One side of the Paradox: frustration of a Jobseeker and its anatomy

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Every Job seeker lives and contributes towards the creation  of a paradox where so many eligible jobseekers are  struggling to find a job they would love to do and on the other side a recruiter is dyeing to fill a position and unable to find a right candidate. Most of the times jobseekers blame recruiters for not replying on their applications and for not returning/answering calls. At the same time on the other side of this world recruiter would be fuming on jobsites for throwing up same search results and resumes they have interviewed and rejected earlier already, desperately getting on to social networks, changing keywords, checking with friends – having a bad day. Why on earth in this advanced technical savvy world connected through internet, a suitable candidate can’t reach the recruiter who needs him, why is it getting really difficult for a recruiter to find right candidate.

This paradox is a result of combined effort of candidate and recruiters/organizations. No one to blame for this alone, Organizations/recruiters would not have a slick recruitment management system, most of them won’t use it even if they have one. Candidates do not know techniques of job search and unfortunately most of the candidates apply for jobs they won’t suit, even worse things is jobseekers does not do a good job of updating their profile on jobsites, sometimes resumes looks shabby, unrelated to the expertise they have.

In India -there is not much information available for jobseekers to help them on how they can update their profiles, what enhances the possibility of their resume appearing on top of search results, unlike Europe, the USA, Indian job market is dominated by jobsites, social networks like LinkedIn are picking up but still not yet contributes to a significant percentage of hires in an year in an organizational context. Candidates need to know few facts to make their whole experience of job searching, fulfilling and smooth.

Do you understand the science of job search?

In order to understand the  art of job search first you need understand science behind candidate search, how recruiters search for suitable candidates?I have heard from so many people saying I " updated my resume 2 months back and did not get a single call so far". To find an answer to this  you need to understand candidate search works , you might be the best brain in your area but if your profile updated on jobsites does not tell that there is 100% chance that your resume will be ignored. It is the medium between you and recruiter plays key than your expertise. Most of the  jobseekers does not write their profile headline properly on Naukri.com, moster.com.They write summary of their experience which is wrong, you need to mention the key words around your technical expertise , if you are java developer just write that along with the technical skill set like, JSP,Servlets,Spring etc and avoid using words likes  “Technologist”, “Innovator” because they are not going get to anywhere, recruiters never use keywords like that.to summaries all you need remember is “How would a recruiter search for resumes” obviously they search for resumes just in the same way you search for information in Google. If you would to know about Tajmahal you will just type that name in Google, let us say if you use “Shajahan” as your keyword the information you wanted about Tajmahal will be somewhere lower on the search results. So keep the headline simple, accurate, very straight forward to cover all the areas you worked on.

Do you need to have a beautiful resume? 

Honestly not, after all you are not sending your resume for a beauty contest! On a serious note no recruiter in the world will fall in love with your resume by the look of it, or for the literary value , neither he/she has time to  read your resume so deeply. Of course it must be in a good shape neatly formatted, no grammatical errors etc. But the key area that catches the eye of a recruiter is “your area of expertise”, skill set summary and your project details – whether the skill set mentioned in summary reflects again in the projects you have worked on. Remember a recruiter takes a call whether to proceed or not in less than 2 minutes by having a glance at your resume. Have those details accurate; repeat your areas of expertise as keywords across your resume.

Curse your co-applicants! 

Not because they are competing with you for the same job but for the reason they applied even after knowing they are not suitable for the position. It is so unfortunate that applications from non-serious, not suitable candidates makes the chances for right candidate meager. Over last seven years, I and with help my team where I worked done an analysis on the response for job postings, we found out consistently that more than 95% of applications does not suit the job. Let me give you a recent example – I posted a job for software architect, we were looking for a person with more than 8 years of Java with distributed systems,multi-threading, strong design and architecture experience on developing highly available enterprise applications. You don’t believe we received application from call center executives, Admin, Finance and freshers in a good number. Now relate this with the life of a recruiter on a given day, he/she would be handling multiple positions and would be receiving resumes from Consultants, employees and direct applicants. Once the recruiter opens up the applications folder and finds a set of resumes not related at all, he get frustrated and move on to another source – he needs to fill the position quickly. So if you are expecting a reply from recruiters - apply for only those positions you suit, ask yourselves twice if you really fit the bill. Otherwise not only you won’t get anything out of it but also you will be killing an opportunity for another suitable candidate.

Where are you applying? 

The emergence social media pushed recruiters post jobs everywhere, the biggest weak link here is not many organizations have a strong recruitment management system which integrate all these and stores resumes at one place. As result recruiters get disorganized, always remember if you are applying on the website the chances of you getting call is really less because of reasons mentioned earlier.so whenever you are applying it on the website, it is a good idea to send a note to the recruiter clearly mentioning the job code you have applied for. Another reason for not getting a call would be “unfortunately most recruiters perceive direct applicants as desperate jobseekers who is struggling to find job, hence it becomes less valuable for them, recruiters should get rid of this notion”.

If you are allying on any other source please consider the below:

Lifetime of your application/email is maximum a day: 

If you are sending your application directly to the recruiters, please keep in mind you need to be precise and straight forward, you don’t have to please the recruiter. You need to understand and accept the fact that recruiter has no time to read your entire email to understand whether you are suitable or not. Write in a manner that recruiter will get to know your profile in first 2 lines. While applying on LinkedIn so not simply click apply button and send resume, customize your response in way that your expertise if mentioned there, that will make the recruiter to click the attachment you sent, otherwise it gets in to recycle bin. If you application cannot attract recruiter’s attention that moment or maximum on that day, you are out of scope. By next morning when he comes to office new set of resumes already piled up in his inbox. Grab the attention by what he is looking for – but only if you really have that expertise recruiter is looking for , DO NOT fake it ever.

Sometimes your subject line of the email disqualifies you! 

I am not exaggerating it, it is true – I have deleted so many applications from my inbox after looking at the subject line, and still see most of the recruiters doing it, let us take an example – a recruiter posted a job of “CFO” on LinkedIn or a Jobsite When you reply it changes the subject line as “Application for the role of CFO” all the hundred resumes recruiter receive will have the same subject line, Now let us say if you change the Subject line to “ Chetan_CA,ICWAI_PWC_ application for CFO”, I can guarantee no recruiter in the world will move on without looking in to the resume.

When madness has its own method why not Job search J , follow basics and help recruiters in helping you.

Two crucial aspects HR should focus on - measuring value addition and stop taking undeserved blame

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I was just a college pass out when the most famous (now) critic of HR Mr. Keith H. Hammonds opened up his thoughts on HR professionals and HR as a function to the whole world. I was shocked when I came across this article later, started doubting my decision making skills – did I make right choice by choosing HR as my career? But as time flew I forgot about this like any other young graduate fresh out of college. But now after having spent good time in HR, I strongly feel his criticism is not all true, but there are genuine issues we still need to address and improve on, tragedy is after 8 years of his article we still look the same in few of the areas he wrote about.

It is extremely crucial now that we focus on these areas to sustain this extremely dynamic world where the war for best talent is getting fierce day by day and taking an ugly, brutal shape. The two critical aspects HR should focus on are – creating more value, measuring that value and stop taking undeserved blame.

Does HR really add value? What kind of value is that and how can we measure it?

World called HR and still calls a necessary evil, a bureaucratic setup which kills flexibility and innovation. Few organizations saw and continues see HR as the living system which keeps everything intact, which adds life to organization, which prepares and leads them in to future. As a matter of fact most of the successful companies today have most successful HR department. So then why there are divergent perceptions, where does HR fit in to the pyramid of value addition? Take an example of a mother, who is a “home maker” ( not mean to say mother can’t earn, it is strictly about a home maker) , she ensures everything is in place at home and makes everything available for the family, she guides, consoles, sets up guidelines and code of conduct at home, brings up children, takes very key decisions, helps in decision making, the only thing that misses here is she going out and earning money, it is done by the “father”. So a home maker mother does not earn money on her own but helps the whole family to earn it. I think in an organization’s scenario HR does the same job of home maker (excluding HR consulting, where money generation is directly related), while HR does not earn money on its own it helps the whole organization in doing that. HR helps the organization deliver by delivering in its own area. In business return/Money/Tangible value takes the ultimate priority, where in a family set up there are much more things attached to it than just return/Money/tangible value addition, that is how I think people start perceiving HR as a cost center, non-value adding function. The other side of the coin most of the HR professionals perceive their function as supreme and argue that without HR an organization cannot survive or it will not exist, the fact of the matter is HR exists because of business, and ultimate decision making rests with the business itself, HR for sure will play a key role, but cannot decide what to be done over and above business’s decision, when I say business I meant the one who funds, runs the business with an objective. Coming back to the point - work of HR and its value addition touches every aspect of an organization like the mother at home, so you cannot fit HR at a particular level and spot on the pyramid. It is everywhere. So the parameter for measuring HR value addition should always be what impact its presence will have on the organization rather what felonies its absence can cause.

So when HR is everywhere obviously it becomes extremely difficult to measure its value addition, however we all know what major areas in  HR  makes it as the living blood for the whole system. They are Talent Acquisition, Training & Organization Development, Performance management, HR operations.

Adding bodies or pumping in Talent?

Talent acquisition attracts a great deal of attention whenever somebody wants to evaluate HR effectiveness, but traditionally for years the way we measure recruitment effectiveness by number of positions filled, time taken to hire, source mix  which does not reflect the real value addition of recruitment function. Parameters mentioned earlier reflects activities performed by recruitment team not the value, take an example of driving a car – if you drive a car with a speed of 100 Km per hour and reached a place in 30 mins, that is a great driving performance, not the real value, you will know value when you compare with what is that you wanted to achieve by driving, if you have reached a different destination that of you wanted to reach the effort is mere waste. Hence while measuring the value of recruitment we should get in to the very purpose of recruitment, why do we recruit people? to add great talent in to organization so that we deliver a great service/product. If this is not met, you probably are not recruiting the talent your organization wants, now how can you measure the value here, would you attribute every product success or profitability of the organization to recruitment? Answer is no, there are much more critical aspects which contribute to success and profitability. It is wise to take the data of employees recruited in a year and analyze – what percentage of people left early, how many non-performers you have from this group (for both cases they could be various other reasons why people leave, can’t perform – you would know those reasons for sure – so do not include them while measuring the value of recruitment), how many of these employees are star performers, what percentage of these have been already identified having potential to move in to the next level or perform more difficult job, take feedback from manager against each role he filled in his team, as to check is he able to get the what he wants from this resource, he might have recruited one with an aim of adding a new skill, if that skill is not added, your recruitment failed of course there is a contribution from that respective manager too for that failure. After having done all this exercise identify those areas where recruitment team needs to focus for next year, pat on their back for the areas they have done well.

Performance management – shake its fundamentals; make it fairer, understandable

I have a fundamental problem with the whole idea behind performance management, the entire HR fraternity is in love with bell curve and forced ranking may be because it looks to be scientific and more because it serves various purposes, like it helps identifying and cleaning up bottom-line, it also helps manager to satisfy their vengeance. So essentially with the model what are we expecting from employees, we are clearly telling look folks only 20% of you will make it in to the top performers so you must compete and do better than your colleague. But imagine what happens to the whole team performance, what happens to the organization, that’s where organizations fail and also results in your best guys leaving. Imagine if everybody on Indian cricket team competing to do better than the other rather striving for team’s success, will we ever win? just imagine Sachin Tendulkar and Virat kohli competing to score a run more than the other, that will result in one guy not giving strike to other, will we ever win. Might looks funny but this exactly what happens on the floor, employees look really amicable and helping each other but majority of them will not share the big ones he is working on because he does not want to give share in the salary hike/bonus to his colleague. It is time we re look at the overall philosophy of performance management and change it in a way that drives team’s performance, like let the whole organization decide what are the most valuable deliverables they had for this year – award all of those who are in those projects, couple it with 360 degree performance management for every employee , so that everybody knows and cognitive of the fact that his colleague’s feedback has value so he/she better cooperate and co-exist to succeed, not in way of Quid-pro-co, any way each feedback should be justified with examples and tangible activities. Take feedback from every employee on performance system at the end every performance management cycle. Improve, innovate it consistently.

Training or capability building?

I think this is the most difficult part when it comes to measuring value, like the recruitment most training departments traditionally measure the activity rather than value, you speak to any L&D professional they talk about how many employees participated in a training program, what percentage of total employees they covered in a year, how many hours each employee spent in training which is again a transactional piece. It is like a person going to most sacred place 1000 times and remain as what he was before, you might visit amaranth 1000 times in your life time but what is the use if it does not make you a better human being? Measuring the value of training department should start from asking are we doing the right kind of trainings that organization really needs?Do an objective analysis do not do trainings that does not add value , over a period of time it will reduce the importantance of whole training function altogether, after every training we ask for feedback asking how was the trainer, environment, facilities provided rather asking the important question – where do think this training will help? Which part of your job you will be able to perform better after this training?

Let us go back to the point of how do we identify right set of trainings to be delivered over the next year, take an example of a software firm having a product, at every release which part of the product you will find more bugs? UI side, Database? That is the area you exactly need to focus and get your resources trained. Track individuals who attended training whether he/she able to contribute in a better way in the areas he got trained, does he still needs someone helps even after getting trained? If this happens on a large scale it is time to look at the whole training function and start fixing it.

HR is not changing at the speed the environment it operates in changing, we need to catch up with the pace and keep reinventing ourselves, after all said and done sometimes HR role looks like a wicket keeper in cricket , you catch 99 balls and drop one, the whole stadium stands up and says his wicket keeping skills are bad, the only way to stop this undeserved blame is keep updating ourselves and being proactive before business comes back to us.