Time wasting
Understanding the business problem, not the skills
Everyone thats ever been a recruiter has had their time wasted. In fact everyone who is a recruiter gets there time wasted weekly and in fact the hiring process itself can waste hours of everyone’s time and regularly does.
Ever interviewed someone and thought.. why are we interviewing this person?
You are not alone, in fact unless you take a careful measured approach to each hire and question the job descriptions that you are presented with line by line this will keep happening to you.
Most try and beat the system using qualification, they qualify everything. They qualify which skills are needed, they qualify if the candidate has every skill, they learn about the skills needed for the role, they learn and qualify and learn and qualify some more.
Yet they still have their time wasted and nothing hurts more than when the hiring manager eventually fills the role with an absolute outlier that from the recruiters understanding shouldn’t have got past the screening.
Why? I hear people say.
There is no single answer to this or a way to stop it happening. My suggestion for recruiters and hiring managers that get this a lot is rip up the current job description and write a completely new one from scratch. Forget templates and long bullet lists, focus on what the person needs to do this job and what this job is.
When taking the new brief think about it like this;
Imagine the brief as a list of parts needed to build a car. Now think one level beyond, how do the bits fit together. Now finally once the car is built, where is it going?
This last part is the business context, with this you can build a more compelling case to hire someone than just someone who ticks the bullet points off.
Additionally
Explore;
Where they most likely work now?
What they are doing at that place, job title etc
Where that place is in relation to your role
What will they be doing day-to-day in your role, and is that different to their current role?
Why is your role interesting?
Are you paying enough?
What are the 3 things they 100% MUST have (everything else is a bonus), example, previous related experience, sector experience, interest in your company
Now only focus on those 3 things, then try switching it up to 3 different criteria, compare the results, iterate and repeat if needed
This may sound sound simplistic but the reality of long template based job descriptions is they are the root of time wasted. Candidates qualify themselves in by hitting 70% of the bullets in the job description. If you have 10 bullets in the advert they believe they are a good fit if they have 7 out of 10. Guess which 3 things they often don’t have?
In reality they are not a good fit and you just wasted their time and yours.
How many sales people have 70% of the skills needed for most roles that have more than 10 bullets?
Answer, almost every sales person alive.
The reality of this scenario is the person eventually hired will probably only have one of these attributes at best and that’s where the outliers come in. Maybe someone with contacts in the industry that previously sold something seemingly unrelated but knows the Owners’ son!