Recruiting is hard. And you might be making it even harder.

Hiring is not easy”, we get that a lot, every year. Wait, wait, before we start repeating common-sense statements, some numbers:

“69% of employers are finding it difficult to fill roles.

According to a ManpowerGroup survey, 69% of US employers are struggling to fill jobs — the highest figure in a decade. If this is a trend that will stick, employers need to work on ways to attract the best players from a limited resource pool.” (source)

“Talent Scarcity and the War for Talent

With a record amount of early retirements since 2020, there’s a severe shortage of labor and talent in many sectors from trucking to software engineering to cybersecurity professionals.

There’s also a geographic mismatch between labor demands and supply. The initial exodus from more expensive cities in a remote work era also complicates this to some degree.

However, talent scarcity isn’t just about digital transformation. Workers are getting more picky too. A crisis of leadership, poor understanding of what young talent needs, the lack of decent working conditions, the push towards higher education in place of work-based training pathways, and the mismatch between education and workplace needs, all contributes to the issue and compound the shortages.” (Source)

It´s been a while since I´m supporting companies in hiring. Since a decade ago, when all the interviews were physical and we had to print resumes to start an interview at the office, things changed a lot — for good! New technologies and tools, the openness of the talent pool with the adoption of remote work, and more inclusive and less biased recruitment, just to mention a few improvements, in my humble opinion. Nevertheless, since then, there are a lot of recurrent hiring mistakes being carried out by many companies, which may be some time ago, didn´t impact so hard in the hiring success, and now could have a much higher cost. Despite all the pandemic, external economic factors, and natural social evolution, management should adapt and improve, and with some simple, and not so new, actions, companies could have better results in hiring and in their businesses consequently.

Below, is a list of common hiring mistakes that you could be doing (great if not!):

Starting with the job description: poor or too much info. Remember that there are people, like you on the other side, reading it — do it in a way you would like to read. Sometimes the workload is too high and recruiters just copy and paste from one job description to another, creating Frankstein-texts, which are too generic and have no differentiation. Each role is crucial, especially in startups and scaleups, so it´s important to dedicate enough time to do it accordingly. Also, is important to avoid gender-coded words and phrases like rockstar and ninja — they are not cool anymore. Some of the common jargons are: Fast-paced, Dynamic, Laser-focused, Self-starter, Can-do attitude, Groundbreaking, Disruptive, Wizard, etc. Be real, honest, and why not, different? Ah, and disclose the salary, always, if possible — it saves everyone’s time.

Time to fill: The Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) reports an average time to fill a position of 42 days. To start, are you monitoring this metric? It´s crucial. As a Founder of a recruitment agency, I can tell you that we have processes that took 65, 90, 120, or more days. Closing these processes with a potential candidate contacted at the beginning of the process is… luck? Maybe.

No structured interview process: creating steps out of the blue. Also a very common experience: we start the process with a clear and defined (at least, it seems) recruiting process, for example: a) Phone screen, b) HR interview, c) Business Case, d) Hiring Manager interview, e) CEO, Founders or Director´s interview, f) Professional References, h) Job Offer.

This, which is already a decent process in terms of timeline, sometimes gets surprise steps: “actually we need someone who just joined the company to interview the candidate before the offer” or, “the founders are not agreeing, could we schedule another 2 interviews with both of them, separately?”. Again, no secret: Imagine if it was you, the candidate.

Lack of feedback: The first interview was amazing, and now the candidate is motivated! Woohooo!

One week went on, with silence from the hiring team. Another one. And another one… and: “yes, we would love to move to the next step with the candidate” — sorry, they already accepted another offer. Of course, there are a lot of unforeseens all the time: covid, business trips, etc. But when this happens often, maybe better to check if it´s not a planning issue.

No one is good enough — suddenly they join great companies. We get that sometimes. Especially in early-stage companies, the decision-makers are very insecure in making hiring decisions, which it´s somehow natural, but if you don´t make the bet, and start hiring, someone will do — and you will regret it. Also, a common mistake is to reject candidates who just don´t look a fit by the resume — there´s much more behind a resume, and bias is hard to fight.

Fun fact: once I witnessed a candidate being rejected because of his handwriting after being approved in all the stages! Yes, because of a Graphology test. (Graphology is the analysis of handwriting in an attempt to determine someone’s personality traits. No scientific evidence exists to support graphology, and it is generally considered a pseudoscience or scientifically questionable practice).

Freeze, unfreeze: Wait! Before you start saying that there are a lot of important factors that made you freeze jobs, I´m speaking about situations which could be avoided: the hiring manager went on holiday, no hiring plan, no one to make the onboarding, the management is not sure if they need to hire for a role… and the dance continues! Freeze! Unfreeze! Freeze! Unfreeze!

Engaging process: I´ll keep repeating: imagine if it was you! Try always to respond fast, to give detailed and personalized updates, ask for feedback, stick with the process steps, send useful information, and create a positive environment during interviews… have empathy! How many processes you were involved in where it felt like you were speaking with robots? Maybe you were.

Not sure about what you want, nor the candidates: Also common in startups and scaleups, companies feel that they need to hire, but not sure if for just one or two different job functions (maybe they can find someone who could work for 3!), or if now or later, or maybe…I use to say that recruiting is like taking a picture of the talent market: if you click now, you are going to find the potential available candidates for a specific role. If you click in 1 month, the picture is going to be different, so make sure when you want to take the photo, and whom you want to be on it.

Bargaining: this one is tough. The candidate went through the whole process, is motivated, and receives an offer below the expectation (not just the candidate’s salary expectation but also below the range that the company had mentioned to the candidate before). It puts people in very stressful positions and people feel not appreciated, especially with offers even lower than their current or last salary. I understand the importance of respecting the budget, and the C&B policies, which have to be respected, but sometimes it´s just for being “smart” and the feeling of saving some thousands for the company at the end of the year. Thinking well, it´s not so smart because for 2–3–5K (or a bit more) a year, having the risk of an offer rejected and low motivation from the professional from the beginning. In the end, if the professional is a fit for the job and the company, for sure this difference would pay off. If not a fit for both parts, the person will probably quit, and the company wouldn’t have to afford the whole year’s cost (obviously, depending on case by case, termination cause, etc.).

And after hiring: recruitment is all about people (and I believe is always going to be, even when cars fly and robots cook, we are still humans). There are some reasonable causes for candidates backing out after the selection process, like health issues, unexpected life changings, pressure to accept an offer, but never let it be because of poor onboarding, poor expectations alignment, no clear report, no support, changing the offer conditions last minute, not reaching an agreement about the start date (I´ve seen a company dropping an offer out because the candidate would need 3 more weeks to start, with a process that took 10 weeks… and started the process all over again to find someone who could join faster. No need to say that it took more than 3 weeks), etc.

In the end, recruitment processes are a reflex of how the company (people!) do things.

This text carries a lot of humor and sarcasm, but I´m being quite honest about situations that I´ve experienced managing a recruitment business, and most of them are quite simple to be avoided. As I said above, I´m an optimistic individual and I believe that the world is better than it was many years ago (even with all we are facing — let´s not start a political or social debate), so it is the professional side of our lives with the remote work all the new technologies. After some years in the industry I stick with the most powerful learning I´ve had about management or anything in life: put yourself in someone else’s shoes, and act as if the other was you or your family.

*If you relate to any of these stories, or simply disagree, it´s ok! Life is nice, don´t be bothered.

If you would like to have chat about the topic or maybe count on our help, please e-mail me at leo@thesalesgang.com or DM me on Linkedin.