Job Recruiting Is Kaput

Posted by • May 17th, 2010 • 97 Comments

The process used to put people in jobs is really, really broken. Within the recruiting and HR professions, scant attention is being paid to a quality control problem of gargantuan proportion. With 50 million job changes made each year (even when the economy is as wretched as it is), a huge component of the economy is just not working properly.

John Sullivan, a recruiting guru, laid out an enormous number of statistics around hiring failures. Here are some of the high points:

  • “Within a year, hiring managers regret 50% of the hiring decisions they make.” – Recruiting Roundtable
  • “46% overall hiring failure rate and a modest 19% great hire success rate.” – LeadershipIQ
  • “Only 10% of attempts to hire a top performer are successful.”  - Recruiting Roundtable
  • “Nearly two-thirds of hiring managers come to regret their interview-based hiring decisions.”  - DDI
  • “Of all the ‘perfect resumes’ sent out by mystery shopper candidates, only 12% were actually scheduled for interviews.” – Hodes™ Healthcare
  • “Nearly half of new executive hires quit or are fired within the first 18 months at a new employer.” – Corporate Leadership Council

So hiring is a crap shoot.

From the perspective of the people writing the pay checks, the odds are no better than flipping a coin that the next hire will feel right in retrospect. In the 2009 edition of an annual job satisfaction survey conducted for The Conference Board, only 45 percent of Americans said they were satisfied with their jobs, which is a marked drop from the more than 61 percent who said they were satisfied in 1987, the first year the survey was conducted.

It looks like both sides agree. The hiring process is kaput. You might notice that if both sides see a 50% failure rate, the odds are 1 in 4 that you and your boss will be satisfied with your next job.

Hiring ought to be seen as a process that just begins at the point where employment begins. Both employee and manager are faced with a period of getting acquainted and ought to have guidelines and support for making the relationship and the work, well, work. Unfortunately, most recruiting stops just as the relationship is getting started.

There are a number of disciplines that might have an effect on these statistics after the hiring decision is made.  On boarding, which is the process of attempting to ensure the success of a new hire, is increasingly well understood. Retention programs are becoming the object of serious quantitative analysis. These approaches will help but can’t undo the damage done by getting the wrong person into the job.

It is worth considering the fact that hiring failures make for recruiter job security. Under most circumstances, there is little incentive for a recruiter to care for or try to influence the success of a new hire. Just the opposite is true. Recruiters depend on high attrition rates as a part of their role in the company. If recruiters were constantly generating great hires, you’d need far fewer of them.

Guest Blogger John Sumser, a member of the Glassdoor Clearview Collection, is the founder and editor-in-chief of HRExaminer, a weekly online magazine about the people and technology of HR. Widely respected as an independent analyst, Sumser has been chronicling and critiquing the HRTechnology industry for eighteen years. During that time, he has consulted with more than 100 HR vendors on matters of strategy and positioning in the market. Prior to his involvement in the HR Technology industry, Sumser was a senior executive in Defense Technology. From large scale software development to naval architecture, he was the leader of tech development teams in a broad variety of settings. His passion is the intersection of people and technology.

Tags:
, , , ,
Categories:
Career Advice, Interviews
  • annspoor

    As a recruiting veteran, I care very much how my placed candidates are doing and follow-up with them on a regular basis. Those candidates have, over time, become my best clients. I will step in when something is not working to make sure that a line of communication is opened. I want to work with clients with a lower attrition rate. This is a compelling story when talking to a prospective candidate about an opportunity. What I see often however is a disconnect in the hiring process, not everyone is on the same page with the requirements. This leads to a disconnect in expectations and dissatisfaction down the road. I agree that many times organizations don't spend enough time on setting clear expectations from the interview forward, on-boarding and retention.

  • Jenn

    I agree completely with recruiting and hiring being broken. I recently interviewed for an excellent mid-level position, and was candidate #2. Number 1 was grossly overqualified and the pay would never meet their standards, but the business was “chic” so they applied intending to negotiate. Number 1 was selected due to obscene education and experience level because hiring was done on a point system, and that person scored the most points by being above and beyond in all categories. Then, when the person turned down the job due to pay, and left the premises not to be seen again, I wasn't allowed to re-apply according to HR policy, as I hadn't been hired first time. They were going to repeat the four month interview process again from scratch! Wow. Just, wow. In a more sane business that person would have been clearly overqualified and asked if they wanted to pursue a more appropriate role in the business, but in Bureaucracy Land they were the top candidate for the mid-level job.

    So, this time I skipped the recruiters. Thanks to the internet, direct office extensions are available to those who hunt. Instead of applying for the job, I went past the hiring managers and HR and left a 30 second, and very intriguing phone message on an administrator's answering machine. That individual has offered to meet in person to talk about employment with the company. I got a final round interview without having to deal with 30 layers of dungeon workers in HR who don't have enough industry knowledge to even know what on my CV is an asset. …They just follow a rubric written by an underling hiring manager because the functioning boss is too busy to do more than vaguely outline qualifications and duties.