The joys of recruiting

[cheekymeerkat]

I'm really want to know why so many people apply for jobs outside of their salary range, or jobs outside of their experience/competence?

For example, I had a position for warehouse manager paying 25k (small warehouse). When inviting to interviews, some people would say they need £35k or £45k, so no good to them - so why apply if you knew the salary? It wastes everyone's time.

The same goes for people who apply for supervisory positions, despite having no experience in that role. The ad says minimum 2 years supervisory experience, but most applications were from people with no supervisor experience whatsoever. Why bother?

Any recruiters here that can offer advice?

[coldel]

Not a recruiter but I would say its because its easy as anything to apply for jobs online nowadays IF the recruiting company just asks for CVs. (there was a big debate on this a while back!). You will just get chancers that scatter gun the online space at hundreds of jobs with the same CV with no care about the role they are applying for - which pushes all the onus on you to sort through it all wasting your time.

Make the application process more involving, even if its so that the applicant has to write say 50 words on why they think they would be good for the role. That should help reduce down the wasters.

Assuming its a job you have put online etc!

[mmm-five]

On the flip side, I regularly do short-term contracts covering roles where they're recruiting for a permanent member.

If I find I like the role, and I haven't got another contract to go to, I will sometimes apply for it too.

The last time I worked for a certain Mac agency was for a magazine publisher as a typesetter (was really general magazine layout/DTP though). The job spec didn't make the role very clear, but I applied based on what I knew about the role.

I didn't even get an interview, and when I was asked by the manager why I hadn't applied - and I told her I had - she checked with HR and was it was because HR thought I didn't have the correct experience - despite me coming in cold on day 1 and doing the job for 3 months without needing any help/support/training from any other member of staff.

When I finally met the successful candidate - as I was to hand over the role to her - I found out that she had no experience in this role whatsoever, had just come out of unsuccessful teacher training course and was only recruited because she 'seemed keen'.

I bet they didn't even read half of the applications that they received.

[Womble6]

You have 3 options really.

A. Get your HR team to pre-screen people. If you don't have an HR team then,
B. Get a recruiter on board who'll qualify candidates before putting them forward to you. If you can afford or justify paying a recruiter then,
C. Phone interview people before doing a face to face, saves time for everyone.

I'm not a recruiter but have done lots of recruitment. By far your best option, if you can justify the cost, is to get a good recruiter on board.

[67Dino]

Best advice I was given was that a good job advert should be as much about putting off unsuitable candidates as attracting suitable ones.

An exercise is a really good idea. For an innovation job we asked people for a 2 minute video on their favourite innovation. Fantastic way of removing time wasters and identifying those who were seriously interested.

[Vaud]

67Dino said:

An exercise is a really good idea. For an innovation job we asked people for a 2 minute video on their favourite innovation. Fantastic way of removing time wasters and identifying those who were seriously interested.

I agree 100%. For some recent roles we have had sales people pitch into a "dragons den" - any business idea, didn't have to be real - we were open that we wanted to test their presentation skills, not their content. Amazing how bad some turned out.

[skwdenyer]

cheekymeerkat said:

I'm really want to know why so many people apply for jobs outside of their salary range, or jobs outside of their experience/competence?

For example, I had a position for warehouse manager paying 25k (small warehouse). When inviting to interviews, some people would say they need £35k or £45k, so no good to them - so why apply if you knew the salary? It wastes everyone's time.

The same goes for people who apply for supervisory positions, despite having no experience in that role. The ad says minimum 2 years supervisory experience, but most applications were from people with no supervisor experience whatsoever. Why bother?

Any recruiters here that can offer advice?

I used to work in recruitment (10 years experience including running my own firms, in case that matters - but see below!).

On the matter of salary, some employers will pay more for better people. Some may have other roles available. But anyhow, applying costs nothing. You should really be at the very least pre-screening on paper and then following-up by telephone before bringing people in for interview.

Humans are humans...

If "most" did not have the "right" experience then I would probably look again at the salary level, the ad wording, the job title, and more generally at the available candidate pool. There's usually a mis-match somewhere, which is something that a good recruiter would probably be able to help you with.

As regards experience more generally, is your role one of the very few for which duration of experience and ability correlate? Supervisory talent is assessable; duration of experience is not in itself a good guide to (or proxy for) ability. If you get someone who is super in all other regard, is there no benefit to you offering a little mentoring whilst they get up to speed?

[AyBee]

cheekymeerkat said:

The ad says minimum 2 years supervisory experience, but most applications were from people with no supervisor experience whatsoever. Why bother?

If everyone had to have 2 years supervisory experience to be a supervisor, how would anyone ever become a supervisor?

Just because somebody doesn't have the exact skillset doesn't mean that they aren't suitable. Isn't it your job to filter those and work out who might be suitable? Or is it just easier to fling CVs over where people already have experience and see what sticks?

[skwdenyer]

AyBee said:

cheekymeerkat said:

The ad says minimum 2 years supervisory experience, but most applications were from people with no supervisor experience whatsoever. Why bother?

If everyone had to have 2 years supervisory experience to be a supervisor, how would anyone ever become a supervisor?

Just because somebody doesn't have the exact skillset doesn't mean that they aren't suitable. Isn't it your job to filter those and work out who might be suitable? Or is it just easier to fling CVs over where people already have experience and see what sticks?

Is the OP a recruiter?

[rog007]

skwdenyer said:

As regards experience more generally, is your role one of the very few for which duration of experience and ability correlate? Supervisory talent is assessable; duration of experience is not in itself a good guide to (or proxy for) ability. If you get someone who is super in all other regard, is there no benefit to you offering a little mentoring whilst they get up to speed?

Correct.

Experience expressed in time is no guarantee of competence. They could have been underperforming for the whole two years you’ve asked for.

There is no silver bullet for finding the best candidate for a role. It’s a time consuming and expensive venture if you try to do it well. Which is why most do it poorly and wonder why they struggle at every juncture of the process. And then they have to do it more often as they find poor-fit candidates that leave early or are moved on due to under-performance. Buy well, buy once is a saying that is applicable.

I see organisations putting more effort in to selecting their IT systems and office furniture than they do finding the best people to operate those systems.

Of course it’s not easy, otherwise this thread and the hundreds of recruitment firms that exist wouldn’t be here.

But there is good practice if you seek it out. It does take time and in some cases money to do it well, but when done well, the results can be amazing.