I’ve just come from meeting a potential candidate for a role. Nothing unusual in that, I do it several times a week and it’s a part of the job I love best. This one was an impressive corporate affairs professional, with experience across multiple sectors and within several African countries, someone who wanted to make an impact in her next role and join an organisation whose values were aligned with her own. She had found her previous roles through recruiters and headhunters but had been alerted in the past month or so to a couple of interesting roles which were advertised by the companies directly, online. So, she had thrown her hat in the ring, twice, and the experience had left her disappointed and disheartened. In good faith she dutifully went through the five steps of the one-size-fits-all application process, filling out forms and divulging various bits of personal information, attaching her CV – and flinging it into a bottomless black hole. That was that – she heard nothing from either company. We joked together that there is a very large black hole somewhere in space in which millions of unread and un-responded to CVs float in a tortured, forgotten spiral.
The issue is a serious one, however, and this is a story I have heard more times than I can remember over the past ten years. For all the advancements and disruptions in recruitment technology and systems, talent acquisition and retention, some things, it would seem, just never change.
The search for talent is in a state of transition, this much we know. AI and algorithms, robots, chat bots and sophisticated screening tools are used to filter the thousands of CVs submitted to hiring companies. All well and good where these are used for high-volume positions, such as graduate programmes where candidates without the requisite skills and qualifications can be quickly filtered out. But there is something gravely wrong with a system or an approach which not only overlooks talent but actively damages its own reputation in doing so.
I know of many instances where companies have missed out on great candidates, like the one I met today, who have applied directly to companies for particular roles. They may receive an automated email acknowledging receipt of their application but after that… nothing. Those candidates are unlikely to bother with those companies again. They will come away from that experience with an impression of that organisation as unresponsive and disorganised – a company that places little value not just in its people but in its potential people. And they will spread that negative message far and wide. Books have been written about the changing world of work and how companies align themselves with the expectations of the millennials and Gen Z in order to secure the best talent ie. those with the most sought after skills for the jobs of the future. There are plenty of companies for job-seekers at all levels to choose from so the message as far as I can see it is a simple one: treat people decently. Respond to them, however briefly. Give them a time frame by when they may or may not hear from you. If you invite them in for an interview and they don’t make the cut for a subsequent meeting, have the decency to tell them why – it’s invaluable to a candidate to know why they weren’t right for a position and how they presented in an interview. Give feedback at every stage and preferably not three weeks later. Leave them with a positive experience – as we all know, what people say about your organisation is a key constituent of brand management.
Hiring the right people is difficult and time consuming so CHROs, HRDs, Talent Acquisition Teams take note: recruiters are not the enemy and we should not be pulled in to a process as a last resort when all else has failed. There is enormous value in a partnership with a recruiter or search consultant who has spent time in a business getting to know the hiring managers, the HR Directors and management team, who has a keen understanding of the culture of an organisation and the kinds of people who do well there and critically, who can broker introductions between a client and a prospective candidate before someone else snaps them up.
I will be immensely pleased and proud if I place the candidate I met with today in her new role, in a company whose values align with hers and where she can make an impact. It won’t be with either of the companies she applied to directly though – they’ve been firmly struck off her list.
