I Can’t Fill My Open Positions Because No One Wants to Work!
No one wants to work. I have all these open positions that I am unable to fill. My recruiting team can’t find me any qualified candidates. I know that this is supposedly a “candidate’s market,” but I think that candidates should be storming the gates to interview here. My head recruiter suggested that part of the problem might be that I didn’t bother to do any salary benchmarking, and I’m offering 30% below market for the industry. She can’t be right about that. I used hard data, such as my opinions and feelings, to develop the compensation budgets.
I also had a candidate tell me that the application process was convoluted. There is no way that’s possible. I was part of the team that decided to license the applicant tracking software, and let me tell you – it is AWESOME. It allows me to ask all kinds of super important stuff, like a candidate’s birthdate. HR told me I shouldn’t be asking that, but I’m the hiring manager, and I will do what I want.
I wrote a KILLER job description by taking a description from 10 years ago and adding a bunch of requirements to it. I only want someone who is a digital native and who has 20 years of experience using Twitter. I also want the person to offer up their own massive Twitter following (and, yes, “massive” is the metric that I’m requiring) to promote my products and solutions. That’s what being a team player is all about.
These people we have working in recruiting just don’t get it. I have told them several times that the candidates they send to me don’t meet my minimum standards. I need someone who is an expert at marketing and promoting blue widgets. Do you know what they send me? People who have experience in navy blue widgets. I need people who are adept at cobalt blue widgets! The difference is vast. A navy blue widget person could never bridge the chasm that separates the two and understand cobalt blue widgets.
Another colleague suggested that I should get myself some interview training. Can you believe that? There is nothing wrong with the way I interview. I like to approach the interview like an interrogation; I regard candidates with suspicion. I look for ways to trip them up. You need to keep people on their toes. Anyone with a gap in employment, a degree in a discipline that I don’t understand, or whose career trajectory has not been a straight line MUST be hiding something. So when I encounter those types of people, I dig deep and make them explain themselves. And when someone gives me an incorrect answer—meaning, it’s not the answer that I would have given—I tell them that they are wrong. These candidates need to be put in their place.
I don’t know what the problem is with the recruiting team. I provide precise and reasonable criteria. All they need to do is find candidates that check every single box. You know, they are lazy and aren’t doing their job either. See what I mean? No one wants to work except for me. I am the only one here who is getting anything done. Could someone tell me what “common denominator” means? It must be good because one of the recruiters just said to me that I am the common denominator in the equation.