Recruitment: An industry in disarray
Noel Daniels
F&B Expert | Leadership Consultant | Speaker | Author | Special Needs Advocate
As the world begins to disentangle itself from the mess that COVID 19 has left in its wake, the recruitment industry will be a key factor. Without a doubt recruitment will play a decisive role in global economic recovery. Not only as an emerging growth industry in its own right but also in the way it influences other industries and businesses. At the end of the day, recruiters hold enormous trans-formative power, not only in terms of direct impact as it relates to hiring practices and trends but also on an individual candidate level.
Realistically, practically an individual can have a profound impact on a company or industry especially when there is market flux as is the case worldwide at the present time. What this means, is that recruiters hold the power to influence business trends in a very real and tangible way. I am not suggesting some sort of Machiavellian power play by recruitment companies to control the fate of the world. The notion borders on the ridiculous; certainly there is no evidence to suggest the current trends are being orchestrated by conscious effort or that it is even possible. What I am suggesting is that the recruitment industry has profound influence on the modern workplace and because there is no central point of cohesion, that influence is largely playing out in a dangerous laissez faire manner. Again, I do not mean to sound alarmist but the truth is that if the recruitment industry is left unchecked, going forward it will cause irreparable damage to the way we vet and hire new candidates. Subsequently it will have a profound impact on social cohesion over the immediate future.
This is a huge topic and I would be remiss to attempt a full dive analysis in this forum. Instead I will attempt to highlight the major concerns in overview so that we can start a deeper discussion. The primary concerns as I see them are;
- Recruitment as an industry. In other words the fact that recruitment agencies are businesses and as such naturally prioritize the revenue stream over the prospective candidate or the prospective employer is problematic to say the least. Moreover the agencies primary source of income very often is neither the candidate nor the employer and for this reason we need to take a closer look at the economics that underlay the industry.
- The lack of cohesion between the stakeholders. The narrative of best practices when job hunting depends on the agenda of the stake holders. The fact that there is a lack of cohesion makes for an unsettling experience for all parties involved.
- The five second rule. In general a recruiter spends around five seconds reading a resume. The question is whether anyone can realistically be expected to form a constructive opinion in that space of time.
Before we delve into these issues, I would like to state that there are agencies and individual recruiters that exemplify humanity. Heroes in the true sense of the word, people that sacrifice their time and often their sanity in an unforgiving industry. To these people I offer a humble tip of the hat, my thanks and respect. Know that you are appreciated. So let us take these issues in turn and see how far we get.
Recruitment as an industry.
From the onset we run into conflicting agendas. Recruitment as an industry implies that there is money to be made. This further implies that the party spending the most gets to dictate the trends. When I first looked at recruitment from this perspective I believed that there were only two stakeholders to consider. The prospective employer and the prospective candidate and for the most part this holds true, especially for smaller recruitment agencies. However as the Recruitment Agencies grow in size a new factor is introduced… advertising. Surprisingly, the biggest revenue stream for the top recruiting agencies comes from advertising on their websites. But let’s put that aside for the moment.
The goal behind recruitment, on the surface purports to connect the right candidate to the right employer. In a perfect world this would be the case and remain so. However, the moment you attach money to the different aspects and stakeholders it all becomes a game of leverage, and the bigger the payoff the bigger the influence. In those cases where recruiters act ethically and with some degree of morality the fundamental goal is reached in a manner that benefits all parties. The candidate gets the best offer, the employer gets the best candidate and the recruiter makes some money. Unfortunately this is not the reality we live in. As the Industry grows and recruitment agencies get bigger, the focus centres on the recruitment agency’s bottom line. Furthermore, reputation becomes a commodity and soon enough the candidate is reduced to a means to an end where the employer’s interests are mitigated in favor of how much money changes hands.
As with all business ventures, even those that start off with noble intentions, the demand for revenue outweighs all considerations. This is a huge problem in the recruitment industry because it creates inevitable moments of conflicting interest. The most important of which is between the prospective candidate and the employer. In general the employer pays the recruiter a fee to collect candidate profiles and vet resumes. The tacit understanding is that the recruiter will put the best candidates forward for interviews. Generally speaking this means that the recruiter has a data base of vetted candidates or has the resources to bring candidates to the table. This is precisely what the employer pays for. However, if the recruiter then also takes money from the candidate to “highlight their profile” we have a clear conflict of interest. In this case the employer is robbed of time to interview a potentially better suited candidate if that candidate was unable or unwilling to pay for the “added service” offered by the recruiter. This is unfair to the both parties, and serves only to benefit the recruiter’s bottom line. Unfortunately, this is a common and accepted practise in the industry. To be fair this is more common with the bigger companies and to some extent small companies, however this goes to the very point I am making, as the Industry grows there needs to be more cohesion and certainly more oversight, to protect both parties interests. Ultimately we need to look at ways of protecting the integrity of the original exchange and promise of matching the best candidate to the position.
This disconnect between the original intention and the reality is further compounded by the fact the big recruiting agencies, are focused on racking in the advertising money. On the surface this is a non-issue however, the fact remains that the business relationship and primary financial impetus has shifted away from the employer-candidate dynamic. Although this seems nefarious, it actually offers a solution to the dilemma. If the revenue is driven by nonpartisan stakeholders it serves to restore the integrity of the employer-candidate dynamic. If this can be achieved we can begin to tie off this particular issue as it pertains to the broader social construct of having the best candidate in the position. This can only be a good thing for society at large and as we navigate a post COVID 19 world we are going to need the best people in the right positions.
There is a larger issue at play. The power of advertising, however that issue is a house of cards unto itself. The larger issue of ethics in advertising is a topic for several full volume books to be authored by smarter people than this commentator. Suffice to say that we need to have a much closer look at how internet traffic is directed to recruitment agency websites in order to ascertain where the pitfalls are. For the time being I think it is safe to say that the primary focus of recruitment should be to ensure the employer gets the best candidates available so that the possibility of connecting the best candidate to the right role has the highest chance of success. After all this is the original proposition on which the recruitment industry is built.
The lack of cohesion between the stakeholders
There is a clear lack of cohesion throughout the recruitment industry. On the surface the issue seems to be that fact that different agencies priorities different things, however this is the same for all industries. The true problem here seems to be that there are fundamental differences of opinions surrounding core issues. In most industries there are huge differences in company policies and SOP’s but there tends to be congruity on core issues. By and large this does not seem to be the case with recruitment industry.
Agencies and individual recruiters differ on core issues and this makes life difficult for those looking to navigate the plethora of pitfalls on their way to a new job. Take the issue of accepting money from candidates. Some recruiters say this is a vile practice and denounce it categorically. Others see it as an important revenue stream. Yet others are impartial and see it as the candidate’s choice. There are many divisive issues but I will focus on two issues that will serve to illustrate depths of the problem.
Firstly, what constitutes a good resume? A big segment of the industry centers on professional CV writing. This practice has become a growth industry unto itself. There are websites and companies that will write a CV for you and they all follow a particular format. They include graphics, text boxes, symbols, bullet points and most important the profile picture. The idea being to set the candidate apart by making a visual impact, funnily enough the result has been the production of thousands upon thousands of copy past CV’s that differs only in the profile picture. Yet professional recruiters will tell you the complete opposite with regard to CV writing. Specifically discouraging the use of symbols and text boxes in particular, the issue is divisive to the point of exasperation. Add the dreaded ATS system in the mix and you are lost for ever.
The ATS system uses Artificial Intelligence, phrase detection and key word detection algorithms to automatically vet CVs. The problem is that ATS can’t read picture, text boxes or symbols nor can it detect text smaller than 11 point font size. How then is a candidate supposed to fit all their information on the recommended one page resume? It’s all a bit overwhelming to say the least. More so if you are not tech savvy and unable to afford the help of a professional. The Resume is a fundamental part of the job hunt. It is your first golden arrow, your first point of contact with the prospective employer. If there is no consensus on the format and the wrong format will handicap your effort then we most certainly have problem.
The second major problem I want to highlight is the format used by recruitment websites and career pages. Most career pages and recruitment sites force prospective candidates to fill out registrations. I have personally spent over an hour navigating a single registration. These sites can be very complicated and time consuming to use. Set aside the inconvenience of the process to the candidate, the process seems counter intuitive simply because without fail you will be asked to provide a copy of your resume as a prerequisite, often you will be asked to provide an cover letter too. The real reason the registration site is set up the way it is, is to ensure the recruiter gets the candidate information in the format that is most convenient for the recruiter. This issue is directly related to the first one. At the end of the day the resume should be enough. Moreover the registration sites differ in format from one another and this too can be frustrating and confusing for candidates.
The registration site should be two or three lines of data entry and an upload tab for the resume. Simple, fast and to the point, instead the system is generally speaking complicated, slow and very much convoluted.
The Five Second Rule
Once the candidate has navigated this system and somehow their resume ends up being viewed by the recruiter, that recruiter will spend an average of five seconds vetting the CV. So the seems little reason behind any insistence on a cover letter. We can put aside the general unfairness of this reality and look at the deeper issue. With the massive increase of people entering the job market in the wake of COVID 19 the current prediction is that the five second rule will soon become the two second rule.
I want you to think about this. What, if anything would you be able to glean from a two second look at a resume. In this scenario the recruiter spends more time opening the resume as an attachment than actually reading it. But for now let’s stick to five seconds. The average professional reads 250 words per minute. At that rate, the average professional can read 20 words in five seconds. Effectively this means that you have 20 words to make an impression on a person that has never met you and has no context for those 20 words other that the criteria of the position they are recruiting for. In the case of the two second rule we will only get 8 words to make in impact. I want you to really think about this. Again, forget the unfairness of everything that precedes the moment and ask yourself. Can you choose the best candidate, on behalf of an employer under these conditions? Keep in mind, twitter gives you 240 characters, LinkedIn gives you 300.
When faced with this kind of cognitive task the human brain is designed to take the path of least resistance. Effectively the recruiter is not looking for reason to include information but rather, they are looking for reasons to exclude candidates. Essentially, there is a set of exclusionary data that will make the candidate unviable. The human brain is designed to exclude general information in order to create a context for inclusion. What this means is that the recruiter is looking for reasons to exclude a candidate based on the set of exclusionary data. In other words they are looking for key phrases that would cause the candidate to be rejected based on the criteria set out in the job profile. A simple example would be job title. Let’s say the position calls for a Marketing Manager. If the candidate’s latest job title is anything other than Marketing Manager, they can expect a rejection, even though they may have Marketing Manager duties listed as part of the last job under the description of the job. This becomes more prevalent when a candidate is applying for a position in a different field where transferable skills are involved.
At the end of the day this means that it is up to the candidate to tailor their resume to the job they are applying for. A dangerous and time consuming process to say the least, furthermore this can be construed as dishonest. Yet this seems to be the best course forward in the short term. Ultimately what we need are more recruiters, after all recruiters are humans too. At five seconds per CV, factoring in breaks times, standard deviation, and reasonable mitigating human behavior we are looking at around 3500 CVs in a given 8 hour shift. This is madness plain and simple. Clearly we need a better system. But for now this is what we have to work with and it’s not going to change anytime soon. What this means is that our best course of action is to understand this system as best we can and try our level best to navigate and help each other through it.
Final Thoughts
Covid 19 has hit us all hard. The world is poised for change and we are at the precipice of the unknown. The recruitment industry is the gear box for the recovery of all industries. With an estimated 15% increase in unemployment in the first quarter of 2020, a number that is set to increase, recruitment has suddenly become a growth industry. To add a further problematic dimension we have also seen the rise of recruitment trolls. People who are using recruitment hash tags to drive internet traffic to their company profiles. There are also a fair amount of recruitment start-ups that will seek to take advantage of this new gold rush.
For some odd reason people think recruitment is easy. Not only that, they fail to see the danger of being mediocre but mildly successful at the task. The fact of the matter is that recruitment as an industry is fundamental to economic recovery. The impact of COVID 19 has not begun to show itself. There are a number of industries that will never come back, and those that were employed in those companies that have already gone under need to find their way. Recruitment has gone digital, in fact the entire process of the job hunt has gone digital and we have to adapt to the times.
In a very real way, we need to look at the recruitment industry in a different light. Going forward it is an essential service. But it is also a new frontier, the new wild west We need to move forward without fear. The best counter balance to fear in understanding. We need to think big and act bigger. The time for half measures is long past. So let us celebrate each other and revel in the achievements of merit for merits sake.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.” - Marianne Williamson
Let us stop elevating the mediocre and begin to celebrate the extraordinary.
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