Blaming Covid and/or Brexit is no longer an acceptable excuse for a shocking hiring experience.
Andrew Grier
HR & Talent Projects Leadership | Talent Acquisition | Strategy | Transformation | Change Management | RL100
I’m on a job hunt and I work in Talent Acquisition, so when I search and apply for role’s I like to use the insight and experience to better understand the candidate perspective of what good hiring looks like.
From a candidates view now, I’m discovering that in my career to date I haven’t seen such a mess… there’re huge gaps in the hiring experience in all sizes of business, from total excellence to complete ghosting, inconsistent nonsense, and varying OK’ishness in between.
If you’re in a position of responsibility regarding recruitment in your business please take heed, you need to act now!
Time is moving, fix things or be left even further behind, not just in the competition for talent but also in the minds of the people you wish to attract; folks remember how you made them feel.
I’ve heard comments about being ‘caught out with new, larger volumes of applicants’ – I’ve said it before myself by way of empathy for the pain of some I know! That’s now an outdated excuse. Whilst ‘caught out’ shows lack of preparedness, if you’ve done nothing yet to fix that issue… why?
Some internal TA teams have been decimated to point of being unable to deliver good service to their candidates or hiring managers, and to some extent (this time last year) I got it. If you’re not hiring why hold onto your hirer’s? The twist in that strategy however now seems to be a bitter one for some orgs, with hiring cash costs kicking back in and outweighing the saving of reduced internal headcount – false economy.
Maybe not everyone believes they can afford the resources to be ready for such unexpected events like a pandemic and Brexit may still be considered a tad chaotic? No!, that's just another false economy. My personal view is that even just semi-prepared means the chances are the real cost would be/could've been less. There has been time to think and plan. All of this started a long time ago and having done nothing yet to adapt and improve now appears uncaring, lazy, or even incompetent; it’s definitely going to be expensive.
Blaming Covid and/or Brexit is no longer an acceptable excuse. If your TA capability is dysfunctional it’s because you’ve never invested the effort or repurposed budget appropriately. You don’t need to spend more to be better, you just need to know how to be better and to apply that knowledge. Trust your TA experts, listen, debate, understand and work with them.
Good hiring experience’s and people engagement needs to be central to your strategy and business DNA. It will always benefit your purse.
Happy to hear your thoughts...
Elevating and promoting a quality candidate experience around the world.
4 年I wholeheartedly agree, Andrew. And it's no easy task, sustaining a positive and fair candidate experience, especially for companies with any hiring volume. Making initial incremental improvements to communication and feedback loops can be readily done by any company and should be readily done. We see that every in the Talent Board CandE Benchmark Research program, and positive experience impact the business and the brand positively with rejected candidates (which is 90+% for any given job on average) being more willing to apply again, refer others and make purchases for consumer-based companies. Sustaining it is another story. I'm not making excuses for any company, because there are always business impacts that change the recruiting and hiring landscape (M&A activity, downturns, changes on the leadership team, a pandemic, Brexit, etc.), and consistent communication and fairness can be ensured no matter what. Also, providing a fair candidate experience isn't about happy, because happy only happens when you're hired -- again, it's about clear, definitive communication and closure.
Seeking interim or perm Senior Ta Opportunities / Head of Talent Acquisition and People / Speaker / Music Events ?? - RL100 Member / IHR TA Ambassador & Judge | ED&I and Neurodiversity Champion??
4 年If we can all take one thing from this pandemic, is to keep note of these experiences and don't let go of them. There's nothing more important than the candidate experience during the hiring process. I work in healthcare, which is one of the busiest sectors for recruitment right now. I will do my best to respond to every email, linkedin message, pigeon. Because something is better than nothing.
President @Center for AI & Digital Policy | Founder @AIethicist.org | CFR-Hitachi Fellow | Lifetime Achievement Award - Women in AI of the Year | 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics | Lecturer @University of Michigan
4 年Kevin W. Grossman, TAS, HCS Dave Mekelburg
Ghosting is the greatest insult. One multinational interviewed me back in November, Round 1 seemed ok.. Even though the interviewer didn't sort out their IT issues before starting, so 10 mins wasted while they tried to fix their web cam.. Post discussion I was requested to do some psychometric testing. Well they said psychometric but most of it was similar to the MENSA IQ tests .. anyhow.. tests all done, round 1 completed.. guess I didn't get the job as they launched a new advert for it this week. A "not for us" communication would have been nice but nada nothing.
Global Operations Director Talent Acquisition - MACE
4 年I’m sorry to say my experience has been very similar. Good luck with your search.