order to be successful in todays employment community. The spray and pray online application process simply does not work. Anyway, cool stuff on here. Thanks for Sharing!
Way to say it girl!!!!
I really think it's about time employers get to think they were once employees and they say "do unto others what you want other to do unto you"