Help wanted

One of the more challenging and sometimes interesting parts of my professional job has been recruiting for open positions. I oversee a reasonably sized division that for many many years had very little turnover and the people being hired were all for new positions added due to growth.

Then starting last summer, one long time staffer quit to care for a terminally ill spouse, then another two got once in a lifetime opportunities with much more pay and closer to home and another had the opportunity to retire early….and so you can see the pattern. Several years worth of normal turnover happening all at once,

So it’s been pretty consistent reorganizing, redoing jobs, finding temporary fixes to get the work done while at the same time trying to recruit.

But what has changed dramatically during this latest round of hiring has been the quality of the candidates.

Gone are the days when I would run ads and get 50 applicants and potentially have a half a dozen to choose from. Now if I get 6 responses it’s been a success and the quality, to be very blunt….sucks big time.

So I may rerun ads and change the wording a little to see if that works. It hasn’t.

The common response is the email with the resume attachment. Often the email will be canned and not pertain to what was actually written in the ad; sometimes there will be an email with the subject line “applying for job opening” and an attachment. If I run the ad in different papers I may get the same email/letter/resume combo as many times as papers it’s appeared in. If I run it multiple weeks running I may get several duplicate resumes.

This is not good for jobs that often have “attention to retail” as a key requirement.

This week came the resumes attached to an email with no introduction or even a subject line – which sent them electronically into the SPAM bucket.

And then there are the excuses.

When I have had enough of the crap I will occasionally respond back suggesting that the applicant have someone else read their resume as it has errors in it. [such as misspellings of the person’s previous employer, the word resume, or their address is spelled wrong and the zip code with letters in it.]

One response I received back was that I must have opened a resume of his that was not the final version. It’s the one he sent and the only one I had. While another asked me “what they had applied for”. Yesterday I wrote back to the person whose resume went in the SPAM bucket because of no email, letter or subject line giving some feedback [me being a nice guy]

The response I received was a curt one word SORRY! in triple sized font and then the resume was copied and pasted in the email.

So from SPAM bucket to “delete” and the applicants don’t even have a clue. It was clear that I had offended the applicant by pointing out why she will rarely hear anything when she sends a resume out. SORRY…..NOT

Then there was the “post it” cover letter. A resume coming by mail with a 3x5 post-it note stuck to it with a full cover letter written in tiny hand writing. I couldn't read half of it even with my glasses on.

A couple weeks ago I reran an ad for a position I have recruiting 6 months for and added the requirement of responding with more than a one sentence email reflecting on how the applicant fit with the description.

The first response was from a guy who had previously sent a two sentence email with a resume and had no relevant experience.

How he responded to the new ad was a one line “I sent you my resume a couple of weeks ago, am I being considered or not”?……………not.

So I am thinking there must be a market for educating and coaching people wanting to switch jobs on how to do it and on the basic organizational skills to manage an effective job search. But I also suspect that many of those who need critical feedback will be the ones who will be offended by the feedback and they will see themselves be the “victims” of over critical people.

Meanwhile I’ll continue to tweak the ads and bring in recruiters to lure people away from someone else. Gradually working my way back up to fully staffed and hope for another several years before another wave of turnover and retirements hits again