Following the recent Wall Street Journal article “Some Firms Struggle to Hire Despite High Unemployment,” a reader commented:
“The process of cutting through employment clutter has become so convoluted that great candidates are lost in the shuffle. All the keyword matching in the world won’t help you understand a candidate’s character, work ethic and potential. Employers think they are entitled to “cherry pick” to such a high degree that great applicants are being passed over. These applicants then get weary of a faceless process where their online applications go into a black hole that never gives any feedback. The system is broken. The barriers are high. Each side is screaming for help, but the other side can’t hear. Let’s stop bemoaning the problem and start figuring out how to change the system and bring people together.”
Candidates send resumes into a black hole and expect nothing. Companies are inundated with resume flow and do not have the resources necessary to review and respond to each one. Both sides really are screaming for help. This week we outline some of the reasons why the resume system isn’t working.
The why is actually pretty easy. The pipes are too full. Access is easy and too many solutions have evolved with business models that rely on a heavy resume flow to monetize their efforts. The big job boards sell their value by promoting the large number of resumes they hold. Job post aggregators take postings from everywhere and make them available to everyone. And even if these positions are filled, the posting remain on the boards or floating around the Internet for weeks resulting in more flow. And of course we have resume scrapers and blasters. Scrapers get every resume they can and sell them to as many as possible. Blasters charge candidates to send their resume to every company possible.
All of these efforts are designed to make a buck first, not to make it efficient to put the right talent with the right position in the right company.
I can already hear the screams from vendors stating, “How dare you!” but having recruited on the Internet since 1990, founder of one of the early software companies in the space and having been around most of the solutions for years, I feel I’ve earned the right to have an opinion.
So the solution? Join me next week, where I’ll share a few ideas about how to unclog the resume pipeline while still being profitable and beneficial. Remember there is a gracious solution that stops both sides screaming.
