Recruitment 2.0: Fun and Human

Let’s admit it: recruitment is a pain, for candidates, employers and the middlemen.

It shouldn’t be that way. To create a culture that people admire and want to be a part of, a company first needs to create a human workplace. To create a human workplace, the human resources process first needs to be carried out in the most genuine and human approach.

However, many big corporations fail from the very first step in recruitment. I’ve come across numerous career sites of prestigious brand names which declare their glorious values, diversity or ‘compassionate global teams’, and caring and inclusive culture. BULLSHIT. They don’t even have Vietnam as a country of residence in their country drop-down list, so in the first step of the application process, I’m automatically disqualified. I bet you would have been pissed if you were rejected for being born in an ‘out-of-the-list’ country. Think about equal rights, globalization, or democratization. (Feel free to contact me if you wonder which companies are on my blacklist.)

Technology has elevated many areas in business, yet not so much in human resources. The fundamental flaw lies in the fact that companies are automating their recruitment process, scanning soulless resumes looking for key words associated with job descriptions, without understanding the meaning behind it and what they are really looking for. Even worse, they avoid the whole process, leaving it to the middlemen, because they are too busy to spend time looking for someone who will later become a part of their team and their culture. It’s a LAZY system. For your information, my resume usually fails these screening tests because it has a picture. But who cares? Everyone is on LinkedIn nowadays, and professionally speaking it’s highly recommended to have a profile picture there, so why can’t my resume have a picture?

We’ve all been through a resume black hole or will have to at certain point in our careers. So many misses and skips. Why can’t we all try to make recruitment a happier and more effective process?

An old colleague of mine, Jeremy, or more precisely, a grandfather-like figure, a mentor who guided me through my very first steps into a career after graduation, co-organizes a bi-monthly recruiting event for techies who are looking for jobs and companies that hire techies. The group has grown to more than 2,200 members since May, 2012. Mind you, it’s not a typical job fair with countless brochures and resumes that would end up in recycling bins after a few hours. Though this event is particularly for people in startups, it paints a bigger picture, and demonstrates how people are trying to raise the bar for the recruitment process - that is making it more human and avoiding the trap of meaningless recruiting ritual performance that would waste your time, money and effort.

During this two and a half hour event, every attendee makes up a badge showing whether they are a candidate, direct employer or recruiting agent, their name, and what skills they are offering or looking for. Direct employers have two minutes to pitch about their company, and who they are looking for. After the pitches, everyone start networking, candidates talk to prospective hirers, while others might grab a few drinks and nibbles. By the end of the event, if you are lucky, you might go home with a few good leads. If not, at least you have the opportunity to meet company founders, tech leads and peers who wouldn’t usually be in your network.

Jeremy often said: “Companies fight through armies of zombies to find the right candidates.” Indeed, and the same goes for the other end. Candidates swim through endless black holes to reach companies. Recruitment should not be such a stressful work. It should be fun. Your career takes up to 40 years of your life. You surely don’t want to spend time feeling miserable that you haven’t got the right job, or your employees aren’t the best out there, or your co-workers are so hard to deal with.

We live in a world of connectedness, where real communication is how we learn to make senses of others and of ourselves. Successful companies build the right teams, ones that interact and share values, contribute and grow together, not ones that get the job done once the clock ticks 5pm, and leave their desks because they can’t wait to go home.

Invest in face-to-face networking with prospective employees or employers through recruiting event like one above is no sloppy work. You have to put yourself out there, constantly and relentlessly. Sometimes, it can be tiring and you might get discouraged. But you can always turn the table around. You will meet people and every of them will teach you something you don’t know. That’s fun, isn’t it? Come on, time is too valuable to spend it on ineffective recruiting rituals that might cost you a fortune in the long run.

Save your time. And remember, be human.

Comments

Lô: Dù đọc chả hiểu cái gì cả nhưng Dương à em nhớ chị quáá em Lô đây :‘(

chris williams: Very well said. I have seen it from both sides- as a business owner who has a hard time connecting with the correct individuals for job openings and as person in search of employment where you can’t get past the automated HR machine to get them to see your real qualifications.