My friend Greg sent me this note the other day:
I’ve been following your comments on creating a better environment for recruiting and job seeking.
I think hiring managers and job seekers should be partners not competitors … they both want the same thing … a good job.
Too much of the advice that’s out there is how to get the best of the interviewer or how to eliminate the candidates … what the???
Greg is absolutely correct. Both hiring managers and job seekers want the same thing. But they do not realize it. This is the problem.
From the employers’ point of view:
Many hiring managers (not the HR people) don’t really know what they are doing. They do not know how to interview to solicit information that can help them determine whether the person can actually do the job. They might have been fooled before when they hired the person they want to have a beer with instead of the person who can do the job. So they think candidates are out there to mess them up. Big frustrations.
HR people are overwhelmed with work. They might or might not know how to recruit any better than the hiring managers. In fact many people charged with hiring are the most inexperienced people on the HR team. They get deluged with resumes they have to sort through, hoping they are screening to find the right candidates so they are very interested in screening people out if it makes their jobs easier. They are most concerned with satisfying the competing demands of the internal people and doing a good job of onboarding the person eventually hired. If they are good at interviewing they are often frustrated by the hiring manager who changes the specifications on a whim or hires someone the HR person knows is the wrong person.
From the job seekers’ point of view:
Many job seekers do not know what to say during interviews so they stagger their way around, mostly being ineffective. Many consultants (including me) recognize that the hiring managers are not very good at this so we prep candidates to take advantage. After all, if they are going to hire based on having a beer then we can prepare candidates to make the impression that will get the candidate the furthest. This might not be the candidate that can do the job best but that is not our problem.
This is the context in which hiring happens. The fact that anything happens at all is almost a miracle. Dan and I want to get these audiences to look at each other based on knowledge, skills and abilities needed to do the job. We want to build skills so interviewers can evaluate candidates based on what is needed to get the job done and candidates can present what they can do more effectively. This would create a much better result when the right pegs are put in the right holes.
Makes sense?