Intro

CareerNet has been in the recruiting business for decades. Occasionally we jump out of this this frenetic industry to build new hiring solutions. Then we test these solutions in-house through our own HR Pros to see if our new or improved solution set is ready for “prime time” (ready for our clients)*.

Sounds Great but What’s your Point?

Good question. Not certain why the intro was a shameless “Who we are” paragraph.

This is a story about what happens when excellent initial results lead to cutting corners and HR failures.

It starts with misleading marketing.

The internet, our TV’s and YouTube feeds are filled with advertisements for online job resume pools and services that can bring “qualified” applicants to your door in minutes. Except they don’t.

Recruiting it seems is more than marketing to the unemployed or disgruntled employee. Way more. Yet time and again companies fall into the trap of automated, massive document pools and filter functions (we call these documents “resumes”). Why?

Because it’s easy, it’s inexpensive and requires limited human contact.

Here is where the actually story begins.

It started out like any other day.

One of our clients asked us to source a list of candidates to fill an important job vacancy. The salary and benefits are terrific by today’s standards. The location is highly sought after. The company is well regarded and big. The position and title are great too.

We began by speaking with our in house Pros (armed with Hiring Pro*) and sourced and confirmed a dozen candidates within 48 hours – each prequalified. Sounds like a great solution, right?

Except that it wasn’t. A few video interviews later an offer was made and accepted. The candidate reported for work the next day. The whole process from job listing to start date? It was less than a week.

This is where things started to go sideways.

The candidate, now a new employee, lasted less than 2 days on the job before being released.

This was not a background check issue. This was not a skills issue. This was not a qualifications issue. This was a cultural fit issue. One that video interviews don’t pick up.

As you may imagine the client (the company) was back on us in minutes for more candidates. Here is what we said to them:

“It’s great to receive top applicants quickly. But take a breath. Think about what makes a great employee – because there are plenty of qualified candidates. A great employee has experience using the skills that your position requires and as importantly is a cultural fit.”

This is how we really feel

That’s a nice way of saying – stop making the same mistakes. Stop hiring first and worrying about productivity and cultural fit later. That approach rarely works.

When it does you got lucky.

Don’t cut corners – especially when cost effective expertise is available.

What we (and our client) learned

This whole exercise was not only costly, but it was also waste of time for the Company and the released candidate.

But it wasn’t for us.

We learned something very important. Primarily that our suite of recruiting related services works only when our clients use them.

As we have written before, sourcing qualified applicants is the easy part. They are available.

You just need the right tools, the training to use these tools, and the experience gained by trial and error.

Conclusion or “What we did to improve.”

This morning (Thursday, June 20, 2022) a few of us gathered to discuss the particular series of events that led our client to this hiring mistake. Each of us in our own way said the same things.

• Don’t let clients cut corners.
• Rely on our process aka Hiring Pro.
• Pre-qualify right.
• Certify resumes.
• Assess properly.

These steps may have added 36 hours to the total hiring process and perhaps $500.00 to the hiring process.

We are able to do this because, since 1996, our business has been not only recruiting and job placement, but solving the problems companies encounter every day when hiring; Skills, company fit, training.

This needs to be communicated to our customers consistently, lest they repeatedly fall into the same hiring traps.

Next Time….

We will write about the ways to approach these crucial steps (bullets above) that will work for any company hiring today and how CareerNet simplifies these steps to limit hiring problems for our clients world wide* in a future post.

We were a first mover in the job board space way back in the early 90’s.* That worked for a while. Then when job boards (and our corporate customers) were overwhelmed with resumes, we were among the first to build an ATS (applicant tracking solution)*. From there we saw the limitations of any ATS and the useless resumes typically found in them. 

Let’s make hiring the right way simple, together and for the benefit of businesses every where.

• The CareerNet Staff

*indicates shameless plugs