The Real Reason Qualified People Don't Get Hired

In the real world when you try to do something, it either works or it doesn't. Either way, you can react and move on.

If you apply for a building permit to expand your garage, your city gives it to you or they don't. If they don't, they tell you why they didn't give you the permit and what to fix in your application so that you can re-submit it and get the permit the second time.

In the real world we get feedback. If we try a new kind of shampoo and we like it, we buy it again. If our hair feels sticky and awful after we try out the new shampoo we'll throw the bottle in the trash and try something else.

In the job-search realm there is no feedback. You apply for a job and you hear nothing. It's unsettling. Sometimes you get a terse email auto-response that says "If we want to talk to you, we know where to find you, but don't hold your breath."

It's not polite. We were raised better than that. Job-seekers are the same people who become our wonderful employees or whose friends and family members do - and they are the same people who buy our products! There are not separate gene pools for people who buy your company's products and services on the one hand and people who apply for jobs with your organization on the other.

It's all one community. We can't talk about corporate and institutional Community Engagement programs and trumpet our good-citizenship activities if we don't also treat job applicants like valued collaborators.

The real reason talented and capable people become so frustrated, bewildered and mojo-depleted on the job search trail is that the  recruiting process is utterly broken. It doesn't work for anyone.

It doesn't help hiring managers get smart people in the door. That's what they want to do, but the busted recruiting system stands in their way. Ask a hiring manager what he or she thinks of the recruiting system at his or her workplace!

Recruiting has become a bloated, stupid process designed to keep a company out of court rather than to hire great people quickly. It also doesn't keep companies from getting sued! It's a bureaucratic mess to begin with, and it's made worse by history's most bungled deployment of technology ever.

What genius ever thought that you could hire cool,  vibrant people to join your team by searching their resumes for keywords? That is brainless.

It shows you how far removed otherwise intelligent people can get from reality when they get too excited about using technology to do something formerly done by humans.

If you're a job-seeker you have to deal with the brutal reality of the broken recruiting apparatus in place in nearly every medium-sized and  large employer. Here is the key: you will not surmount the problem by submitting to it and taking your chances playing Online Job Application Roulette.

No one will see your resume or application in the automated Black Hole recruiting pit, where resumes go to die.

No one will  know about your relevant experience. No one will see the clever and interesting things you did at each of your past jobs.

You have to slip past the broken online recruiting system and reach your hiring manager on your own. It is easy to do. It is fun. Online research is a game and after a short time you'll become very good at it.

You will know more about a hiring manager before you reach out to him or her than most of his or her own teammates know. You will be amazed to see what an advantage that is!

You can read job ads if you want to, but don't ever reach out to a hiring manager by specifically responding to a job ad. That is never your best positioning.

You will speak to something more important than the goofy and delusional Essential Requirements listed in the job ad. You'll talk about your manager's pain, instead. 

Ignore the job ad and reach out to the person who heads up your function at any employer you choose. That person is your hiring manager. Of course, his or her title is Purchasing Manager or Controller or IT Director or something else, but for your purposes that manager's decision-making, budget-allocating position makes him or her your hiring manager.

There is no need to confine your outreach to managers who have current job ads posted. Every manager has Business Pain. You only need to find one with Business Pain at a level sufficient to warrant spending some money to solve it.

You will gain all the leverage you need and deserve in the job-search process when you are clear on the pain you solve for employers. Suddenly you will be more than a bundle of disconnected experiences and tasks. You will see your significance in a way most job-seekers do not.

You will see how you make a financial and philosophical impact on the organizations you've worked for, either as an employee or a consultant.

You have to back up in your job search and ask yourself "What is the real problem I solve -- and what does that problem cost employers until it's resolved?"

It may help you to remember that the only reason organizations hire people is because it would cost them more in lost revenue or wasted expense if they didn't have each of their team members on board. The magic number for you to know as a job-seeker is "What is the cost of the pain my employer experiences until I show up to relieve it?"

As you explore that question, here is another thought to keep in mind. The broken state of recruiting is not your problem -- all you need to do for yourself is to get your next job (and the one after that, and so on) through the side entrance.

The broken state of recruiting is someone else's problem, if you are a job-seeker. It does you no good to keep trying a locked door or to tell your friends how hard it is to job-hunt.

You don't have the emotional juice - the mojo - to waste on those activities. You need every drop of mojo for your own mission.

The awful, inhuman recruiting processes that frustrate you are slowly melting away, but your focus is on yourself. You can walk into the job you want and deserve, but you have to step outside the lines to do that!

You have to stop thinking of yourself as a job-seeker, and start thinking of yourself as a consultant. You have to find the confidence to reach out to your hiring manager directly and talk about pain and solutions.

You are fine and perfect the way you are right now. Repeated rebuffs in the form of stone-cold silence from employer after employer in your job search is not a judgment on you. It's a judgment on them, but nothing for you to stress over. You have your mission and your path.

Your job is to figure out what that mission is and where your path lies and then to take a step. You are more than qualified for a huge array of different jobs. You can zero in on the ones that interest you most - and where your talents can solve the greatest pain.

That's your power in the job-search equation - never lose sight of it! 

Our company is Human Workplace. We are reinventing work for people!

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