A re-occurring topic of discussion in my world these days is how to attract good applicants as well as traditional application methods.

Surprisingly there are a lot of people in my industry as well as hiring managers out there who still believe in the old resume, cover letter, follow up call and interview for everyone, the same process for every applicant and for every position. They also believe that it is the candidate’s responsibility to know the accepted process and system and meet the requirements.

So… if you are having a hard time attracting and retaining people through the traditional methods – it is their job to get better at it? Let me understand this correctly. I can’t attract people, the people who apply are not right for me or no one is applying, I wish people could just get more educated about the process and my company. Yeah, I don’t think that is going to happen.

Everything else on the planet has and is changing – fast. So why isn’t the accepted method of applying? Here is a question for you… Do all of your employees in your company have the same education, undergo the same orientation and training, make the same money and do the same job? If you answer is no, then whey do we make them all go through the same application and interview process.

Someone responded to one of my blogs saying that every applicant should know how to do a resume (or pay to get it done professionally – which is a whole other topic), know how to cold call and follow up and be educated about interviewing. My response was that if they can do all of these things well hire them – for a sales position! But do administrators, accountants, or any other job that requires that you work mostly on your own with minimal interaction require that you have all of these assets?

What about the younger workforce coming up? Do you really expect them to do a resume (in Word no less) and email it to you. They don’t know what email is! And that is a fact; email will cease to be the major form of communication over the next 10 years. Asking the majority or our workforce to apply for a job in a way that makes not sense to them doesn’t make sense to me.

If you demand applicants meet your expectation – prepare to be disappointed. Here’s a thought. We put so much time into all of the other systems in our operations; why not put some time and energy into making it easier and more understandable for your target employee to apply. Yes that might mean having more than one way to apply.