Talk about a bunch of slow pokes. According to the Dice-DFH Vacancy Duration Measure, companies are taking longer than any time in the past 13 years to hire new workers. The largest companies (5,000 or more workers) are taking nearly 10 weeks to hire.
What can happen in 10 weeks? Well, consider that 10 weeks represents about 20 percent of your company’s yearly calendar. Ten weeks might represent an entire sales cycle at your company. If your company is in the business of making money, 10 weeks of lost activity from a good worker represents a hefty chunk of opportunity cost.
Some say that companies are slow to hire these days because they really aren’t that confident in the economy. But I don’t believe that’s the issue. Why? Because job postings are at their highest level since 2001. It just doesn’t make sense to pay for job postings if you don’t think you’re going to fill them. (As cartoonist Matt Groening has pointed out in “Life is Hell,” “When you tell me you hate me, it makes me think you don’t love me.”)
I think we can take companies at their word: They really do want to hire. The more plausible explanation for slow hiring is that companies just aren’t getting the job applications they’d like to see. Never in the history of America have so many unemployed people been greeted with so little enthusiasm on the part of business.
It’s like getting to the last episode of “The Bachelorette” — and not a single guy is left holding a rose.
Is really no one good enough for you?
Sometimes the hole in the funnel is just too narrow for anything to get through. Here are a few ways to look at those same job applicants with a little less skepticism, without losing quality outcomes:
Don’t reject the long-term unemployed out-of-hand. One study showed that those who are unemployed for eight months or more receive far fewer call backs about their resumes. As an employer, why assume the glass is half empty and that a long-term unemployed person is unemployable? Maybe instead the candidate is hungry for work, tired of uncertainty, and looking for a place to excel. In fact, a study of 20,000 employees showed no statistical difference in productivity between the two groups.
Make sure there isn’t racial or ethnic bias — intended or not — in your hiring department. When job-seeker Jose Zamora couldn’t land an interview, he decided to change the name on his resume to Joe Zamora. Only then, he says, did the interview offers start coming through. Blacking out names on resumes and filing them according to number is one way to get around unconscious bias in hiring.
Stop caring so much about years of experience. If NFL teams cared as much about years of experience as your company did, they wouldn’t bother drafting top prospects. You can identify smart people in a number of ways, from online and in-person assessments to the interview itself. If you think that training a new employee is going to take months instead of a few weeks, create an internship or apprenticeship program the way this company did.
Stop demanding college degrees. Colleges prepare some people very well for IT, but sometimes the course knowledge is obsolete by graduation. Certifications are often a better gauge of a person’s relevant skill level. Being able to learn on the fly with the help of YouTube and online user forums is more in line with the kind of on-the-job learning that is required for work these days. Think about giving the candidate a realistic, hands-on problem to solve as part of their interview, one in which they have to consult several online and human resources. Isn’t that what you care about most anyway?
Finally, don’t worry about “cultural fit.” So the interviewee doesn’t like to play video games and doesn’t drink Mountain Dew like it’s going out of style. You worry that this lack of “fit” will spell unhappiness for the worker and your current IT crew. But how about adding some spice to your team, a little diversity? It can’t hurt. In fact, it might make your team more productive, more innovative — and better able to adapt to the diverse cultures and personalities of your customers.
Give it a shot. Adopt just one of these strategies and, in the end, you might find a lot more job candidates worthy of that rose. Read more on this topic at MSPmentor.
Eric Larson is director of marketing and communications for the Creating IT Futures Foundation, the philanthropic arm of CompTIA.
