FOMO VS. FOMU

Happy Wednesday to everyone tuning in to today’s episode of the Hirewell Update. I’m your host, Ryan Brown, Vice President of our Corporate Functions team, and this is my co host. I’m Emily Goor, Director on our go to market recruiting team. The Hirewell Update covers the latest talent insights, monthly placement overviews, talent solutions, and the hottest jobs we’re working on.

All brought to you by us, your market experts here at Hirewell. Before we kick off the show, you can find all of our content at talentinsights.hirewell.com, or if you’d like to learn more about Hirewell, our service offerings, check out our website, www.hirewell.com. Hey there, Em, we meet again on the Hirewell Update.

It has been a minute. I’m sure all of the followers are just like, where have they been? It’s been a busy few weeks, which is a good sign. We love busy,

But just in case y’all want some more talent insights, Excited to dive into this topic because I, I’m not the hippest of hip folks. Shocking. I feel like I know a lot of the terms like Gen Z gets me here and there or so. Kudos to you Gen Z, but I learned a new term a few weeks ago that I’m excited to share with y’all.

The term was FOMU. Have you, I don’t think when I share this with you, I didn’t think you’d heard it either, but I had heard of FOMO. Okay. Just so you know. Right. Same. And you know what that is. So in on the times, FOMO, fear of missing out, in case you’re unfamiliar. But FOMU was new to me, so I learned that FOMU means fear of messing up.

Okay, so FOMO, fear of missing out. FOMU, fear of messing up. Right, I mean obviously I had never heard of it either until you shared it with me Em, so now that I’m in the know, when you shared this with me, I think, Number one, I could resonate quite a bit with that, but I think a lot of people can, resonate with the fear of messing up.

But when we’re thinking about FOMU as it pertains to the job market and folks that are in hiring positions and or job seeking, I think that from organizations to candidates alike, they can probably find, a lot of similarities to how they feel about FOMU. Yeah, I honestly think it’s everywhere right now.

I think FOMU is very, very much a thing versus FOMO I actually think it ties pretty, I know we’re always doing this, like tying things back together, but I do think it ties really well into our discussion, about our talent insights discussion a couple of weeks ago, not tune into that one. It was, it was a good episode.

We discussed interview processes including more and more stakeholders. And more and more rounds of interviews. And I think, we talked about a lot of the reasons why I think another reason why is FOMU. Like companies are fearful these days of messing up and making the wrong decision when it comes to hiring. So they’re dragging out processes.

They’re looking for more validation, like, Hey, I’m not so sure I need them to talk to this person next. Because they’re fearful of making want validation from additional employees at the company in the interview process. Exactly. I couldn’t agree with you more on that. I think there’s also this pressure from hiring managers or maybe a better word for that is on hiring managers to make great hires, because it’s really reflective of them and their team and performance. So if they bring someone on board, that’s not the right fit for the organization.

That can reflect poorly on them. So on top of the idea that companies want to hire people that are going to make an impact on the organization. They’re also feeling, I think this intense pressure in regards to their own performance and their own evaluation. If they’re sitting in that hiring manager seat.

It’s such a good point. Like I know a lot of the times my lens is, hiring sales folks. So it’s like hiring managers are constantly wanting to bring in people who are going to bring in revenue to the company right away, right? Like on the sales side, we see here so frequently, like we need this person to be able to ramp up quickly, ramp quickly, ramp quickly.

So they’re fearful that the person’s not going to be able to bring in revenue right away, but at the same time, they’re also just kind of fearful of, how that person being hired is a reflection just on them and their overall performance. So I think that’s a really, really good point is there’s a lot of pressure just on hiring managers these days.

I’m with you. And I think. There’s also such a juxtaposition between the theme of FOMU, right? Fear of messing up and hiring right now versus the FOMO, fear of missing out in hiring in like 2022. I’m like, acronyms. I know we talked about like 2022. It was definitely a little bit more, I would say of like a candidates market and companies were doing everything they could to not miss out fear of missing out on hiring great candidates.

I remember compensation bands were through the roof. Remember that year? Like you guys were hiring all these recruiters, recruiters base salaries were like crazy. Wild. We were hiring account executives with like three years of experience at like a hundred K base salaries, like double OTE. Thinking back, I think it was probably like 2022, probably around two years ago, where it was like fear of missing out. Like we have to do everything we can. We have to hire these people. We need to get them. We cannot miss out on these amazing candidates. Exactly. Yeah, I think that’s a perfect way to describe the differences that we’re seeing in the market.

Just a couple of years later, and I think, we’ve talked about FOMU from like a hiring manager perspective. Candidates are also feeling that. Quite a bit. And I think that we’re seeing a lot of tendencies on the candidate side right now, too. So, there’s always passive candidates that we engage with, in terms of finding great folks for our clients, but we’re noticing this year, passive candidates are much less open to making moves right now.

I think that, there’s some stability factors coming into play. They have an understanding of their role. They know what’s expected of them. There’s much less of that FOMU thought process where they’re currently at and, thinking about making a move into a new organization.

All the things that they’re uncertain of, that’s where the FOMU starts to come into play. So a lot of candidates, I think, that were communicating with right now are much more receptive to retention bonuses or counter offers currently, much more to than we’ve seen in the last 24 months. This is very much something that I think is starting to come into play.

Now that we’re in, Q3. Yeah. Q3 and almost Q4. So it’s been an interesting shift even in this last just year. And from, Q2 to Q3, that’s something that we’re noticing is happening more and more. That candidate perspective is a really good point. I think we’ve seen the same, like you’re saying.

And I think because there’ve been so many ups and downs in the market and just with companies these past, 24 months that some candidates have been burned. Honestly

Maybe they’ve joined a startup and things didn’t go well, or, I mean, even not startups, like we know what tech layoffs have been like at the large tech companies.

So I think people are kind of content staying put right now because. Like you said, it’s familiar to them. They know what to expect if it ain’t broke. Right. Don’t fix it. So they’re like, why would I move? I don’t want to go somewhere and like mess up when I kind of had a good thing going here. So I think that kind of perspective is really interesting.

Sure. And one thing I want to note is. We’ve, compared like 2022 with current year. This is something that happens often. But now that we have the term FOMU and understanding of like, okay, is this a FOMO market or a FOMU market? That helps us really understand where things are at currently.

Every time there’s an election, there’s a little bit of that FOMU that comes in, folks are making really calculated decision when it comes to hiring during election year. So that’s a part of it as well. And we’re obviously getting closer to things being in Q3 with elections coming up in November.

So that’s not unsurprising news. Like this is something that we see. And I think it’s something to note for folks too. Also, there’s still a lot of like instability and questions about the economy. FOMU markets are definitely, a part of instability with regards to the economy too. But I love that we now have this, idea of what to call this type of market.

And, if a 2022 market ever decides to come back, we can get back into the FOMO market as well. I know I keep having to like check if I’m saying the right version, but I love it.

I think it’s really interesting. And now, like you said, we can just categorize them really easily. We sure can. I love it. Well, this was great Em. Number one, thanks for teaching me some new lingo. I appreciate it. we bring these things to each other, like you bring me the tiktoks

I’m like, I brought one thing to the group one time, but it’s great. No, all the time. All the time. Em no, this was great. And hopefully this resonates with some people too. I’m curious if folks are actively job seeking, are you experiencing FOMU or if you’re in a hiring position? Are you experiencing it too?

And if so, why? So if you have any thoughts, leave it in the comments. We’d love to hear from you. I love that you asked that question because I know we didn’t really get into like problem solving around FOMU. And if it is a problem, hot take, I think it’s a problem sometimes. I think, especially like on the hiring manager side, I mean, we’ve talked about how it’s affected interview processes and

I think it’s a great call out that you’re asking the folks watching to maybe ask yourself either on the candidate side or on the hiring manager side. Have you been a victim of FOMU recently? And ask yourself that question and maybe ask yourself why, right? Is it like we said,

the pressure of hiring the wrong person, what that means about your performance at your company, what that means about a new employee speed to impact, ask yourself why, and then ask yourself potentially like how it’s affecting your company’s interview processes, how it’s affecting your overall company brand.

I know we tie it back to company brand a lot, but like candidate experience and company brands, I think we got to kind of take a step back and maybe again, encourage people to look big picture. Am I a victim of FOMU right now? And is it having a negative effect on our interview process, on our candidate experience, on our company brands?

I think more organizations need to ask themselves that question right now. Yeah. I totally agree with you Em, completely. Well, we’re going to keep an eye on things from a FOMU perspective. We’ll see what’s going on. And yeah, I have to just double check I’m saying it yeah. I’m like spelling it out in my head to make sure.

Its F O M U. We maybe should have said that at the beginning. We’ll outline it. It’ll be in the table. Yeah, they’ll be able to find it. But I’m curious to see if we’re going to continue that in Q4. We’ve obviously entered into it and we probably have been in it since Q1 and Q2, but I think it’s really prevalent now that we’re in Q3.

So we’ll keep an eye on things, a pulse on the market and report back in Q4 on where things are at. Wow, we’re the second half of the year, which is, Absolutely insane. I’m saying it live on linkedin so that this person doesn’t have an excuse, I think it’s time to bring Matt Massucci in for our mid year check in.

He usually needs like a few weeks in advance, but it’s, it’s August, so yeah, we’ll be here for the rest of the year with some exciting insights. We sure will. We sure will. Well, thanks Em, I think we covered a lot today and we’ve learned a lot today as well. So why don’t you take us home?

I will take us home. That is a wrap for this week’s episode of The Hirewell Update. Thank you all so much for joining us. As a reminder, you can find all of our content at talentinsights.hirewell.com or if you’d like to learn more about Hirewell and our service offerings, you can check out our website.

It’s www.hirewell.com. We’ll be back next Wednesday around noon central. And I just wanna say again, talentinsights.hirewell.com actually just got a revamp. So shout out to Nia and our marketing folks, Nia, particularly for like really just crushing that project. We’ll see you all next week. Have a good one.