Is Recruiting the Laziest Part Of A Company?

It would seem so.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-steps-recruiters-use-select-best-r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9s-bob-mcintosh-cprw-mbti?trk=hp-feed-article-title-comment

Look how hard they work to avoid doing their job.  First they have the computer flush 75% or more of the people applying.

First, reduce the number of résumés to be read

By now you’ve heard about the applicant tracking system (ATS) and understand its purpose, to eliminate as many résumés to read as possible. Simply stated, it screens résumés for keywords and phrases. Those without the proper keywords don’t make the cut.

To give you an idea of the sheer number of applicant for each job: according to Jobvite.com, nearly 100 résumés are submitted for professional positions and 150 for other entry level.

The ATS effectively eliminates 75% of résumés submitted for a position, but even reading 25 résumés can be a burden

Heaven forbid they should actually read the resumes people send to them.

And the ones that get glanced at?

Second, read the 25 out of 100 résumés chosen by the ATS

Even after the résumés have made it through the ATS, recruiters will take approximately six to ten seconds to read each one to determine if it’s worth a second view.

Recruiters’ job is to look for résumés to disqualify from consideration, rather than qualify them for consideration. It’s a process of elimination. Résumés that make the cut are placed in the “must read” pile.

It’s said that the sales job starts with the customer saying no.  But what happens when you can’t even make the sale because the person reading the resume doesn’t understand the job. So the recruiters concentrate on superficialities.

Third, read the résumés in the “must read” pile

A closer look tells recruiters if the résumés have what it takes based on:

• Readability: the résumés contain short paragraphs, with no more than three or four lines. Important points are bulleted. Important text is highlighted in bold to stand out from the rest of the text.
• Accomplishments stand out: they are measurable with numbers, dollars, and percentages. Executive résumés, according to Laura Smith-Proulx are quantified.
• Shorter is better—two pages—but I’ve spoken with recruiters who will read three- even four-page résumés. The more pages, the easier the ATS to see you, my dear.
• Demographics: Determine if the applicants’ demographics fit the role. Does he live close enough to the company? Does his work history show too much or enough years of experience? What size companies has the applicant worked at?

So, so far nothing related here as a criteria actually relates to the work at hand.  It’s all making an effort to eliminate people, for reasons that have nothing to with the work. Finally, if your lucky.

Fo(u)rth, determine which two, three, or four résumés to submit to the hiring manager

The recruiter’s reputation is riding on the best candidates to submit to the HM, so the résumés must impress him. He must be sold on the candidates’ accomplishments, which must be relevant.

For example, although a candidate has outstanding accomplishments as an individual contributor—increased revenue 80% by generating business in uncharted territory—but the job calls for a person with management experience, he probably isn’t a good fit.

Personality fit is also key in the recruiter’s decision. But how does the recruiter see candidates’ personality in a résumé? It’s not an easy task for the job seeker to accomplish, but a résumé that demonstrates a human voice without use of fluff and cliches is preferred.

The use of personal pronouns is typically frowned upon, but when used sparingly can emphasize the job seeker’s skills and accomplishments. By sparingly I mean used only in the Performance Profile section.

Finally the recruiter actually is passing something to the person who actually can make a decision. By this point though, the actual best candidate has probably been flushed by the system.

Fifth, defend the recruiter’s choice to the hiring manager

A well written résumé should not be difficult to defend. After all, it has passed the ATS, the six-second glance, a more extensive review, has presented relevant accomplishments, and has given the recruiter a sense of the job seeker’s personality…as best it can.

But the résumé is a document that can’t reveal as much as the interviews conducted by the recruiter, HR, and the hiring manager. This is a the first step in the process, albeit a very important step. The recruiter must sound convincing when she presents her decision to the HM, perhaps second guessing the choices she’s made. Let the interviews begin.

The recruiter’s job isn’t make those decisions.  Her job is to give the hiring manager OPTIONs which this process is designed to avoid.  The recruiter shouldn’t have t defend anything other than not giving the Hiring manager the options he needs.  The fact that the recruiters are taking upon themselves and flushing people based on irrelevancies only makes the Hiring Manager’s job harder in the long run.

Recruiting people must be the LAZIEST people in company. Horrors, that they must read a whole 100 resumes. Doing that might actually be work. Well that ATS can weed that down. Now lets look at this just a bit differently. That’s 75 sales leads the company just flushed. That’s 75 people that the ATS has pissed off for them. The people applying for those jobs are not applicants, but future business leads, vendors or customers. All because recruiting doesn’t want to do their jobs. Look it’s easy to look at recruiting as separate from the rest of the business. It’s not very smart though, in the long run.

https://davidhuntpe.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/thanks-now-buzz-off/

Ultimately flushing people will hurt the business.  For that matter taking the hiring decision away from the people most qualified to make that decision, the hiring manager will likely lead to bad hires.  The fact is that recruiters are not qualified to make the judgment calls that they have taken upon themselves.  In the long run this will hurt the business and the company.

In the end all you are doing is hunting purple squirrels. And recruiters, if this how you are conducting business, how do you recognize talent when you have it.  Look, real talent doesn’t want to waste their time threading the labyrinth and fighting Minotaurs created by stupid recruiting policies.  All we want to do is get back to doing the jobs we do so well.

Look we’re out there.  The talent that you recruiters say you want so much.  The problem is that You people have set up so many lines of noncommunication that the system is broken.  Unfortunately we the talent can’t fix it.  We’re tired of fighting a system that works so hard to fail.  You people aren’t just flushing resumes, you’re failing, badly because, for some strange reason your afraid to work for your own success.  But your failure, recruiters is everybody’s failure.