Are Good Employees Hard to Find?

Since I was a little kid I've heard the phrase "Good help is hard to find" hundreds of times. What does it mean? Is it really hard to find good employees?

How could it possibly be hard to find good people? The unemployment rate is still higher than it could be. Talented folks are everywhere. Why would we ever hear employers complaining that they can't find people to hire? It doesn't make sense.

Yet everywhere you look, employers complain about talent shortages. They say it's hard to find good people. What's wrong with the people who are applying for their open positions now? Why is good help hard to find?

Here's why.

"Good help is hard to find" and its variations "We're being especially choosy" and "We're looking for a needle in a haystack" are tenets of the religion Employers Choose. That is a religion based on fear. When a hiring manager believes that he or she is the only person in the hiring equation who has an important decision to make (which one of these job applicants is worthy of my precious job opening?) then good help may indeed be hard to find.

It is often hard to find smart, capable and self-aware people who are also willing to grovel, beg and twist themselves into pretzel shapes in order to please a fearful hiring manager. It may be impossible to find a person like that.

Most job candidates who know what they bring to the equation aren't willing to wait weeks for a callback after an interview, comply with more and more fanciful requests and generally prostrate themselves to get a job.

Why should they? They have no reason to do that. They care as much about the environment they're stepping into as they care about getting the paycheck.

"Good help is hard to find" is the brainless bleat of a lousy manager or a fearful, beaten-down HR person. Your job as a job-seeker is to avoid people like that.

If you're an HR pro working in a place where the managers look down on job-seekers and insist that they crawl over piles of broken glass to get a job, it's time to speak up.

If you're a hiring manager in a talent-repelling shop like that, that advice goes for you too. You can't blame your silence on the environment, because everyone currently working there is part of the current problem and the future solution. Speak up and say "We make it too hard for people to apply for our jobs. We make it too hard for smart people to get through all the filters. That's hurting us!"

Good help is not hard to find. If open jobs go unfilled for more than 45 days, something is broken. That is a failure of management. There is no reason for a job ad to sit open that long.

Let's imagine a staff meeting at Acme Explosives. Chuck Jones, the CEO, is checking in with his direct reports on their progress pursuing the company's top initiatives.

CHUCK: So, Sally, how are things in HR?

SALLY: Not that great, Chuck. We have six job openings and no serious candidates on our radar screen for any of them.

CHUCK: How can that be?

SALLY: Good people are hard to find. We ran the ads, and a lot of people responded, but none of them are qualified.

CHUCK: We didn't know the market for talent? We didn't know where to find people, how to reel them in and keep them, or what?

SALLY: We put out our nets and there were lots of shrimps and crabs in the nets when we pulled them onto the boat, but no fish.

CHUCK: John, how are things in Sales?

JOHN: Not so great, Chuck. We've been working on Q2 sales goal, but people aren't buying.

CHUCK: Why's that?

JOHN: You got me, Chuck. We make sales calls, but people don't buy our stuff. We were blindsided by reality.

CHUCK: How are things in Marketing, Jonah?

JONAH: Gotta be honest, they could be better, Chuck. We launched our new stick dynamite product line in February, and like John said, the market isn't responding. Maybe the product is too expensive. I don't really know.

CHUCK: You don't know the market? You don't know what buyers want?

JONAH: Evidently not.

Do you see a pattern? Chuck's best move is to fire Sally, John and Jonah and then fire himself for keeping these three turkeys around as long as he did. It's everybody's job to know the market. Hiring managers have to know what it costs to get people to do the things they need to have done. They can't toss a job ad out into the void and then say "Wow, we didn't see anybody who met our spec."

It's their job to know in advance who's around and what it costs to get the backgrounds and experiences they're hiring for.

They can't say in their defense "I had no idea what was going on outside these company walls." HR is no different from sales and marketing.

HR is a sales and marketing job in the new millennium, in fact. It has been one for years, but too many organizations have been slow to notice that.

If an organization's recruiting focus is on screening people out, they're helping their competitors. If their focus is on reeling people in, making it easy to apply for jobs and paying enough to get the biggest fish before somebody else snags them, then they're helping themselves, their customers and their shareholders.

It is time to stop repeating the lie "It's hard to find good people." It's time to own up to our own shortcomings in the recruiting arena. If we can't fill our job openings quickly and enthusiastically, that's our own failing, not something to whine about.

I worked for U.S. Robotics from 1988 to 1997. We hired ten thousand people without a Black Hole recruiting portal. How did we do it? We ran job ads. Our employees, customers, vendors and friends sent us awesome new employees. We treated job applicants like valued collaborators.

We could tell in twenty minutes if we wanted to hire someone, and we could generally tell in forty-five seconds if we didn't. We hired people who were smart and game and human.

No one had to impress us, and if someone worked hard to impress us we were wary, unless they were twenty-one years old -- in which case we hired them and told them to relax and be themselves.

Good help is easy to find, and it's management's highest priority to find those people and get them on board as fast as possible. In my HRtopian vision, any job opening that goes unfilled for 45 days is put on hold while the hiring manager explains to his boss why he let such an important priority lapse.

If the boss agrees, the hiring manager gets a ten-day extension to right the wrong and make a job offer. After that, poof! The job opening disappears. You can try again next fiscal year, and if you do, please do your research first.

HR is in the middle of this problem, too, of course. HR people who stay silent when presented with delusional hiring specs and galley-slave pay rates are part of the problem.

Rise up and tell the truth, my HR brethren and sistren!

I used to tell hiring managers, lovingly, "Pull the needle out of your arm, and help me eliminate half these bullet points so I can run this job ad."

Real companies hire real people, and they do it fast. Every week and every step you add to your recruiting process drives excellent people away. The more marketable they are, the faster you will lose them when weeniefied bureaucracy gums up the system.

It's a new day in the talent market. Brilliant employees have the upper hand, always have and always will. If your organization can't see that, prepare for a long, slow (or fast) slide into oblivion, but if you can see it, rejoice! You're already way ahead in the talent game.

SONG OF THE DAY: DJ Khaled's "All I Do is Win"

Human Workplace Q & A

Hi Liz, I'm an HR Manager and I agree with you that our hiring process is a huge part of our recruiting problem. What are the steps for us to look at eliminating in our recruiting process, if we want to get more and better applicants?

Thanks,

Josee

Dear Josee,

Start with your job ads. Are they talent-repelling, bureaucratic things that read as though the job applicant is nothing, an ant, a flea? If your job ads read in the third person a la "The Selected Candidate will possess..." that's a big part of your problem. Put a human voice in your job ads! We can show you how to do that if you aren't sure.

Next, look at the Applicant Tracking System your job applicants must enter to apply for a job with you. Is it a simple and friendly process? If not, why not? There is no need for job-seekers to sit at a computer filling out forms for hours. That is stupid, because good people won't do it. Ask your ATS vendor what the drop-out or abandonment rate for your recruiting portal is. If it's more than ten percent, why is it so high? Your process is onerous, and the best people will be the first ones to bail.

We have lots more to say on this topic, but there isn't enough space here. Write to Michael and ask him about Recruiting with a Human Voice and Interviewing with a Human Voice, our two recruiting-related courses for HR folks and hiring managers. Have a terrific week Josee, and stay human!

Best

Liz

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