Let's Build a Mountain! Step One: Don't be Unattractive

In 2022 I was laid off from a tech job just before layoffs became the cool thing to do. What followed was a year of job-searching hell that showed me that both traditional and trendy recruiting practices are as well suited to the current tech landscape as a cheap pool floatie is to river rapids. Companies aren't getting what they need, even with a glut of candidates on the market. Candidates can't land an interview, even with companies begging for talent.

It sucks for everyone and it doesn't have to. Join me for a boots-on-the-ground guide to navigating this mess.

Now that we know how to manage the mountain, it's time to build it so you can find your candidates. Or, rather, let's set up the right conditions for the mountain to build itself out of the best possible candidate pool.

The good news is this isn't rocket science:

1. Don't be unattractive.
2. Write a bulletproof, accurate job posting.
3. Offer thoughtful compensation.
4. Promise that a human is absolutely, 100% going to read every candidate's application materials. (You've already got this!)
5. Go fishing in the right places.

Today, let's not be unattractive.

There's a bit of well-weathered advice to daters that the way to be attractive is to not be unattractive. This goes for the job market too, but it seems like too many people and companies get hung on doing things to be attractive, and fail to understand that the best way to be attractive is to stop doing unattractive things. An unattractive process or approach leads to candidates seeing red flags and not applying or backing out. That won't build the mountain, so let's take care of that.

A Frank Assessment

Let's start by quickly evaluating how things are going.

1. Do you or your company ask candidates to take assessments or create sample materials (do not say yes if you only ask for portfolio pieces) before doing a screening call?
2. Does your job posting contain each task and tool the candidate might be expected to do and use? Or, does it run past one page when pasted into Word?
3. Was the job posting written mostly by the hiring manager, HR, and leadership?
4. Was the compensation determined by a budget review?
5. Do other companies in your industry or space offer significantly different benefits and perks?
6. Does the job posting contain verbiage similar to “In 3 months, the candidate will....” or “In 6 months, we expect...”? Will the “successful candidate” have experience with specific software that has many similar clones? Or, was the position previously performed by someone with flexible hours, a hybrid schedule, or a fully remote schedule, but is now returning to the office with prescribed hours?

I hope this isn't a surprise, but “yes” and “I don't know” aren't the right answer for any of these questions. The truth is, every answer should be an unambiguous “no.” Anything else is an unattractive look to candidates. The good news, much of this can be fixed very quickly – keep reading to understand why it's unattractive and what to do instead.

If your answers were “no” – great. Skim, don't skip this article. You don't need it, but it's good review.

Quick Fixes

Assess and Test After the Screen

As a candidate, electronic quizzes and tests, as well as most pre-interview requests for custom samples tell me that many past candidates or former employees in the role have been wildly unsuccessful, or, if I'm feeling charitable, the company got burned and is taking it out on current candidates. When I take these tests, I steel myself for an interview that will likely be halfway between an interrogation of my character, and halfway a rant about the prior occupant of the role. At best, this sort of situation indicates that the company doesn't know how to hire for the role. At worst, it means that the role is bloated, undefined, or regularly placed in impossible situations.

If your company is genuinely getting value from these quizzes and tests, place them after the first face-to-face interview. Candidates will be far less interested in “gaming” them and providing answers that they think the employer wants to hear (though it won't eliminate this behavior) and the tests will feel more like the assessment they are meant to be. If you are using them to whittle down the field in the first step, stop. Writing a good job description and getting your compensation right is going to solve more than these tests and assessments do.

Sharp Job Descriptions

The next article will be all about how to write an excellent job posting, so I won't go in depth right here and now, but the longer and more wandering they are, the less the candidate really knows about the role, and the more the smart candidate is going to assume that there is something odd about the role and not apply. At best, it's hard to be what is needed and wanted, when no one knows what they want or need. At worst, it's easy to end up with the wrong person in the wrong job when the goals are unclear. Again, we're going to hit this in depth next time, so stick around.

Sharp, concise job descriptions that focus on the meat of the role will always help candidates self select in and out of the process, which helps grow the mountain with the right candidates, not the wrong ones. Furthermore, while candidates can't necessarily know who wrote the job description, sometimes there are tell-tale signs that HR mangled it, or leadership added bloat. Mangle and bloat nearly always makes a job description feel shady or sketchy. Job descriptions should be written by the people who understand the job best, and verified by leadership and HR, not the other way around. Again, stay tuned, more on this soon.

Bennies!

I'm also going to cover compensation, perks, and benefits in another article, but the short form is that it's a bad look to be paying wildly below market, and this is very often a signal to the wrong types of candidates that they have a chance. Out-of-step compensation is almost guaranteed to produce a puny mountain with lukewarm candidates.

Compensation should be based on market rates, and the role should be adjusted until the compensation is fair. As for benefits and perks, you can absolutely make a positive mark for yourself by offering a non-standard perk (I particularly liked that one company, located near a very good zoo, offered free passes to said zoo) but only so long as it isn't attempting to make up for a complete lack of a standard benefit. (I was, emphasis on the past tense, interviewing for a job that offered a choice of several meal services until I found out this benefit was their alternative choice to offering health insurance.)

People work for money and benefits. Even if it's a passion project, even if they are good-hearted people who believe in the mission. No one can pay their rent in zoo passes or buy groceries with funky company swag. The best benefits take care of the person first, and then provide enrichment. This is non-negotiable. Again, I'll talk more about benefits and perks, and how companies are misunderstanding the table stakes very soon, so stay tuned for that, too.

Flex and Bend, not Fixed and Brittle

Rigidity in the job posting, especially for a tech role that is done in a dark room, mostly by your lonesome, on a computer, using resources accessed by internet, at best tells a story about old skool thinking, and at worst tells a story about micromanagement, distrust, surveillance, and a lack of ability to bring unique skills or ideas to the role. No one wants to be a square peg hammered through a round hole, and those who have choices will choose to apply somewhere else.

Be as flexible as possible. And really dig deep here. Flexibility is huge and a lack of it will cost you highly qualified candidates. Why is something rigid? Why can't it be flexible? Could those challenges be eliminated? If something can't be purely flexible, are there ways to provide breathing room, such as a hybrid schedule, a few days with a late start, or meeting-free Fridays to allow people to work a 4/10 schedule. Challenge yourself to grant flexibility to roles that have never been viewed as having any at all.

Story time, because I think this is such a great illustration of how inflexibility becomes ingrained and no one questions it. I saw an otherwise attractive job posting recently that I was interested in, until I saw that the hours were 7AM to 4PM. While these hours aren't necessarily odd, they are for this business, which would be normally expected to be open 9AM-5PM, like similar businesses around town. So why 7AM to 4PM? Those hours have traditionally been first shift in my area. So any business advertising these hours is assumed to have a second, and maybe even a third shift. But the business I'm talking about hasn't had a second shift since the 1980s. A decision made in the 1980s, to keep first shift hours, ostensibly because they expected the second shift to come back, is now costing this company candidates in 2023. Yikes. Don't be this fixed and brittle.