By Liz Ryan | April 19, 2018
Dear Liz,
There is a job opening in my department.
I told my friend "Ellen" about the opportunity and she was interested in applying. I took her resume to HR and told them how smart and creative Ellen is. I showed the HR person Ellen's LinkedIn profile. She said, "I'll follow up."
Nothing happened. I went to my manager and told him that if he wants to meet Ellen, he should just call her instead of waiting for HR to contact her. My manager "Ben" texted Ellen then and there.
Ben and Ellen had coffee a few days later. Ben told me, "Ellen is amazing. I want to hire her." Ben went to HR. He asked them to fast-track Ellen's recruiting process because he wanted to hire her.
HR said they would expedite Ellen's process but a week later, Ellen hadn't heard from them.
Ben reached out to a contract agency we work with. They hired Ellen as a contractor and now she's working in our department. The only thing is, she doesn't get any benefits.
Meanwhile HR says they will contact Ellen next week to start her "official" recruiting process. Ben and Ellen had coffee five weeks ago!
The HR person I first worked with told me, "Ben really complicated things by bringing Ellen in as a contractor. Now we'll have to pay a fee to the contract agency if we hire Ellen as a full-time employee. Ben cost our company a lot of money."
I said, "Are you kidding? Let's be honest. HR cost our company a lot of money when you sat on Ellen's resume after I told you she was perfect for the job. Ben did the businesslike thing. You guys didn't. You didn't even explain or apologize."
Ben sat down with our VP of HR. He said, "I don't want to make trouble or to bust anybody but our company's recruiting process is broken. I almost lost a great candidate because we couldn't move fast enough. We don't tolerate weeks of delays when we're trying to land a customer. Why would we tolerate weeks of delays when we're trying to land a great new hire?"
Ben said the HR VP told him, "Candidates are not customers. We need customers, but candidates need us."
Ben said, "That attitude will kill our company."
Now Ben and the HR VP are going to meet with the CEO. It's a huge deal in our company. The dam is bursting. Everybody was afraid to complain about our broken recruiting process but now they're speaking up. It had to happen. Our company has treated job applicants like dirt since forever. I got treated like dirt when I applied to work here five years ago.
Thanks for your influence, Liz! I feel very proud to have helped my friend and my manager, and the company too of course. Things have to change. There are 32 job openings currently listed on my company's website and I know we could have filled those jobs weeks ago if we could just see applicants as important people, like our customers.
Yours,
Ramona
Dear Ramona,
The business world is changing fast. HR is one of the slowest departments to get the memo. They don't understand that if a company can't get recruiting right, they won't succeed. Customers are not more important than candidates.
Recruiting is a sales and marketing job. Misguided HR people (and sometimes department managers, too) think recruiting is all about weeding people out. They are mistaken. Recruiting is all about inviting people in!
I'm glad your CEO is getting involved. Hats off to you for helping Ben and Ellen find a way around the bureaucracy and hats off to Ben for escalating the issue with your company's broken recruiting process.
Here are some of the biggest problems in recruiting, and recommendations for fixing them:
All the best,
Liz