Shooting fish in an ocean. The trouble with the recruitment system.
Posted by Mitch on 31st March 2014
I think recruitment, on both sides of the house (agency and internal), could become a lot more interesting (not to mention effective) if companies just took one critical decision.
That decision would be to take half the money they spend on recruiting and invest it instead in training.
Specifically, in training talented and motivated people how to do those jobs the company had previously been obsessed by trying to find the mythical “perfect candidate” for.
Then maybe it would put an end to all the “war for talent” bullshit.
The recruitment industry can start doing what recruitment should really be about; like producing great attraction materials, talking to candidates and assessing them for potential and fit. And that would in turn, free them from the icy-cold grip of the impossibly narrow candidate profile, the “computer says no” keyword fiasco and the fantasy of “talent’ being defined as someone doing exactly the same job for a different employer.
Maybe then everyone can benefit from an employment system that encourages and helps facilitate job and skills mobility.
Job ads would become more interesting because more of them would be expressing opportunity rather than a shopping list of experiences.
A new breed of candidate would be upskilled by their new employer rather than stagnating with their old employer. Motivation would probably soar.
There’d be a lot less people unemployed and there would be a lot less open positions – which should make these companies more profitable.
This wouldn’t necessarily be good news for recruitment agencies – many of whom have benefited from this hiring paralysis driven by such ludicrously narrow candidate “must haves”.
Some may be forced to take a broader approach to how the services they provide – like actually interviewing and assessing candidates against a specific criteria rather than dismissing them for not having the right amount of keywords on their CV. They could also then stop calling themselves Headhunters.
This broadening of the criteria that currently drives recruitment might become a little more complex, but on the upside, a lot more jobs would get filled.
And that has to be good for everybody, right?