Author, speaker, coach and founder of Cheryl Czach Coaching, helping high-achieving professionals and organizations accomplish what's next.
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Last month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Report. According to the data, as of December 2021, there were 10.9 million job openings and 5.9 million job separations. Further, the number of quits reached a new high of 4.3 million. But the Great Resignation has done more than simply create a record number of vacancies; it is forcing a change in how companies recruit and hire.
Candidates are no longer tolerating outdated and one-sided hiring practices. They are finished with cumbersome application processes that require duplication of data, multiple-step interview methods that don’t allow equal footing in decision making and personality assessments designed to eliminate them with limited information. They are opting out of a system that is designed to keep the power dynamics away from the candidate and place it in the hands of the hiring manager.
As a career coach, I am seeing this revolution firsthand. Clients are consistently removing themselves from recruiting processes that are overly burdensome. They see these employer-focused interactions as an indication of poor company culture and are no longer interested in engaging.
It’s a wake-up call for those who are paying attention. Many hiring managers and human resource leaders are sensitive to this shift but not quite sure how to address it. Here are three small steps you can implement immediately to demonstrate to potential employees that you understand what it means to create a culture of partnership and that this partnership begins with the hiring process.
1. Explain your mission and make a clear link to your employment practices. Now more than ever, employees are mission-driven. This means they want to work for an organization whose mission and values align with their own. More than lip service, they want tangible evidence that the company lives this ethos every day through employment practices, leadership philosophy and with the greater community. For years, organizations have hired for “culture fit” or “culture add,” but now the shoe is on the other foot. It's on the company to prove they align to candidates' values, not the other way around.
One way to do this is to ask about values in the interview and be prepared to speak about how the organization aligns with them. For some hiring managers, it may feel awkward to ask about values in an interview, but candidates, especially those in younger generations are ready and willing to have that conversation. In fact, according to Udemy’s Workplace Happiness Report, 62% of employees overall would take a pay cut to work for a company whose mission and values align with their own, and that percentage increases with Millennials (78%), compared to Gen X (43%) or Boomers (43%).
2. Be prepared for more balanced interviews. The traditional interview format of the interviewer asking questions for 45 minutes and the candidate being allowed 15 minutes at the end to ask a few questions is outdated. If your organization is still conducting interviews this way, I encourage you to rethink this. Choosing where you will work is a major life decision and candidates are no longer willing to make that decision on very little information. Instead, offer them the opportunity to interview you and members of your team. Extend an invitation for a meeting solely designed for them to ask the questions. Introduce several members of the team at a variety of levels to give a feel for your culture.
While you certainly won’t offer this opportunity to every candidate, it’s a worthwhile time investment for your short list. Facilitating this extra step in the process results in greater offer acceptance and ultimately increases employee onboarding success. According to Glassdoor, organizations that invest in a strong candidate experience improve their quality of hires by 70%. This is important when you consider that over one-third (37.9%) of interviewees exited their organization within 365 days or less, with two out of three of those doing so in the first six months.
3. Rethink job requirements. One of the biggest shifts we are seeing with the Great Resignation is people transitioning into different fields of work. In fact, according to a recent Joblist survey of over 1,000 people who made a career switch, or “a switch in profession,” 23% said they did so because they were no longer passionate about their field; 25% said they wanted a new challenge. In short, they are seeking to take the experience they’ve gained and apply it to a different industry or role.
Unfortunately, many candidate screening systems are designed to parse resumes for keywords and related experience, then push the best matches to the top of the list. While this automation once created efficiencies for the talent acquisition team, it now means that many high-achieving and fully capable candidates are going unnoticed. What’s worse, hiring managers, feeling the pinch from being short-staffed, are directing recruiters to find candidates who can “hit the ground running,” which means possessing an exact match to the posted qualifications. Looking for candidates with transferable skills may take longer, both in recruiting and onboarding, but the result can be a candidate who loves what they do and is committed long term.
Implementing these three shifts in how you hire and recruit are the first steps to address a complex and ever-evolving situation. They are not designed to completely solve the problem, but rather serve as quick solutions that can have an immediate impact on filling your increasing vacancies.
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