Why is the recruitment process not working?

Why is the recruitment process not working?

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Discussion

Fiddly-Dee

Original Poster:

23 posts

118 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
By far the most common complaint amongst employers, be they small, medium or large, is the dearth of suitable candidates to fill roles, across the full spectrum of their hierarchies.

Similarly, there are many well-qualified and experienced people who bemoan their inability to land a "decent" job.

The role of the recruitment process, whether internal or outsourced to an agenct, is the marrying up of the above 2 parties, yet something seems to be broken. I do not recall it being this way 20 or so years ago, so what has changed? I suspect a combination of factors, but I would be very interested in the views of those better qualified than I.

Orchid1

877 posts

107 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
Recruitment consultants are the sneakiest slimiest most dishonest people i've ever come across who lie, lie and lie again in order to make shady deals and protect their commission.

I don't know if there already is one but if not there should be an independent body set up to monitor them and deal with complaints.

MitchT

15,788 posts

208 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
The old fashioned way was to start at the bottom and work your way up, so people higher up knew what they were looking for in a person to undertake a role lower down because they'd been there. The modern way is for 'career politicians' to bullst their way into senior management positions. They haven't actually worked their way up through the ranks and haven't done a day's real work in their lives, so they haven't a clue how to recruit good people as they've no idea what they're actually looking for and what constitutes a good match for a role. These people are usually very good at saying the right things to the right people so have no difficulty selling themselves to the directors who employ them, but are then utterly worthless to a business. However, their ongoing stream of bullst ensures that they're well liked. They usually hire people who aren't going to be a threat to them, not people who will be good for the company.

truck71

2,328 posts

171 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
I wonder if employers are too prescriptive in their approach. I always look for reasons to employ someone rather than the other way round, the latter being very common. Trying to pigeon hole people is a mistake IMO.
Employees often feel poorly led and find themselves demotivated which realises itself at interview as frustration impairing they're chances of getting hired.
Leadership is often confused with knowledge and technical ability,just because you're a good engineer doesn't make you a good head of engineering.
The policy of auto mated selection whilst time efficient doesn't pick out the finer nuances of people's cv s often missing out on good candidates who could be developed.
Just my tuppence worth.

Edited by truck71 on Sunday 23 October 15:18

Flooble

5,565 posts

99 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
In the old days the employer could place an advert in the local paper and thus interview the few local staff who were suitable. Relatively painless and not much overhead. Everywhere was a lot smaller and more connected too, so word-of-mouth carried a lot. In order to apply for a job the applicant had to sit down and spend a fair amount of time typing a copy of their CV plus covering letter, thinking fairly hard about whether they could fit the role and it was what they wanted.

This meant that candidates were pre-filtered on location, ability and desire to take the role. The hiring manager role is relatively easy.

Nowadays nobody reads the help wanted section local paper, if it even exists. If an employer is brave enough to place an advert on an internet site such as Monster, it is simple for applicants to apply for 300 jobs in a few minutes with identikit CVs, crammed full of keywords.

This makes the job of the hiring manager much harder as it is necessary to wade through people who clearly didn't read the advert before applying. Either they are 300 miles away and won't relocate or they have none of the necessary skills. If you are decent, like me, you actually make the effort to respond to every person - which quickly consumes your day. Especially if you are really nice and ask people if they actually meant to send in a CV which appears to show they have been out of work since 2012 and that job was on a cattle farm in Brazil (no, really, it happened - the guy had done a summer job and never bothered to update his pro-forma CV before firing it out willy-nilly).

With lots of the CVs being designed just to pass keyword filters, you then have to expend effort in interviewing people to discover if they actually know what they have put on their CV. Something of an arms race has taken place where companies load up job adverts with skills and competencies in an attempt to filter out unsuitable applicants; in return applicants add keywords for skills which they don't really have because they suspect that it isn't a real requirement of the role and is just being used as a filter. Unfortunately that means needing to test every single item on the CV for veracity as you don't know which are the "fake" skills.

Then we add into the mix recruitment agents, who fill the jobsites with adverts (they generally pay pennies to place an ad as they buy so many, thus they can afford to post the same advert every day and push the "real" adverts down the results). This means that 95% of the adverts on a jobsite are placed by agents and quite often are to one degree or another "fake" (either a duplicate advert, with agents actually copying each others; a totally made up role; a role that was filled but is still being spammed out and so on). So applicants can't take time to carefully put their heart and soul into an application as they may be expending hours on applying for a vacancy which doesn't exist - thus they resort to spamming all the adverts with a generic CV.

It's a pretty miserable place on both sides, with huge amounts of human time and effort going to waste.

I now try to use alternative routes, such as local Meetup groups and word of mouth - just like in the old days!

davepoth

29,395 posts

198 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
Orchid1 said:
Recruitment consultants are the sneakiest slimiest most dishonest people i've ever come across who lie, lie and lie again in order to make shady deals and protect their commission.

I don't know if there already is one but if not there should be an independent body set up to monitor them and deal with complaints.
One will be on to complain in a minute, but I've only met one that did their job properly. All of the others just relied on scraping up as many CVs as they could and then shovelling as many of them as they could at a potential employer in the hope that one of their candidates would get the job - essentially working on the assumption that the interview process is no better than a throw of the dice.

Orchid1

877 posts

107 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
davepoth said:
One will be on to complain in a minute, but I've only met one that did their job properly. All of the others just relied on scraping up as many CVs as they could and then shovelling as many of them as they could at a potential employer in the hope that one of their candidates would get the job - essentially working on the assumption that the interview process is no better than a throw of the dice.
Exactly and if you dare have the audacity to stick to your guns when being interviewed by a recruitment consultant and tell them that no you won't work for 40% less than what the job should be paying you're effectively blacklisted (sometimes in an entire city) never to be put forward for a job again.

MitchT

15,788 posts

208 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
The OH has changed jobs on average every couple of years since she graduated almost 15 years ago. She's had ongoing dialogues with a number of recruiters the whole time, but never actually been placed by one.

Flooble

5,565 posts

99 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
I have met a few decent recruitment agents, there is a spectrum.

I would estimate that 95% of the recruitment industry is based around the numbers game, cutting both ways. I receive calls every day from agents asking if I have any vacancies and wanting to push speculative CVs onto me (which are always refused since the agency T&Cs then prevent you from employing that person for 6-12 months, unless you stump up an eye-watering amount. Equally I receive calls (or, more usually, just mail-merged emails) asking if I would be interested in XYZ role - a lot of which are totally wrong.

However, I have had possibly 2-3 good agents. Who don't bother you unless they either have (a) the perfect role for you (on the "getting a job" site or (b) came in to meet us only when we ask them to and take the time to work with us on a job description, advising likely salary bands, showing exemplar CVs for us to gauge the candidates we might get. Then provide a shortlist of properly filtered candidates all of whom could actually do the job so the interview only needs to be for cultural fit.


Tomo1971

1,127 posts

156 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
MitchT said:
The old fashioned way was to start at the bottom and work your way up, so people higher up knew what they were looking for in a person to undertake a role lower down because they'd been there. The modern way is for 'career politicians' to bullst their way into senior management positions. They haven't actually worked their way up through the ranks and haven't done a day's real work in their lives, so they haven't a clue how to recruit good people as they've no idea what they're actually looking for and what constitutes a good match for a role. These people are usually very good at saying the right things to the right people so have no difficulty selling themselves to the directors who employ them, but are then utterly worthless to a business. However, their ongoing stream of bullst ensures that they're well liked. They usually hire people who aren't going to be a threat to them, not people who will be good for the company.
Short version - they can talk the talk but not walk the walk.


bad company

18,483 posts

265 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
davepoth said:
Orchid1 said:
Recruitment consultants are the sneakiest slimiest most dishonest people i've ever come across who lie, lie and lie again in order to make shady deals and protect their commission.

I don't know if there already is one but if not there should be an independent body set up to monitor them and deal with complaints.
One will be on to complain in a minute, but I've only met one that did their job properly. All of the others just relied on scraping up as many CVs as they could and then shovelling as many of them as they could at a potential employer in the hope that one of their candidates would get the job - essentially working on the assumption that the interview process is no better than a throw of the dice.
Took longer than a minute to get here but I am happy to speak up for the recruitment industry. I started my agency in 1989 and sold it as a very successful business in 2012. If you do it right you get good clients and candidates (workers) coming back to you again and again. They also recommend you to others. The problem is that the industry attracts a lot of people who think it's easy money and owners who want to play the CV numbers game.

ChasW

2,135 posts

201 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
Many good points made here. I blame both sides. On balance my experience of the recruitment industry leaves much to be desired for the reasons stated. Things get better at the top end as head-hunters have to protect their reputations and the really good ones know their clients inside out and conduct thorough due diligence on recommended candidates. However I have also witnessed poor practice amomg employers. When I arrived at my last company job descriptions were poorly written to start with. When a new role was created managers would copy and paste from existing JDs and cobble something together and pass it onto a recruiter. Interviews were usually "off the cuff", ie poorly planned and conducted. No-one ever really stopped to analyse what was really required and how we would know when we were presented with the right candidate. Much of the blame can be traced back to de-layering of management starting in the 90s. Fortunately I worked for companies that took "management", ie the competency, seriously as well as having strong enough cultures and value systems that encouraged hiring managers to recruit people better than themselves. Now we have a situation where the poorly trained are developing the next generation so I can't see standards improving.

Ms R.Saucy

284 posts

89 months

Sunday 23rd October 2016
quotequote all
Fiddly-Dee said:
By far the most common complaint amongst employers, be they small, medium or large, is the dearth of suitable candidates to fill roles, across the full spectrum of their hierarchies.

Similarly, there are many well-qualified and experienced people who bemoan their inability to land a "decent" job.

The role of the recruitment process, whether internal or outsourced to an agenct, is the marrying up of the above 2 parties, yet something seems to be broken. I do not recall it being this way 20 or so years ago, so what has changed? I suspect a combination of factors, but I would be very interested in the views of those better qualified than I.
prejudice on behalf of employers

Who wouldn't want a experienced graduate , with extensive experience of managing teams in delivering a time and life critical service in highly regulated environments to manage their fast moving environment ... ? But of course that doesn't matter when said graduate is a 'willy washer' as I believe the peanut gallery on PH call Registered Nurses or an 'ambulance driver' ( Paramedic) ...

same with people who cannot or will not accept the civilian 'translation' of the responsibilities of NCOs in the military ...

Terminator X

14,921 posts

203 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
Orchid1 said:
Recruitment consultants are the sneakiest slimiest most dishonest people i've ever come across who lie, lie and lie again in order to make shady deals and protect their commission.

I don't know if there already is one but if not there should be an independent body set up to monitor them and deal with complaints.
This, complete s.

TX.

bad company

18,483 posts

265 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
Terminator X said:
Orchid1 said:
Recruitment consultants are the sneakiest slimiest most dishonest people i've ever come across who lie, lie and lie again in order to make shady deals and protect their commission.

I don't know if there already is one but if not there should be an independent body set up to monitor them and deal with complaints.
This, complete s.

TX.
Funny how those able to do it well can be so successful then. thumbup

Zad

12,695 posts

235 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
The big employment agencies certainly seem to have a big staff turnover. I'm forever getting emails to both my business and private email addresses (I run a small electronics design business) from people who have just moved onto someone else's desk and are either "just wondering" if they could send some CVs my way, or if I might be interested in some roles they have going. I'm amazed I haven't been offered my own CV yet, regurgitated from when I registered with them 15 years ago. I wonder if they move on to estate agencies, pharmaceutical reps, or the other sort of pharmaceutical trading. Certainly enough of them seem to be very "eager" and "enthusiastic", both on the phone and face to face.

To answer the original question, recruiters (not agents) seem to think it is their God given right to be able to demand a person who already knows every aspect of the job, their internal corporate culture, never needs training and is psychic. Training quite often consists of "there you are, get on with it", and is done mostly by recruiting people from elsewhere, where their education has been paid for by someone else. Way too much emphasis on the twiddly details of knowing Adobe Umbongo 39.7 for MacOS X Furtleberry or whatever, and not enough on the actual human being.

There are some really good agents out there, usually in smaller businesses, who take time to get to know people. These are worth their weight in crocus stamens, and possibly bull semen. In the nicest way. People without a bit of an odd sniff and reactions like a Jack Russell on caffeine.

4x4Tyke

6,506 posts

131 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
The "Why?" is quite straight forward imho. The race to the bottom with agencies competing with lower fees, largely driven by their clients, employers. The market is 'slimy', because that is what the market is currently choosing.

HR is generally considered a cost centre and not an investment in a revenue source. If companies really consider their staff to be their greatest asset they would recognise the need to invest in getting and retaining the very best fit. The employees value needs to be included. Their cost of replacement if it doesn't work out or they get poached again in 6 months.

Employers should select better agencies, not just on up front cost, but metrics the employees' value to the company.

A solution that I have seen work very well is bringing the process largely back in-house with dedicated a "Talent Acquisition" team, working closely with existing staff to approach recommended present and former colleagues first; can make good use of social media, and participating in local meetups. The latter was one of the most interesting to observe in action for me when I was asked to give presentations at a couple of these for my then employer. These generated very good speculative applications. What started out as an idea to raise brand awareness became a very effective corner stone of recruitment.

As an aside, the Talent team was recruited from disaffected recruitment agents, not HR background.


Edited by 4x4Tyke on Monday 24th October 10:54

andy-xr

13,204 posts

203 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
From employers:

It used to be the case before 2008 that an employer would take a candidate that had 70-80% of what they were looking for, they'd train them on the remaining. By 2012, employers wanted 150% of the Must HAve skills for 70% of the salary. Expectations changed.

The way in which many businesses function has also changed. It's drummed into you from school, get a job, work hard, you'll get promoted and one day Rodders, this'll all be yours.

Employers now recruit for a role, a function, something that they need to be fixed or get done. There's less scope now for promotion and wage rises. In many cases as an employee, your best wage rise will come at your next interview.

From employees
Employees are getting more savvy and realise that work isnt the be all and end all. Usually after being short changed a few times and thinking back to what they were told in Careers lessons at school, then working out they were lied to by their teacher and by the guy who interviewed them. The 'work hard, you'll be rewarded' was supposed to mean you'll be trained up, promoted, get a pay increase and more responsibility. What people find out is the reward is to be able to get to come back next month/quarter.

It is hard to get good people, because some are like jilted exes and others are psychos on both sides of the interview table. Employers expect too much for the money they're putting up, employees twice shy


55palfers

5,892 posts

163 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
Remember the Personnel & Welfare department(s)? Staffed by a few "mature" and experienced individuals with genuine people skills. Maybe also did the wages?

Certainly did all the recruitment. They knew the recruiting manager and the job. Along with the profile of the individual needed to fulfil the role and ensure a good fit with the company culture and existing staff.

Then it became HR. They were given laptops and PowerPoint. Got good at Maslow et al. "People are our most important asset you know"

Yes, I am an old cynic but in too many companies, the Bridge has become too remote from the Engine Room.


Foliage

3,861 posts

121 months

Monday 24th October 2016
quotequote all
Combination of slimy recruitment consultants and clueless untrained 40-50yo female HR/Talent Managers/Recruiters in business's who don't understand the business or the role they are recruiting for.