Please, have a seat, and welcome to corporate recruiting! In the spirit of “walk a mile in another man’s moccasins,” I thought today would be a good day to have you visit the recruiting “pit.”
“How are you doing?” you ask? We’re quite fine, thank you. Just another busy day in the pit, making calls, re-establishing connections, getting our Boolean on, and occasionally stopping to brew a new pot of French Roast.
It’s a beehive, and the energy is palpable. So, as they all nod at your visitation and bid you farewell, realize there are a few nuggets of information they would never share with you:
- Technology Has a Price ~ A candidate’s market combined with the increased accessibility to job openings has created a bottleneck of applicants. The increased use of on-line applications (submissions are up 133% in the last 3 years) is handled nicely by Application Tracking Systems, but that only creates an even bigger pile of resumés, which we may or may not ever view (see #3.)
- We’re Not Using Our Strengths ~ Recruiters are skilled in the art of making relationships, salesmanship (yep, believe it,) and communication skills. Because of the barrage of resumés, recruiters are spending most of their time screening “paper,” rather than connecting with people.
- Hidden Talent is Everywhere – We can’t afford the luxury of looking at every single CV. When our requisition “load” is heavy, we will default to key word scanning, or an even simpler rule of thumb – “first seen, first screened.” Meaning that early applicants gain more exposure than other candidates. Truth is, we rarely respond to more than 15-20% of all applicants. Hey, we don’t like it any more than you do, but there’s only so many hours in the day.
Have you taken spent time with your recruiting team? They may have a few things to say….or, worse – they may just keep it to themselves.