It's just the market we're in...

As a leader I’ve always been in a never ending pursuit for simplicity. It’s been my experience that too many things are over engineered, which introduces additional areas of potential failure. If I am suggesting a solution to your problem, I can assure you that my answer will include no more steps than are necessary to achieve the goal.

That’s part of what’s been so frustrating about this job search.

I understand my position in this world. I’m looking for lower, middle-management type roles. That’s like a half step above night shift manager at Subway. No shade to the hard working sandwich artists who may be reading this, I respect everyone’s hustle.

But all of this is to say that any role I’m applying for likely doesn’t need to have 5 rounds of pre interviews, 3 panel discussions, 2 take home assignments, and a romantic rose garden presentation with the CEO.

When people ask what my greatest strength is, it’s my ability to solve complex problems with ease. And this is exactly what one of those solutions looks like.

1 brief discussion with a recruiter. 1 full interview with a hiring manager. For director level roles, possibly one more discussion with a group of potential future colleagues. That’s it. It doesn’t need to be more complex than that.

Anything more is wasteful. How much money in salaries are you spending having all of those rounds of interviews with all of those people? And what purpose do all of those interviews serve? Do all of the people involved in that complex and convoluted process actually have any say in what the final decision is or is it more likely that the decision lies with one or a very small group of people? So why waste everyone’s time? And why waste the company’s money?

And what kind of logistical nightmare are you creating with all of those rounds of interviews? You have to reconcile the calendars of any number of staff, typically small groups of staff, which in turn lengthens the recruiting cycle, while also minimizing the number of candidates you can actually meet. So it takes longer to see fewer people. Another lose/lose.

I get it. Hiring the right staff is really important to the long term growth and success of your company. You spend a lot of money on wages and you want to ensure that you get proper value for your investment. All I’m suggesting is to spend fewer of those wages on interviewing prospective new hires if they don’t really add anything to the process or have any say in the outcome. Let those people earn their wages doing the job they’ve been hired to do and trust the judgement of the people you have hired to recruit new staff.

And maybe then we can all stop walking around telling each other “It’s just the job market” when the problems with the job market are ones that we’ve all engineered ourselves.