Death Knell of Hiring As we Know It

Take yourself back ten years to the last throws of the Dot.Com Era and compare the difference between the amount of people available for job openings then to what we have today - way too many. When the economy is cooking and there are fewer people seeking work than available jobs, it’s all about finding people to do the work. When you have too many people for the jobs at hand, the real effort lies in making sure you get the right person for the job.

Pity the poor hiring manager that makes a bad hire with so many choices...but it is happening every day.

With hundreds of resumes to paw over for each opening, you’d think making a hire would be easier….think again. Resumes are woefully inadequate for times like these and better assessment methods are needed to uncover the 50 people you get for each job whose resumes all indicate a qualified match. Then consider trying to pick the five or so people out of those to interview for the role. How do you choose? Phone screens? Psychometric tests? Coin flip? Whatever the method, you then need to interview people that are given one chance to make their mark – and one chance for the interviewer, typically within 30 minutes, to make their choice. After 5-6 weeks of time invested (sometimes less), you settle for the best person of the group – I mean how many hiring managers will say all that time was wasted. So, somebody gets the job. That folks is the hiring process for 95% of all jobs…there has to be a better way, right?

There is, well, er…sort of…at least it is somewhat evolving!

I think it is inevitable that the Internet will continue to shape employment initiatives for the better, the way it has since the early 1990’s (OCC, Monster, ATS, Google, etc.), how it evolves will depend on the thought leaders of the employment universe.

For several years now employment focused people have marveled at the opportunity that the Social Web could provide, claiming it as the next frontier of job recruitment. I certainly believe this will happen, but not until human resources and recruitment gives up on the resume as the vehicle for job consideration. A resume does not work at all for Social Networks and goes against the basic doctrine of the Social Web - helping others and genuinely sharing interests, motivations and passions. A resume can never divulge the truest sense of a person. They diminish our skills and demean the complexity of our experiences. Resumes in their simplest context are for screening people out, plain and simple – not much helping or sharing there…

While the employment world comes kicking and screaming to a non resume world (it could take a while…), the Social Web can provide an excellent, world class benefit that hiring authorities can put to great use today. In fact, it has been my prediction that this will help bring the demise of the resume (I’m betting my career on it actually…), and that is providing a career development, training and job hiring process where people actually get into careers that they love, possessing the skills to do the work and getting hired for the right jobs at the companies where they fit in the best.

The last part of the equation is the one that the Social Web offers right now. There is absolutely no reason that a person should get into a job situation where they knew very little about what they were getting themselves into, nor for a hiring manager not to know whether a person they offer a job to has the right interests, motivation, attitude and functional capability to do the job they offer them. The tools at our disposal to evaluate both sides of the hiring equation are available and both parties make a big mistake by not using them. Through the use of Talent Communities, Online Assessments, available Internet data and other Social Media activities – we’ve never had more opportunities available to make the best hiring choice.

I agree that not all companies have availed the public of their employment “brand” and it is a bit more work for a person interested in a company to get a sense of this, but there are plenty of ways to do it (using Linked In to contact a current employee for example, checking Clean Journey’s Career Investment Score, etc.). More importantly, a career minded person has tons of ways to create a Professional Brand and make a Career Investment that will get them noticed and position them to be considered for the work they crave.

For employers with way more resources, there are no excuses. The Social Web provides all the ammunition that is needed to uncover most of what should separate one candidate from another (Twitter, Facebook, Clean Journey, Linked In, Google, etc.). Finding people that have the skill is of course important, but finding people that have the interests and passions to do amazing things with those skills is the key separator to finding the "best" person for the job. The Social Web has and will continue to greatly improve the Quality of Hire for both company and new hire alike, and the benefits that this will provide the overall American Economy should be immense.

A wise person taught me a long time ago that a passionate worker is a hugely productive worker who won’t dream all week about Friday Happy Hour…uncover the passion!

Comment by K.C. on August 11, 2010 at 3:46pm: Hi Pam - I certainly wasn't referring to you in my comments above - you already had stated that as a TPR you worked mostly on finding needles...I was referring to the 200+ companies we surveyed. Not to be direspectful in any way, but you may want to put yourself outside of your own domain just a bit...there are historical figures of the number of people that are applying for the number of open jobs in America today (again BLS figures), and many of the Clean Tech companies surveyed have literally have gotten scores of on-target resumes for each of their openings...

Sandra, I am so glad you find it fun to go on about something you should investigate a bit more before dissing...the key take away of a network/community or whatever you want to call it is the assessment of an individual - obviously you haven't found this in your world...

As far Timothy O'Leary, who I actually got to meet a few times, I assure you not a bit of LSD has passed my lips since....well its been years...and yes we will have all types of extremely important scientists, engineers and technologists as part of OUR communities...sorry can't tell you how :)

Comment by Sandra McCartt on August 11, 2010 at 3:57pm: I knew it was a secret and one had to know the secret handshake. I knew it mentored by O'Leary, it's a flashback. :)

Comment by K.C. on August 11, 2010 at 10:04pm: I usually don't bother to interact with folks that like to mock, undermine and throw virtual stones...its not my style...particularly from those so brilliant and worldly...but I will leave you with one thought:

There is a man who I greatly admire that single handedly created the German Solar industry (Germany with something like 100 sunny days per year leads the planet in Solar business), and he was asked after 30 years of struggling uphill againast all the naysayers what he could tell us and this is what he said...

"The famous German philosopher Nietze in the 19th Century wrote, 'a new idea will firstly become denounced as being ridiculous. Secondly, there will be many long and difficult fights against it. Finally, all people will say they were in favor of it from the early beginning...', to those with new ideas don't let these energies ever stop you. That's what I woud like to say..."

Comment by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2010 at 1:08am: Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzche, as i recall from my very distant dabbling in philosophy was actually born in Prussia, claimed to be Polish, went insane perhaps as a result of tertiary syphillis and was highly disregarded due to his claims that "God is Dead" go figure , is there a thread here?

Comment by Lance Newman on August 12, 2010 at 9:50am: interesting new concept of hiring. instead of the "death" of resumes/cv's i would suggest that future hiring involves an "ultramae" which combines a candidate's work-experience (think actual stuff done at a specific employer) as well as their social networks. I think the social networks will be a powerfull tool that potential applicants and employers could use to screen each other but I do not see how social networking could be faster than any current method (which already includes going through social networks for referrals) that we use to find applicants. With all the liars and jokers out there on the internet this social-network-only method opens yourself up to making a lot of time-wasting-interviews that you would have never made had you been able to view the actual work experience of the candidate via their resume/cv. I think how the future of hiring will go is one will still need to have a document showing their work experience (just like the dinosaur resume/cv of today does) and then further-screening of the applicant will be done by employers through the social networks.

in my 15+ years of sourcing/screening candidates for all levels of jobs from intern to executive and everything in-between, the only time I had more than 50 qualified candidates show up was for extremely junior jobs that any college graduate could do. that's extremely rare to have even 5 actually-100%-qualified candidates show up in a search... but 50? no way. If your job is so easy that 50+ people can instantly do it you probably should be combining it with another job and get a 2-for-1 hire from someone who's multitalented.

Comment by K.C. on August 12, 2010 at 11:08am: Lance - I couldn't agree with you more...a blend of past work experience with a combination of a vibrant review of a person's AIM's (attitutdes, interests, motivations) and functional capability (with an assessment test used for basics evaluation) is the potential that is ahead for us using the Social Web and good ol recruiting know how. All of this is available today by the way...not sure if I'd use "ultrmae" as a marketing term... :)

The gist of my post was not the death nell of the resume - it was the hiring process (see title). Somehow in the comment thread this got skewed a bit, but that happens... Ten years ago we sat around at my firm and posited the way hiring "could" work best and the flaw that always came up was the fact that a resume is used as a defacto job report, not different from a credit report does for those considering to extend credit. The big problem here is that a credit report is created by independent analysis of third party experts (TRW, Experion, etc.), and the resume is a marketing document created by the person looking to get a job. Could you imagine giving credit based on what a person tells you about their credit worthiness (lets leave out the Mortgage debacle as an historical anomoly for the purposes of this analogy - OK?). We sat around a decade ago and came to the conclusion that there should be Career Bureau to do it independently like credit...then we went back to sourcing Diabetes Cell Biologists and Chem Engineering Formulation Directors...

Anyway, its not just the resume, its the whole shebang with average interview accuracy less than 25%, phone screens where you can't see a person, and refererence checks where every person you contact sing the praises of their friend/colleague - what I am saying is that with the Social Web there are many avenues available to improve on this - what most candidates call an "archaic" process. Go review the Monster Survey from earlier this summer and see what 5,000 people had to say about it if you disagree... (oh yeah - we use resumes everyday in our work and in our Talent Communities for the member to provide a work history...)

Now about the 50 people - again read my post - recieving 50 resumes of people whose resumes "indicate a qualified match" - much different than 50 people 100% qualified you write...and if you are a corp recruiter with finance, HR, Ops, customer service, sales, marketing, quality type openings - our research indicates (surveying 200 companies) that they are getting so many on-target applicants that it is hard to decide on who to hire. Conversely, if you are a TPR working on jobs where there are 50-75 people total in your geography that can do the role - period - and these are the types of jobs one of my companies has been getting for the past 8 years...well, like us you're probably hoping to get 2-3 on-target candidates...

Don't forget its a big world out there!!

Comment by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2010 at 11:48am: So what do you do Pam when - like in this environment you get 50 resumes that all match 100% of the job spec...who do you choose?

Your quote KC minus the posts that you deleted. When folks start doing that little number to change the thread it's time to check out and disregard the entire mess

Comment by K.C. on August 12, 2010 at 12:16pm: Sandra I didn't even notice you COULD delete a post until you just mentioned it...(kind of new to this site)...sorrry to see you are not having any fun...

Comment by Alasdair Murray on August 12, 2010 at 12:38pm: I still think you'd have been better off staying with the Sunshine Band.

Comment by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2010 at 1:03pm: Ah young Alasdair, there is no sport in jousting with the lame :) Methinks Sir KC doth spin in circles like a worm.

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