All you have to do to hire great people is to avoid these five major gaffes. It isn\u2019t hard, but it requires a change in your attitude. You have to give up the idea that the employer is mighty just because they have a job to fill. That idea went away with cradle-to-grave employment.<\/p>\n
Nowadays the employers that can snag talent are the ones that value talent and are proud to show it!<\/p>\n
Designing Impossible Roles<\/strong><\/p>\n The first big recruiting problem starts at the job creation stage. Managers stuff ten lbs. of who-knows-what in a five-lb. bag and expect one super-multi-skilled job applicant to walk in and solve all their problems.<\/p>\n Good HR people prevent that from happening. When I was an HR leader, I told some of our more greedy managers \u201cEither you kill half the requirements in this job, or I will \u2013 and I don\u2019t know what half of them mean, so it\u2019ll be better if you make the cuts.\u201d<\/p>\n I insisted on only recruiting living people, not magical beings from an alternate universe. I\u2019m just funny that way! I don\u2019t want to run ads and screen resumes only to find no qualified applicants in the bunch because the job itself is ridiculous and there\u2019s no living person qualified for it.<\/p>\n Writing Hallucinatory Job Specs<\/strong><\/p>\n Our friend Amy is a headhunter. She was visiting a client, a VP of HR for whom Amy fills a lot of positions.<\/p>\n The VP of HR, Morgan, was explaining a new position opening to Amy when another VP poked his head in Morgan\u2019s office.<\/p>\n \u201cGood thing you\u2019re here, Amy!\u201d said the VP, who ran the company\u2019s Quality function. \u201cI just got approval to hire a new engineer, and I\u2019ve got the spec right here!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCan I see it?\u201d asked Morgan, the HR chief. \u201cHere it is!\u201d said the Quality leader, handing over the written job spec.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is this three-letter acronym \u2014 the certification you\u2019ve specified as an Essential Job Requirement?\u201d Morgan asked the hiring manager. He listed the words behind the three-letter acronym.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never heard of that one,\u201d said Morgan. \u201cMe, neither,\u201d said Amy, who recruits technical people for a living.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s new!\u201d said the Quality guy. \u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it, but I want to get one on my team!\u201d That\u2019s a true story, and a sad statement about how some people recruit.<\/p>\n They make requirements mandatory that they don\u2019t even understand themselves \u2014 as though more letters after a person\u2019s name would make that person smarter or more capable!<\/p>\n Paying Galley-Slave Wages<\/strong><\/p>\n It is time for every HR leader and hiring manager to give up the idea that the economy \u00a0hasn\u2019t moved an inch since 2009 and qualified people are still scrambling for work. They aren\u2019t. If you don\u2019t know what a given job is worth in today\u2019s marketplace, it\u2019s your job to find out.<\/p>\n If you knowingly recruit for your open positions planning to pay less than the market does, you deserve the chirping crickets and disappointing responses you get.<\/p>\n 5 Ways To Improve Your Company’s Search For Talent<\/a><\/p>\n Screening Out Talent with Applicant Tracking Systems<\/strong><\/p>\n We joke in our office that anyone with a heart and a brain will be screened right out of any recruiting process that uses keywords to choose one applicant over another. Keyword-based screening was a bad idea when it was originated twenty years ago, and it hasn\u2019t gotten any smarter since then.<\/p>\n If you want to hire great people, you won\u2019t do it by screening people in or out of your pipeline based on keywords. Applicant Tracking Systems are undoubtedly the worst-ever use of technology to solve a strictly human problem.<\/p>\n Beating Great Applicants Away with a Stick Through Inhuman Recruiting Practices<\/strong><\/p>\n When I was a corporate HR leader my boss, our CEO, used to say \u201cYou\u2019re my backbone-stiffener!\u201d<\/p>\n He meant that as his consigliere I helped him make the right (= human) decision when he needed a little nudge in that direction.<\/p>\n Nowadays in our company we help lots of CEOs make human leadership decisions, and we also help job-seekers make the decision to bail on a lousy recruiting process before accepting a job that would squash their flame.<\/p>\n There are lots of good reasons for talented people to bail on an unfriendly recruiting process. If an employer expects applicants to wait for weeks while they screw around not moving their recruiting process forward \u2013 hit the bricks!<\/p>\n If they can\u2019t communicate with you via phone or email but only through the use of talent-repelling auto-responders \u2013 flee!<\/p>\n If they tell you that they loved you but they just want to see more candidates \u2014 meaning they want to find a replica of you who costs less than you do \u2013 get out of Dodge!<\/p>\n It\u2019s a new day in the talent marketplace. There is no talent shortage \u2014 there are only confused and deluded managers who hope against hope that someone amazing will show up to fill their crappy jobs\u00a0while expecting to get paid next to nothing.<\/p>\n That\u2019s like me going to TJ Maxx and hoping to find a sapphire necklace on sale for $49.95, and when I don\u2019t find one complaining that there\u2019s an affordable-sapphire-necklace shortage.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a shortage. That\u2019s me needing to put down the hash pipe and enter the real world, where talented people are simply everywhere.<\/p>\n This article was written by Liz Ryan from Forbes and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.\u00a0SmartRecruiters is the\u00a0hiring success\u00a0platform<\/a>\u00a0to find and hire great people.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pixel.newscred.com\/px.gif?key=YXJ0aWNsZT0xMDk2NTY2MWY2YWU2NWYzN2UxYjQ5OGUwZDQ3ZDhkYSZwdWJsaXNoZXI9YTdjZjY4YjgwOGFiZTIzN2M1ZWJiN2FiYzRhMzhjYzM=\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you want to observe a whine-fest of employers complaining about nothing, just Google the term \u201ctalent shortage\u201d and scan some of the two million-plus search results.\r\n\r\nOf course you would think there\u2019s a talent shortage when you design impossible jobs that also pay peanuts, write delusional job specs and expect the world to beat a path to your door!","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":32348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":""},"categories":[840,630],"tags":[],"series":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/wpid-thumbnail-c83b357ef2350d83d940777ad0103254.jpeg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Podcast-icon.jpg","download_link":false,"player_link":false,"audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/hiring-success-podcast\/id1472174987","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9oaXJpbmdzdWNjZXNzcG9kY2FzdC5jYXN0b3MuY29tL2hpcmluZy1zdWNjZXNzLXBvZGNhc3Q","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"soundcloud":{"key":"soundcloud","url":"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/smartrecruiters\/sets\/hiring-success-podcast-1","label":"SoundCloud","class":"soundcloud","icon":"soundcloud.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/3bM8YzLjM2G9qJXLBBySaB","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/www.smartrecruiters.com\/blog\/feed\/podcast","embedCode":"Don’t Make These 5 Recruiting Mistakes<\/a><\/blockquote>