Part 6 of an ongoing series inspired by What’s Next for You: The Eightfold Path to Transforming the Way We Hire and Manage Talent
“Widgets don’t have career aspirations. Widgets don’t ask for work-life balance and acknowledgment and appreciation for their efforts.”
What do you love most about looking for a job?
Is it writing two dozen different versions of your resume, each tailored for a different company or industry?
Is it digging into job postings to divine the keywords that will raise your application to the top of a recruiter’s inbox?
Is it filling out hundreds of online applications, entering the same information over and over and over?
Is it sitting by the phone hoping someone might call – especially somebody/anybody at the company you most want to work for?
Let’s be honest here. The job search process stinks. No one likes the constant requests for more information and endless rounds of interviews. No one enjoys waiting weeks at a time with no contact. No one appreciates discovering that someone else got the job without the courtesy of an individual outreach. No one likes winning the job, only to realize that the actual duties don’t come close to matching the job description — or your skills and ambitions.
In short, corporations treat talent like raw material pulled through an industrial supply chain. It’s dehumanizing. It sends a terrible message to candidates and new hires alike. Applicants notice, and word gets around.
That negative reputation isn’t easy to overcome, which only complicates recruiting when talent is in short supply. While it seems like every company acts the same way, that’s not an excuse. If you want people to treat you with respect, you have to treat them well in return.
Sourcing and hiring remain a people process, even if the current information overload makes it feel like that’s an impossible dream. That’s why many recruiters and HR managers chose their careers in the first place – and that personal approach continues to pay dividends for organizations that find a way to maintain it.
It means taking a step back and looking at how an organization appears from the candidate’s perspective. Then it means building a system that supports both applicant andrecruiter, in a manner that eases rebuilding those relationships.
It starts with a candidate experience that treats people with respect. The technology behind the process must support, not replace, human connections. It requires recognition that employer brand is all-important if you want to attract top-tier talent to your organization.
The obvious question is – how?
Once again, that’s where AI-based talent intelligence becomes essential. The same tools that streamline workflow for recruiters and hiring managers also automate the process of building a simple, positive candidate experience. The benefits are immediate:
- Better alignment between postings and applicants by building skills-based job descriptions and candidate profiles
- Single-click submissions rather than endless, repetitive forms to fill
- Accurate suggestions for additional open positions based on skills
- Links with existing employees from similar backgrounds to promote connection and smooth the onboarding process.
Traditionally, a company welcomes a new hire with a handshake. Talent intelligence restores that connection by putting these relationships back at the forefront of the process.
What’s Next for You: The Eightfold Path to Transforming the Way We Hire and Manage Talent, by Eightfold’s Ashutosh Garg and Kamal Ahluwalia, is on sale now at Amazon and Barnes and Noble
