Why Talent won't engage with you, especially in 2022

With the talent wars getting worse day by day, companies are realizing with growing alarm that getting talent to just apply for roles in your organization is no longer the main problem. There are now reasons - post interviews, that talent will either not join your organization or join & then leave very soon, let's look at some reasons why:

1) The TAT tattletale: In the name of turnaround time, you've rushed through the recruitment process and not taken the time to either understand where the role fits in the larger scheme of things in your company (mid to long term career paths not being visible to the applicant/incoming employee) & you have also not taken the time to really understand if the candidate's aspirational plans and even current/future ready skills fit the role. (many people complain that they've left organizations in a very short while because the role was not what was communicated to them at the time of the interview.)

2) Compensation blind spots: The law of Demand & Supply is one of the oldest lessons in economics that we learnt. Yet, when it comes to Talent Economics, the ground reality of paying adequate and deserved compensation to top shelf talent has yet not been recognized by a lot of employers. This has in-turn changed the employment power dynamics in the market, making it a candidate driven market rather than an employer/company driven market. What does this mean? It means as an employer, you can no longer bank on things you took for granted to attract talent like even your employer brand to get talent to join you (even if you're a well known, big brand) unless the moolah is meal worthy. In short - do better (& faster) compensation analysis of the market because before you finish your analysis (if you take too long) the market dynamics have changed again. Sites like Glassdoor & Payscale are increasingly getting better at getting compensation data based on a person's educational background, work experience, growth & other parameters - & job applicants know their worth. Not to mention these two generations speak much more freely with their peers when discussing their growth & compensation than their previous generations which took their salary data to their graves so as to speak.

3) Widely available unbiased workplace feedback: Employers, you're getting squeezed out of the podium space you had reserved to specifically only speak about & push your own narrative by the two most digitally & socially vocal/expressive/connected generations that are flocking your halls at work - Gen Y (Millennials) & GenZ. Employee experience feedback sites like Glassdoor, Fishbowl, Blind, AmbitionBox, Indeed, (even Quora sometimes based on company specific questions). Erstwhile loud & colourful employer brand initiatives that showcased bright office spaces, Foosball tables, in-house gyms, multi cuisine cafeterias, happy faces wearing t shirts with the company logos & seemingly laughing out loud at break room tables - are not being taken seriously by Gen Y & Gen Z talent because they're getting their information from the inside of the company from their peers - firsthand - about good/bad managers, company benefits, work life balance, career growth & learning, progressive/toxic culture narratives, & the works. So don't bother updating that company careers page if your ground reality doesn't match it. In the world of dating - you're doing the equivalent of peacocking. The moment talent sees a pigeon instead of a peacock, its adios amigo.

4> Not keeping up with the times: Covid19 has made us witness the biggest work from home experiment. For the very first time, some of the smallest to largest companies had their employees work completely from home for extended periods of time. As the wave dies down slowly - many companies, even those that witnessed growth in these times are calling their employees back to the workplace for better 'productivity'. Those companies that have progressively embraced WFH & even become Remote first workplaces are showing the way for organizations to understand that this will now be a (talent) war cry - Work Life Balance, that people have experienced at such a wide scale across continents & are now not willing to give up. Talent today is either not applying to jobs or not accepting offers of companies which are not promising a hybrid workplace at the least. Again, your brand won't save you. You can save on cost, save the planet (all those carbon footprints), have enhanced employee happiness as well as better productivity - why not?

5> Poorly taken or conducted/Inadequate/weird interviews (please have a super strong talent acquisition team that can do 'Train the interviewer' sessions for your hiring managers consistently & routinely - educating them in empathy, interviewee enablement, interview discipline (no last min cancellations), time management, structured & casual interviews, etc.) to ensure the applicant feels like it was a great experience interviewing with you (you'd be surprised at how often the final offer acceptance depends upon how effective the interviewer was at taking an intelligent, challenging, respectful, thorough interview).

Other parameters quickly summarized in points that are making talent not engage with you:

6> Lazy Job Descriptions (incomplete information, no way to track applications, no responses)

7> Bad candidate experience (I've heard of really bad candidate experience stories even from even the biggest companies that have made applicants swear off from ever applying to them.. didn't I mention in point 1 your company brand also won't save you?)

8> Poor interview co-ordination & non existent / weak feedback loop (Just have a highly trained, smart separate co-ordination team - it will save you a lot of grief & a lot of dropouts - recruiters are already handling too much.)

9> Taking too long to close a role (Many applicants drop out of the hiring funnel because they are fielding multiple offers & do not have 60-90 days to wait for the hiring cycle to conclude. A way out could be to tag the Top 5% selects from the beginning of the process and ensure they keep the co-ordination team posted on any timeline based limitations).

10> Inadequate thought leadership / social visibility of values & experience sharing by senior leaders in your company online.

11> Refusal to innovate & adapt to new practices & thoughts - causing talent to shun the stuck in the stone ages companies in lieu of faster, more progressive, openly vulnerable startups / companies that are changing with the new world, in real time.

Please leave your thoughts & feedback in the comments, I would love to hear from you about your experiences if any when you turned down an offer or left an employer within a short period of time. Employers pls feel free to engage about your practices / challenges too.