To be fair, most of social media is.
Every time I read a “Dear Recruiters” post, part of me dies inside.
Same for “Dear Hiring Manager” and “Dear Job Seekers.”
Fueled by frustration and immediate gratification, these takes fall into the same lazy social media traps: divisiveness + virtue signaling.
Label and vilify another group based on the small scope of your personal experience. While reassuring everyone that you would never do such a thing.
Except you totally f*cking would. And do.
I’ll say it a little louder for the people in the back: job seekers and hiring teams ARE THE SAME PEOPLE.
Everyone who’s fed up with awful job seeking experiences absolutely has the ability to impact change. Right now. At their own company.
But it rarely happens.
Why? As job seekers these issues affect us directly. As employees, they don’t.
(Unless hiring is so bad it’s a drag on our time and success. THEN you start to see our motivation uptick.)
Our shared outrage is a matter of inconvenience. Not one of morals.
But let’s pretend we’re all so motivated. We’d learn a few things:
1. Root causes are more complex than they seem.
Recruiter A needs to do Task B, Hiring Manager C needs to do Task D, problem solved, right?
Nope. When “everyone sucks” there’s more going on, process wise. Thousands of people at different companies aren’t colluding against you.
There’s no WhatsApp chat of people trying to do you dirty.
2. We’d learn what we don’t know.
Fixes seem ‘easy’ when you don’t understand the problem to begin with. So we’d understand the deeper challenges of the hiring process. And better relate to those tasked with it.
“Learned Empathy” as the kids call it. Kind of important.
Getting everyone rowing in the same direction and you’ve got a shot at fixing things.
3. Sometimes – just maybe – job seekers have unrealistic expectations.
After talking to thousands of job seekers, we’ve discovered the perfect hiring experience. This would make everyone happy:
????100% remote process (no need to take a day off)
????1:1 time with the C Suite
????No tests or assessments
????Perfectly matched values
????Immediate feedback
????Massive offers
????1 easy step
If some of these seem conflicting and unrealistic, you get the joke.
Perfect doesn’t exist, folks. Pair that back to 5/7. But would we even be happy with ‘good’? Not everyone…
Social posts don’t solve anything. (Not even this one.) But they can start new conversations that point us in a productive direction.
????Stop finger pointing. Start understanding. Fix things in your own house before putting others on blast.
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
