Ever since it was reported a couple months ago that many recruiters are not considering individuals who are currently unemployed, any number of bloggers, pundits, commentators and others have sounded out about the short-sighted in justice that this policy seems to represent. Many HR pros, however, have responded that the real problem is time:
- Time to sort through the dozens, if not hundreds, of resumes – many from desperate applicants who aren’t qualified for the position
- Time to communicate with hiring managers and the potential candidates themselves
- Time to conduct any required background and reference checks
- And on, and on
No doubt, these are all legitimate concerns. What puzzles me, however, is that for all the controversy and debate over the legality, morality, ethics, human capital concerns, business impacts, talent retention, etc that has gone on ad nauseum, there’s been very little I have come across addressing the problem from the standpoint of waste and value. More importantly, there’s little discussion on where waste and value are created in the hiring process.
Are HR departments (and all others who are, or should be, involved in the hiring process) so remarkably lean and efficient that there is simply no room for improvement? Of course they are not, since nothing ever is. HR adds value to the hiring process when they identify and recruit the best possible candidate, regardless of current employment status. Recruiting new talent is a process that can be mapped, analyzed and improved:
- Creation of a vacancy
- functional manager’s requisition
- all necessary approvals
- posting of a vacancy announcement
- receipt of resumes
- candidate selection
- interviews
- offers and hiring
- on-boarding
Where are the bottlenecks?
All of these processes (and probably many others) combine to form a value stream. Where is there waste in the process? Where can it be made more efficient? If not every resume can be given due attention – why not? What would we need in order to assess every possible applicant? Why don’t we have it already?
A business should be looking to recruit the best possible people, regardless of economic circumstances, right? Of course they should. What a terrible thing to witness, however, that when confronted with a tidal wave of resumes the response has not been, “How can we more efficiently process a huge volume in order to identify the best candidates?” Rather, it has been, “Let’s make the number of applications we have to process smaller.”
Sadly, this knee-jerk reaction fails to provide the organization with the best possible candidate.
About the author David M. Kasprzak
I am a seasoned project and management analyst with over 14 years of experience as a trusted advisor to all levels on planning, measuring and analyzing activities. From small-scale internal projects to multi-year development efforts supporting enterprise-wide initiatives at the C-level, I “get geeky” seeing great management practices yield great outcomes. I am a fierce & vocal advocate for learning, collaborative approaches to work and pursuing Operational Excellence through challenging the status quo and fostering management innovation
