Hey, recruiting! Are you ready for a career change?
By Aishwarya Suresh, Cofounder @ Enrole
Earlier last week, Twitter announced that if its employees are “in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever,” they are able to do so. Other tech giants, namely Google and Apple, have extended their work from home policies indefinitely.
In other words, the days of moving to Silicon Valley to be a tech entrepreneur, or moving to New York City to pursue a career in Finance may be of the past.
So, what does this mean for startups? In the past, the biggest hiring struggles startups faced were their lack of recruiters, an established brand, and competitive salaries. But, what if the workforce moves remote? What if location is no longer a limiting factor?
For one, organizations in general will face an influx of candidates. However, is our current hiring system and job market ready for this?
The short answer is no.
The current hiring system involves several practices of the past with inefficiencies built-in:
- Faux sense of equality
In certain companies, a candidate pool is already identified before a job posting is made in order to align with budget cycles. So, what does this mean? Hiring managers may have a few candidates in mind — either through past experiences or references — prior to the posting even being made public. This leaves the candidate blind-sighted.
2. Postings become stale
Though some websites have built-in expiry dates for job postings, there are several instances where a posting has been filled but has not been cleared from a website. This results in blurred visibility: the applicant does not know if the posting has been filled or if they will even be considered, and the recruiter is flooded with emails and applications positions that have been filled.
3. Lack of personality
In the current hiring/recruiting landscape, personality is not showcased until the interview. How will you know if this candidate will represent your company well? There is no mechanism to gauge a candidate’s fit for a company’s cultures or values. More importantly, there is no real way to sense their professionalism, their intrinsic motivation, their ability to work hard, and their ability to be creative. In fact, several recruiters have even admitted that they assume if a candidate is self-driven or hardworking based on the contents of their resume. But, let’s pause for a second and realize that the keyword is “assume;” there is no real way to tell.
Even if some firms do choose to value the personality of candidates — which is very hard to do in the current landscape — their process takes an awful long time and way too many interviews. Personality should be at the front-end of the recruiting process.
4. Recruiting takes too much time
Why should recruiting be limited to a 4-hour career fair on a Friday. In fact, why should I even have to sit down and pull out my laptop for talent sourcing. According to Time.com, the average human’s attention span is 8 seconds. We need a next generation recruiting platform tailored to our current needs.
In other words, the current system focuses on candidate elimination rather than candidate selection. Hiring managers and recruiters often find themselves increasing the barriers to entry in order to limit their candidate pool. This practice is not one of mal-intent; companies just want the best of the best. Rather, this practice is used primarily because there is no other option; there are very few recruiting platforms focused on selection.
However, COVID-19 has forced the need for disruption in this industry — particularly as Gen Z enters the job market. The world is ready for the next generation of recruiting, and this next-gen method is personality-driven and mobile-first.
In a forthcoming blog, we will be giving our take on potential solutions to the problems outlined above.
To learn more visit www.enroleapp.com
