How Companies Would Hire People If They Were Smarter

Recruiting Needs an Overhaul

The state of corporate and institutional recruiting is abysmal. Recruiting is the most broken HR function, followed by performance reviews.

We can get rid of performance reviews. Many companies have already done that. We can't get rid of recruiting. We need to re-design the way we hire people, instead!

We ask exactly the wrong questions and follow exactly the wrong process in hiring people. We hire very stupidly.

We use an inflexible, data-crunching method to sort resumes. We create job specs based on pure delusion -- as though we could possibly know in advance that the right person for a certain job would need to have five or seven or 15 years of experience in Marketing or Finance.

How could we possibly know that? We can't! It's arbitrary.

We write job specs that require a certain number of years of experience with a certain software tool -- an idiotic pass/fail requirement when some people pick up and master a tool in three months and others take years to gain that same proficiency.

The fundamental problem in recruiting is that we try to match people with jobs as though the people were pegs and the jobs were holes.

We pretend that we can determine a person's suitability for a job based on facts, when we all know that any facts we could report in a job application tell us almost nothing useful about the fit between a person and a job - not to mention an organization.

One software engineer, for instance, could have years of experience with a particular programming language and still be utterly wrong for your assignment.

The software engineer has seventeen years of experience -- but so what? The more important question is "How does his or her mind work?" 

We all see the world differently. Another software engineer could have far less experience but end up to be a much better fit for your job opening.

The second software engineer might have a better feel for your issues and better instincts for solving your problems.

You'll learn those things about him or her on an interview -- unless the perfectly-suited candidate never gets to meet you because he or she was screened out by a brainless keyword-searching algorithm.

How to Recruit with a Human Voice

Here's what smart organizations to do to hire great people every day:

• They create job specs not based on lists of qualifications (made up in their minds!) but by describing the assignment and the organization.
• They use their job ads to entice smart people with other options (the only people you can afford to hire) rather than driving talented people away with off-putting, fanciful-bordering-on-delusional requirements.
• They save everybody's time and energy by including the salary range in the job ad.
• Rather than forcing busy job-seekers to fill out tedious online job applications (do you make your customers create their own records in your customer database?) they ask applicants to respond to a job ad with a thoughtful 250-word paragraph. (There's an example below.)
• They make careful but speedy 'yes or no' decisions and get back to every applicant right away. 
• They don't play cat-and-mouse with compensation. They get everybody's salary requirements and expectations right out on the table early.
• They don't let anybody interview candidates who isn't a strong interviewer. I am always shocked by how easily we throw unskilled interviewers onto a hiring committee. That isn't fair to them, to job applicants or to your customers and shareholders.
• They treat recruiting as their highest priority. We recommend to our CEO clients that they tell their hiring managers and HR folks they've got 90 days to fill any job. If you can't fill the job in 90 days, either you didn't understand the market or you made the new hire too low a priority. If that happens, the job opening disappears like Cinderella's coach at midnight. Better luck next time!
• They treat every job applicant like gold, because job applicants are people and only people can buy your company's products and services, or recommend them.

Job-seekers are fed up with their awful treatment at the hands of employers. HR people and hiring managers are just as fed up with the bureaucratic delays and roadblocks that ATS (applicant tracking system) technology creates.

An ATS is a terrible use of technology to solve a human problem, and its day is past - thank goodness!

A Job Ad With a Human Voice

Here is a sample Job Ad with a Human Voice we wrote for a client:

E-Commerce Operations Manager - Angry Chocolates

We're Angry Chocolates, a specialty organic chocolate maker located in downtown Fayetteville. We launched our first e-commerce site in 2015 and it has grown enough to create the need for a new E-Commerce Operations Manager.

This could be a great job for you if you love the back end of a website, like to work with numbers and inventory levels and want to work with Marketing, Production and Inventory Control to build a tremendous online business worldwide.

We need someone in this job who can start a new function from scratch and manage a team (over time - right now it's a department of one) and who understands U.S. and international shipping.

The job reports to our VP of Operations and pays $80-$90K. If this job sounds like a good fit for you, please send us a 300-word message that tells us why you think so. We're excited to build our E-Commerce operation and hope to hear from you!

Chuck Jones, CEO, Angry Chocolates

What are Chuck and his team looking for as they review 250-word responses to their job ad, when they sit down at a staff meeting one week after the ad runs?

They are looking for people who have thought about the job and the challenges it will bring. They want to see each job applicant's brain working.

Chuck and his team receive 150 responses to their ad. Brigit Hathaway, Angry Chocolates' HR Manager, screens out 110 of the responses.

Those 110 job-seekers completely failed to respond to Chuck's assignment, writing generic things like "I have a long background of managing successful multi-location logistics teams."

They fell down by demonstrating no understanding of Angry's unique situation and drawing no parallels between their experiences and Angry's needs.

Chuck asked applicants to explain why THIS job is a good fit, and folks who sent in generic zombie-style responses didn't do that. 

When Chuck meets with his managers, they have 40 job-ad responses to review together. It won't take long to narrow that group down to 20 people they'd like to know more about, and 20 folks who aren't a good match for this job.

Here is an excerpt from one of the responses Brigit and the team received.

This applicant, Bryan, is a contender for the role.

Excerpt from Bryan's Response to the Angry Chocolates Job Ad 

Dear Chuck and Team,

I was excited to see that Angry Chocolates is growing internationally as well as domestically these days. Congratulations to all! I'm interested in your E-Commerce Operations Manager.

I've been running a fulfillment center for three giftware manufacturers for the past three years, working with each of their web teams to coordinate the sales order process and then overseeing picking/packing and shipping of about 500 orders/day. I also have my own home-based e-commerce business, selling gemstone jewelry through a website I designed myself. 

How to Hire Great People, Faster: Recruiting with a Human Voice

In the old-school, traditional world of crusty bullet-point-loaded job ads and ATS screening, Bryan wouldn't have had a chance.

He would have been kicked out of the pipeline in a heartbeat because his past jobs didn't have the "right" titles.

Traditional recruiting doesn't allow for the possibility that someone could have learned what they know at a part-time, sideline business like Bryan's home-based gemstone business - but why not? 

Since Angry Chocolates is new to e-commerce, a more fearful version of Chuck would have required five or seven or even ten years in e-commerce while Bryan only has three.

Try running a fulfillment organization for three years! You'll learn a lot, fast.

Bryan may get the job at Angry Chocolates! He has e-commerce experience both from his home-based business and his day job.

How long does it take seven smart people to read 40 short essays? It doesn't take very long! The conversation is very good for their Team Mojo. They aren't just talking about skills and qualifications. They are talking about themselves and their culture, too. 

Around the table, Chuck's managers discuss the job and the candidates. They zip over to LinkedIn to check out the job-seekers' profiles. 

They don't waste job-seekers' time dragging them in for interviews before telling them what the job will pay.

They don't make anybody fill out an online job application.  Their slogan at Angry Chocolates is "Treat people compassionately."

They have built a great business by following that wisdom!

The world is changing. The simpler and more human we can make recruiting, the better it will be for all of us. We are not machines. We can see by now that recruiting people through mechanical means is a horrible idea.

It keeps talented people out of our organizations and robs  our customers and shareholders of their talents. 

It's 2016, and we can bring a human voice to recruiting. Any employer or recruiter can use these methods. You can take a step into Recruiting with a Human Voice right now!

Our company is Human Workplace.

To learn how to recruit with a Human Voice, join the Four-Week Virtual Course Recruiting with a Human Voice launching Saturday, January 9th!

If you're job-hunting, check out our Four-Week and 12-Week Virtual Courses for job-seekers (and our courses for entrepreneurs and working people, too)!

Want to bring the Recruiting with a Human Voice mindset and methodology to your organization? Reach us here to find out more!

Reach us with your questions here!