Recruiters vs Recruitees - WW3
INTRODUCTION
In the world today, recruiters and job applicants seem to be in a war situation, whereas, this should be a very friendly, fun and enjoyable process. This is reason most people believe searching for job is a humongous problem and pain.
Finding job opportunity, crafting materials and prepping for interviews are all normal and I personally agree there should be no shortcuts....I believe looking for a job is itself a full-time job, else you ain't ready to work. The real pain, however, is "ambiguous job posts and hoarding of IMPORTANT info/details" till certain stages(usually at the end) in the interview process, which wastes everyone's time, money and effort.
PROBLEM
Many Companies and Recruiters don't want to understand that hiring should be open and honest discussion of everything no matter the stage. For example, they want to remain under the false-pretense that salary should be ignored and mentioned only at last stage. Yes, we all know its all about pay, its not free but same way we all already know its all about work and more work as well. Infact, the undisputed fact is salary is one of the factors that most people(including even the hiring managers, recruiters and interviewers) would consider as crucial when they are planning to make a career move. Yet, they pretend and refuse to come out of the traditional hiring methods and embrace modern collaborative methods to get a higher-level and more well-rounded evaluation of potential candidates. They also don't want to be open and honest completely but they expect candidates to give out everything they have done in their entire lives....this is ok but I don't want to work with an employer that is not open either....for example, DONNOT write me an encyclopedia of expectations and work to do for you BUT refuse to atleast tell me what you're willing to pay for the job and expectations. I believe I have the right to know, so I can have all I need to weigh my options early enough and be able to make a guided decision. Help me to help you, vise versa.
POSSIBLE SOLUTION
For the hiring managers, I believe if the position has been defined, the potential employer should already have a salary in mind and this should not be a secret, so asides the long list of detailed job description and expectations, include perks, benefits, salary budget or atleast a range for the role, everything spelt out. (To be honest, I give this to many companies in the USA...big kudos!!! Some people believe USA is the best country in the world, NEVER argue, I believe them...capeesh! ??).
Filtering applicants should start from the job post through detailed description, so we get this out of the way from start. Not busy collating junks of CVs both relevant and irrelevant, creating a generous heap of time-wasting backlog, leading to spending weeks in getting back to applicants and be experts in curating rejection emails(many times very rude or demeaning rejection emails or even worse, a cold rejection silence... in this, some companies are experts). The root cause is leaving applicants to guess, assume...making applicants to enter what seems to be a gamble, submitting applications even when you smell it might not be a total fit due to some uncertainties but apply just to find out...all total waste of everyone's time. At this stage an applicant should be able to filter himself out by understanding clearly its not what he/she wants after weighing everything. Bottom line - DONNOT make candidates to apply just to find out if it is what they are looking for, you just defeated the purpose of the job post/advert, which idealy should be what you want and what you offer.
SUGGESTION
Now, if applicants go beyond this stage of not only reading the job advert, but having interest so much so as to sending in applications, then this must be only agreeing and confirming everything is already a fit. Congratulations to everyone, we have some match....all that is left is time to prove it all; both the reason you should be the hired and why you are worth the pay. Straight to the point.
I mean, what use is it for both recruiter and applicant to waste all the time and efforts; and for the right candidate to scale through all the interview hoops ONLY to reject some shitty-offers? Something that could have ended a win-win situation is now a win-lose(recruiter fall back on second best candidate, leaving best candidate walk away with nothing; yet worse than he came to you because he lost time, money and effort invested in the process.)??
CONCLUSION:
I believe interview should be all about...demonstrate that you have all qualities it takes to do the job and prove that you are worth the pay. But then, recruiters should be more open in providing what to prove in the first place.
This will remove the need to drag back and forth and argue about salaries, perks and benefits that should have come first, simply in the job post/advert, while also reducing to the barest minimum the chances of job-offer refusals/rejections by top candidates. This method surely will save valuable time for both recruiters and applicants, making most interview processes to end with best candidate and be a win-win situation. See all the benefits in this post's header image.
P.S: *** I strongly suggest and advocate all shortlisted candidates should go through a paid interview process.??