How The Web Has Flipped Hiring On Its Head

How The Web Has Flipped Hiring On Its Head

The hiring challenges of today are almost exactly the opposite of the challenges of just a decade ago. Credit: Tabercil, Flickr

The hiring challenges of today are almost exactly the opposite of the challenges of just a decade ago. Credit: Tabercil, Flickr

For more than a century, the challenges facing hiring managers remained constant. Because there was no easy way to reach people, applicant pools were limited by things like geography and just lack of access, and the fundamental issue was finding good applicants.

Back then (which was only about a decade ago), there were only a few ways to build an applicant pool. Obviously, one was to go through your own networks or post the job internally.

The second was to take an ad out in a newspaper, post a “help wanted” sign on the office building or go to career fairs. And the third was to hire a recruiting agency, for a pretty hefty fee, which had access to its own networks, to help you find qualified people.

All of those methods only touch a small percentage of people who could potentially be strong fits for the job. It was the equivalent of a hiring manager taking a candle into a pitch black cave, with 95 percent of the area remaining dark.

That all changed when the internet exploded in popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s. Now, instead of a candle, hiring managers have 1,000 lumen flashlights that reveal every square inch of whatever cave they’re in.

While that’s good, it opens up a whole new host of problems for businesses. Specifically, instead of just trying to find talent, the new challenge becomes shifting through that talent and finding the right people.

Easy Access

Today, recruiters can access literally millions of candidates within a few clicks. While numbers vary greatly depending on the job, one posting on a career site can easily garner more than 100 applicants.

On top of that, millions of passive candidates are now easily accessible through programs like LinkedIn Recruiter. With its highly-specific filters, a seemingly limitless amount of potential applicants can be found for even the most obscure of jobs.

This has led to information overload in some cases, especially at highly-desirable companies. Yahoo, for example, gets roughly 2,000 resumes a workday and Google once got 75,000 resumes in a single week!

The New Challenge

While Yahoo and Google are the exception and not the rule, the fact is job postings are getting more job applications than ever before. And now, instead of building an applicant pool, the real issue facing America’s hiring managers is how to parse through those people and find the best ones.

A typical example of how this is done today is PNC Financial Services Group, which gets around 100 job applicants per position. The company uses resume-filtering software to screen that down to a group of 25, which is interviewed by the HR team.

After that, the best four or six take an online assessment and then are interviewed by the hiring team, the best three of which go through a the final interview. Obviously, then one of those is hired.

This is a pretty typical process for most companies. But there are a few concerns: specifically that 75 percent of candidates are eliminated by resume alone and 95 percent are eliminated without any real input from the hiring team.

A Better Way

Imagine some interviewing software was implemented in the process. Now, insight beyond just the resume – such as the personality of the candidate, their desire for the job and some powerful behavioral data – are ascertained with less effort by the HR team than they were exerting before.

This information is both highly valuable and it can easily be shared with the entire hiring team. That creates a more collaborative hiring process where entire hiring team can get involved earlier, without any more effort.

Additionally, it is a better experience for the candidates, because they now get a voice to make their case. And it opens the door for high-potential, low-experience candidates (i.e. diamonds in the rough), which are often eliminated by their resume but can make the best hires.

Bottom Line

Like everything else in business, challenges in hiring have changed dramatically since the advent and adoption of the internet. Before, applicant pools were too small. Now, applicant pools are often too large, putting a strain on HR teams to screen through them.

The goal should be to use the right force multipliers, i.e. technology, to quickly screen applicants while providing a great candidate experience. A company that can consistently get that right can gain a substantial competitive advantage in the “war for talent”.

About VoiceGlance

VoiceGlance is a cloud-based hiring tool used by forward-thinking companies to hire smarter, instead of harder. Learn more here.

 

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