Unemployed in the “Greatest Job Market of All Time” – The Short on the Long Process of Being a Candidate

I applied for my dream job at my dream company. My experience and skillset match perfectly! It’s been 15 minutes why haven’t they followed up? Am I overqualified, underqualified, missing the most important qualification? Too expensive? Oh my GOD, am I too cheap?!?!?!

One of the greatest gifts someone can give you in life is PERSPECTIVE. One of the most ignored gifts in life is PERSPECTIVE. I had fun writing my first article and received a GREAT response. I wanted to follow up with additional insight as both someone who is currently unemployed and someone who has helped hundreds of companies evaluate and improve their talent acquisition process. Taking a deeper dive into the emotional rollercoaster of the full time job of not having a job. Into the hardest part of the entire experience… THE WAIT! I’ve seen both side’s perspectives and thought this may help not only us job seekers out there, but also the organizations looking for us!

I’ve walked through the application, evaluation, and interview process with companies ranging from Fortune 5 companies to small startups I’ve seen a lot of different tools, resources, and best practices (or lack-there-of) cause bottlenecks in various points of the candidate experience. Below are the 3 most commons areas I have seen these occur. Hopefully this will help you rest assured that there is a process and it, unfortunately, can take time.

• Resume review – I referenced applying to the perfect job earlier. In this case it was a job at a very well-known company that I felt I would be a good fit for. I have LinkedIn Premium (Thank you Meredith!) and I am able to see that I am 1 of 174 applicants… That is just the candidates that have applied through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an excellent resource, but I would say that the overall response is high. There are usually multiple resources used, but we’ll use 175 applicants for the math in this example. In my experience, depending on the level and job function, a recruiter can carry between 20-40 job requisitions (reqs) at any given time. Unfortunately sometime this can be more, or less depending on resources and time of the year. That would mean in a given month (assuming 30 reqs that have 175 resumes to review, that a recruiter looks at each resume, and spends a minute looking at each one) there are 87.5 hours of resumes to review. 2 weeks and 12.5 hours of work! Now most ATS’s (Applicant Tracking Systems/The software that collects your information when you apply) help screen out based off of keywords, and sometimes miss great candidates, but as you can see this is an overwhelming amount of work. When you factor in multiple phone screens that last a half hour and connecting with hiring managers on the great candidates they find it will take time to get through this process. I’ve seen follow up take a few weeks to months, in a few rare cases, to even get to an initial phone screen. In my previous journeys through unemployment it hasn’t historically taken this long. It is a time consuming process so keep this in mind in your search.
• Interviews and scheduling – The next most common, and in most cases the most time consuming, is the coordination of interview schedules. Most recruiters set aside time during the day or week to focus solely on connecting with qualified candidates. Typically phone screens or in-person interviews with the recruiter can be scheduled within days. Where the process starts to go awry is when hiring managers, or multiple hiring manager’s, schedules are involved. Hiring managers find themselves in the impossible task of needing new employees while trying to maintain business. They are usually stretched, along with their teams, and time becomes scarce. If a panel interview (multiple people) is required for a particular position those common times are exponentially harder to find. I've worked with a number of companies to define best practices and accountability to the interviews, but ultimately it’s hard to do because work still needs to be finished. Good organizations focus on knowing who is necessary to make a hiring decision and holding them accountable for making interviews a priority or making sure that alternates are available. As a candidate be sure to make your availability to interview priority in your schedule.
• Making the decision – A bad hire can cost a company TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars, some times more depending on the position when effort (time), onboarding and training, impact to clients and business are factored in. In some cases I’ve seen employers with a perfect candidate sit on that candidate because, even though they are great, they feel there may be someone better out there. I’ve heard of candidates interviewing and not receiving feedback or an offer for weeks or sometimes months. Be sure, during the interview, to try and address any concerns. A commonly asked question by an interviewee is “Are there any concerns you have about my qualifications that would prevent you from being able to make a decision?” It’s better to ask a version of that question and be given a “No” quickly than to sit out on the market with a concern that didn’t go addressed while you had the chance.

Remember the next opportunity will be a great one! This will all be worth it in the end. Hopefully this perspective can give you a bit more reassurance than before. The process is long in some cases, but it will eventually work for you. Hang in there and continue to ride the highs and battle through the lows!

If there are any topics that you can think of about the unemployment experience that you feel may be a great chance for me to share my perspective please reach out and share. I can put together more articles if I see a common theme!