Why Hiring Challenges Never Go Away

[00:00:00] Alright, The 10 Minute Talent Rant is live. I’m James Hornick, joined by Jeff Smith and we are on the clock, The 10 Minute Talent Rant is our ongoing series or breakdown things that are broken into talent acquisition, hiring space, maybe even pitch a solution or two. Before we dig in, all our content can be found on TalentInsights.hirewell.com.
I was just thinking you remember when we used to actually like hard stop limit to 10 minutes. We kind of threw that out. Yeah, it’s a little over, long format. Yeah. This week’s topic, episode 114: `Why Hiring Problems Never Go Away.`
The problem for you is that I long talk everything. So there was just no world that we were ever gonna do this in 10 minutes.
Yeah, we tried anyways. All right. So hiring problems never go away. This reminds me of classic movie Groundhog Day, and I am actually a huge, I’m huge fan of all the Groundhog Day ripoffs. I think there’s lots that I, if I had to do my top, I like Palm Springs. Fantastic. Have you seen that one?
Yep. Well, [00:01:00] it’s probably my favorite. Number two, Happy Death Day is very underrated. That movie actually a lot of fun. I’ve never, I’ve never seen any of the other three. So that one and its sequel, is actually, and what was, oh no, the third, I wrote this down wrong. What was the Tom Cruise one? Edge It Tomorrow, something like that.
It was actually really good. They talked about a new sequel and they never did that. Number four, this hiring market right here, my friend. Everything we’re seeing right now is the Groundhog Day market. Yeah. We talked to our team. Every other week and about trends we’re seeing, so we can all kind of stay on top, like what’s the latest things happening in the market?
And as a complete side note, if you have a customer facing business out there matter what your industry is, I highly recommend you get all your customer facing people together once a month at a very minimum. And just talk about what’s happening, ’cause you pull some incredible insights. So I love that you put, I love that you put insights and not, you know, these do devolve into
group therapy our, our airing of grievances, airing of grievances, group therapy. I think it’s important that you do it. Yeah. But that’s how we [00:02:00] get a lot of the stuff for this show. So, Jeff, you wanna talk about what, so what did the team pull? Let’s talk about this. Yeah. What are the latest things we’re seeing?
Yeah, a couple trends. The hubs on the coast model is back San Francisco, New York, our home market in Chicago. We’re seeing more and more hiring in, you know, those three LA, Dallas, big markets are back. That’s your takeaway. Not exclusively, of course. But noticeable enough to talk about right now. And in conjunction with that, you know, more and more people are returning to office.
And a lot, a lot of this is driven by investors, CEOs, boards, et cetera, that’s saying it’s the right thing to do and we’ll get into, you know how some of that’s data driven. Some of it might not be. Yeah. It’s a side note. I saw a, I actually I wasn’t even aware of this. I saw a YouTube video a couple weeks back talking about Austin’s decline.
So I guess that they, I read somewhere else too that like their, new startup hiring is down like [00:03:00] 6% or something like that. So I didn’t even realize that, like we saw this anecdotally, we’re seeing more hiring specifically in the traditional hub locations, but even like the more the new, new places are not doing as well as they were.
Yeah, it not. It’s like 120 degrees there. Yeah, no offense. Austin, there’s number two. There’s downward pressure on salaries offers, et cetera. Won’t be a shock to any of you that the days of runaway salary inflation are over. Alright, RIP 2021. The heyday of recruiting, it doesn’t appear that we’re gonna see an increase in that anytime soon.
The next thing is just this overall sentiment from companies. Well, they, they just don’t seem like they really want it. Yeah. They don’t really want to be here. If they really wanted to be here, our message would’ve resonated with them. And we are both advocates for both sides.
Yeah. Companies and interviewees selling themselves and, you know, showing off for each [00:04:00] other. Here’s why you should hire me. Here’s why, you know why you should work here, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that it feels a little bit one sided these days. Yeah. So we’ve got the trifecta, we’ve got back in the office, and also in more traditional locations we’ve got less pay and not just less pay.
It’s that the fact that like offers, there’s more haggling and coming in below what the ask was. Which is a different thing psychologically. And then you got the, you gotta prove to me why you wanna work here without telling me telling you why you should wanna work here mindset, which, was the hallmark, I think the early part of our career as we saw that all the time.
So basically 2019 and prior, is that what we’re saying? Yeah. Basically we are right back to where we were before the pandemic started. So, and I didn’t wanna- see how the title fits now people. Yeah, I didn’t wanna base an entire episode just strictly off anecdotal things we’re seeing. I did pull some stats here.
So Business Insider actually had a brain dump of an article, a stat dump, an article that actually had sources cited. So indeed [00:05:00] postings for remote work 7.5% in May compared to 10%, in mid 2022 year over year pay increases fell from 9.5% in 2021 to 3% in April, 2025. That’s from Gusto Payroll Services and last huge drop.
Huge, huge drop. Yeah. And then lastly, the average, lowest wage people would accept for new job dropped from $82,000 in November, 2024 to 74,000 in March, 2025. That’s from the New York Fed. That’s across all positions, all levels, all people. But it’s pretty significant. So it’s not just us like these things are happening, but like Jeff, we’ve both been doing this for 20 years.
We’ve been doing the 10 minute tallant for five years. I remember at first we thought like, Hey, can we do more than 10 episodes? Is there really that much to talk about? We, why do we keep seeing the same things coming, coming up like over and over again? Like, why are people limiting talent pools to specific locations for roles that don’t require it?
Why are we haggling over a $5,000 difference in an offer amount when [00:06:00] the positive mindset shift of that new hire could easily go negative? Or they decline and then you’re back to the drawing board with some other candidate that maybe you didn’t think was as good or whatever. Yep. Why do you expect someone to interview with your company and be more excited about them than you’re willing to actually sell it to them for like, they’re just supposed to figure out how good you guys are on your own without you overtly telling them.
And why do we have to keep talking? So we could have easily just gone back to the archives on this episode and probably rehash some of the stuff we did, but like, why is it the same thing over and over again? We didn’t even need to go live. We could have just, we could have done a retrospective of all the big hitters of all, but where are they now?
Yeah. All the rants of yesteryear. The answer, James, is because we’re human. We do dumb things, that feel logical and are actually all based in emotion and snap reaction, all that good stuff. Yeah. So we’re gonna break this [00:07:00] down into a few little things, just to kind of give you a little bit more perspective.
Number one, cognitive biases are inescapable. It is part of our DNAA part of our fabric. Yes. When business gets tough, when things get tough, we refer back to times when things weren’t tough and try to emulate all of those things with those conditions. The worst part is almost always one of those things has nothing to do.
Yeah. With the other, yeah. It absolutely affects, in this particular instance, hiring decisions and how they are made. Even if you have a structured process, when times are tough, the following things creep in. Yeah. You’ve got affinity biases, which is basically hiring people who are similar to us. You have a halo effect,
overvaluing, a single trait that is seemingly positive. And you have confirmation bias, which is basically only looking for evidence that confirms a first impression. Those are the definitions. [00:08:00] Yeah. And then these biases override process improvements and resurface in these well-trained teams.
Even when a data point points to something the other way, people fall back on the worst thing, which is I just have a gut feeling. Yeah. And then when the gut feeling is
Trust your gut, Jeff.
And when it’s, and when it’s confirmed, six months later you’re like, I knew I was right. Or when, when it is confirmed, you’re like, I knew it was wrong.
And then you just run on that. Yeah. The point here is, is hiring’s supposed to be rational. You’re supposed to look at skills, experience, fit, all of that stuff to, to validate your decision. And it almost never is that, most decisions are made emotionally and justified or slammed, as I just said after the fact.
Candidates are often rejected for vague reasons, like they’re not a culture fit, which usually is a mirror reflection of the emotional discomfort of the hiring team rather than a specific [00:09:00] problem. Yeah. The last part of this, inevitably is short term hiring mindset will win in these scenarios. So you’ve got a company maybe that says, oh, we want a long-term strategic fit.
But there’s all this short-term pressure, so you invariably, take, you know, what you can get or hire the who’s good enough sort of thing, which could potentially delay or derail things further. To your point earlier, you could hire the wrong person. They could leave and then you’re looking a year later after the fact.
Yeah. Conversely, you could hire the plug and play who you’re like, oh, it fits everything, but they’re a complete asshole. Yeah. Equally terrible. Equally awful sides of the coin, both destructive. Yeah, I’ll follow up with kinda the second point here. Power dynamics also reinforce old habits.
Negotiating someone down is something you’re supposed to do when you have your manager’s hat on. It’s just ingrained in our DNA, like, that’s part of it. And [00:10:00] it’s the responsible thing. Consequences be damned because you’re, you know, whatever. I’ve said this a million times. People complain how bad an experience is when they’re a job seeker on LinkedIn,
in the real world. I’ve seen it time and time again, but a lot of those exact same people do the same thing when they’re in the hiring seat. Yeah. I’ve had people admit that to me out loud. Out loud. I’ve had people tell me that like, you know what? Like I’ve totally done that. They’re like, now that I’m a hiring manager, I look at things, I’m more, I make decisions in a different way.
I look at things that would’ve driven me crazy as a job seeker. It’s. Ego driven. It’s, our shit doesn’t stink. Employer behavior is reminiscent of kind of those pre 2020 hiring. I don’t think there’s a way of getting away with it ’cause I think that, pre pandemic years had more candidate friendly offers and flexibility.
The pendulum has kind of swung back the other way, but ultimately it, so much of it comes down to people are unwilling to admit that like you are yourself part of the problem.
But when [00:11:00] you’re a job seeker, it’s always somebody else.
I mean, we’re gonna nail it at the end with the answer here, but it start formulating it in your head. Third piece is fear of, you know, making a hiring mistake drives this one-sided behavior. I don’t want the candidate who needs to be sold. I want the one that’s gonna see, to your point earlier, how great we are on their own.
Most people will jump on. Like the hiring is broken bandwagon, but none of the stuff that we just outlined ever seems to get fixed. I think and part of it, it’s just admitting that people, not companies, collectives of people. Yeah. Being the underlying issue of, you know, everyone not being willing to do what needs to be done.
Again, we’re gonna get to the takeaways here, right? Okay. Yeah. So what are the takeaways, Jeff? What do you got? [00:12:00] You can only control what happens inside your company, and it starts at the individual level, but also has to be a community type of effect. You’re either actively trying to be as good of a person or collective of people, ie a company, as possible or you are not. Yeah, it really is that simple. Company culture needs to start and end with high EQ and vulnerability. All I’m saying is it basically needs the ability to understand that you or the collective will never have all the answers and pushes you to always put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
The thing I’ll add is if you’re ever, if you’re ever out there and you’re frustrated with how your interview process went when you were interviewing for a job, instead of just complaining about it, go back to your current company. Look how things are run there ’cause that’s the area you can actually fix.
Yes. And I don’t think many people do that. You know, it’s always some other company’s issue, some other company’s problem, but no one really wants to fix their own house or recognize when there’s an issue. Yep. [00:13:00] Which, so basically we’re saying we’re all human. Yeah. Basically the summation is. Be a human.
Yeah, that’s it. We are short on clock. That’s a wrap for this week. Thanks for tuning in 10 Minute Talent Rant, part of the Talent Insights series, which is always available for replay on talentinsights.highwell.com, as well as YouTube, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify and Amazon. Jeff, thanks again as always, everyone out there.
We will see you soon.