When news stories are on TV and radio or in the paper about the jobless totals, I count myself in that lot of people seeking a new job. The process is frustrating. A person can apply to so many jobs a day but certainly not enough to chew up the time span of a normal business day.
As such, there is time to think. Lots of time to think. So many job seekers spend time contemplating what problems are being caused on their end--not enough training in software, maybe the resume needs to be punched up. And so job seekers fix these things. And then they fix them again. They turn to one another often for support, ideas, advice.
At length, it might be that several or even many job seekers are not completely or remotely qualified for the job they apply for. It might be that their resume is poorly organized or emphasizes the wrong things. But this does not encapsulate every job seeker still being tallied among the jobless. For every unqualified job seeker with a poor resume, who is unreliable and asking too much salary for their services, there is at least one who is qualified, dependable, experienced and professional.
This is why I found it so aggravating when I read a recent newspaper article about the frustrations hiring managers are having.
The applicants, it seemed, weren't too keen on doing volumes of free work to demonstrate their skill level or stay persistent through four rounds of interviews.
All this says to me is that these frustrated hiring managers don't know what it is they are looking for, how to spot it when they see it nor do they work for a company worth working for. Let's take the first part first:
Consider hiring for a job much like scouting a player for college recruiting or being drafted into the NFL or NBA. The first thing a hiring manager needs is an understanding of the skill needed to excel in a position. I was a sports writer for many years, for example, and a colleague told me about a player being recruited by Boise State in football. I watched him play for a few minutes and could instantly see what the scouts saw--big, strong, balanced, good footwork...
Hiring managers need to be able to do the same thing and, through this process, it's clear a great many of them can't. I'm not sure what they are looking at when they have a need for a writer or editor, for instance, get resumes in from at least a half dozen quality writers (that I know of personally) only to see the job listing re-posted a month or two later.
This could be evidence of many things but mostly to me it's evidence the people doing the hiring don't know what they are doing. It might be, one HR friend of mine suggested, that they didn't get enough applicants to choose from. Mmm, good thinking. The Sacramento Kings are hiring basketball players, but the only two who applied are LeBron James and Kevin Durant...better wait for more applicants. That's just further proof you don't know what it is you're looking for and how to see it when it's in front of you as a hiring manager.
Now to the second part:
Professional people are, hmm, what's the word? Professional! Their time and skill is valuable. Why, then, would any self-respecting company on Earth try to hire someone by seeing if they will do a lot of work first for free?
Has anyone ever needed to hire a musician, say, and asked them to play a free gig at their daughter's wedding first? Hey doc, could you cure my cancer for free first, then I'll see if I'd like you as my family doctor? Hey contractor, remodel my kitchen for free and then I'll decide if I want you to remodel my whole house.
This is what hiring managers sound like when asking graphic artists, web designers and others to provide a sample of work not from a previous company or project. Why would any professional person subject themselves to that sort of subjugation? That's probably why you aren't getting enough people to apply.
Lastly, there is the issue of companies that have an opening and simply will not fill it. I applied for a local company some time ago and had a phone interview. The hiring agent asked me a range of questions related to the position. I understood, I assured her, the subject matter of the company, the nature of the position and answered in the affirmative when asked if I possessed each certain skill related to the position. Months have passed. I clearly didn't get the job, but someone certainly must have, I rationalized. They either haven't hired anyone or haven't hired anyone with the specified skills. Their website, the updating of which is the responsibility of the person in this position, still shows the position vacant.
And it's not just me and that one job. I know of dozens of jobs that have been vacant for months--and I don't mean a month or two, I mean seven, eight, nine months. And what are the job seekers left to do? Apply to the job again? And again? And again?
Surely there is something to be said about the number and quality of those seeking jobs. A major problem, from my perspective continues to be the hiring process itself. No hiring manager should need to see excessive work samples, ask for free work to be done or interview a pool of candidates four or five times.
More problematic still is the number of jobs listed on various sites and the number of people being hired over the due course of time is not equivalent. If a company gets 100 perfect candidates, it doesn't do anything to the jobless tally if those companies decide, at long last, to hire nobody.
Now where is the news article discussing this notion?
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