Weeding through applications - a broken system

Two Monday’s ago, I posted a VP, Technology position through LinkedIn. I rarely post jobs. It creates a flurry of activity and is a passive way to, well, meet people through "sourcing". 

I already had some great prospects lined up for our client, and while my network is wide and deep, it is impossible to know everyone. If I miss just one, that would be doing a prospective candidate and our client a disservice.

Within three business days, guess how many applicants we had?

430.

Take out the 20% who had no business applying to the role and that leaves 344. Take out another 10% who are not a fit for various reasons and that leaves us with 310.

310 applicants. And each day we are getting more.

Now, I'm a technology search consultant. I'd like to say I'm good at what I do. I pride myself on being able to determine a lot about someone within just a few minutes, but that requires industry knowledge, references, recommendations, profile reviews and conversations. Even if all 310 applicants were brand new to me, and if I'm "that good", I would still need to have, at minimum, 15-minute conversations with each of the applicants – and that’s just an initial discussion. That would take 4,650 minutes. That’s a little less than 10 business days. Ten. Without checking email, eating, or managing any other business whatsoever.

When a company posts a position, they are “sourcing”. Not actively recruiting. Not contacting their network (if they have one). They’re rolling the dice that suddenly all the stars align and an impact player at a company in their industry, who just happens to have every skill, certification and education needed, mixed with just the right level of experience, the perfect compensation target, willingness to relocate or work virtually, and, oh, has the perfect culture fit for the company, will apply.

So, let’s take those 430 applicants. Let’s even take off 30% of the applicants and, in most cases, give someone with little or no functional expertise in the area needed a phone – because that’s the only way to get to know these people. A decent conversation should last, say, 30 minutes to meet them and take notes? That’s 9,300 minutes of introductory calls.

How much time can one spend on the phone in a day, solely focused on speaking to applicants? Is four hours enough? Okay, let’s go with four hours. That’s eight calls per day. That will take 38 days. 38 days to meet 310 applicants, and that’s assuming there aren’t any more. No referrals from the executive team. No more internal applicants.  No one else already in a Rolodex to contact. That’s just applicants. And that’s one person on the phone for four hours straight each day, for 38 days. And how long will the interview and offer process take? And will these prospects wait around that long (since most of them are out of a job anyway, hence their interest in applying to a position). And when did the hiring manager want this position filled? Oh, yesterday.

Search consultants, recruiters, headhunters, whatever you want to call us – we know our market, the people, the good ones (and sometimes more importantly the bad ones) to contact. We maintain relationships and proactively invite a prospect to consider a new opportunity, though they may be perfectly happy where they are. And those people, the ones who rarely have time to be applying to a role, are usually the impact players in the industry. Does that mean applicants are poor options? No, not always. And especially not in the unusual year we’ve had. But the majority of success I’ve had is recruiting someone to a company, not “sourcing” someone who’s actively on the market. 

If you made it all the way to this point, you are probably as exhausted reading this as I was typing—can you imagine how an internal HR team feels? This is a broken system. This exhaustive exercise is WHY you should use an external search consultant. It is to remove this headache and burden from your HR team’s desk and keep them focused on what’s important, not sifting through resumes. 

Oh, and now I have 478 applicants.