Alone in the dark

When applying for a new job, how many times have you seen yourself astonished about the outcome of a recruitment process? Or… have you ever experienced complete absence of feedback from a recruiter or employer?

In my many years working as (Chemical) Process Engineer, I have seen in first person, as user, situations of all colours. And due to the frequency or “normality” with which this type of scenarios happen, it is not difficult to anticipate that your answer to the above questions is probably and unfortunately “yes” and “yes”.

All professionals in the industry are, in a greater or lesser extent, often contacted by recruiters or head-hunters looking for new opportunities, for employers, to candidates. And that is a very relevant point in this whole story; that is the typical flow of recruitment, and due to its nature, it is inherently focused in filling a position, a job description, rather than centred on the candidates. That vision, from that only perspective, is leading to poor user experiences by the candidates in those recruitment processes.

One clear example recently happened to one of the candidates from our talent pool. He mentioned to us that he was involved in other recruitment process (in parallel) that lasted 3 months. That is probably acceptable from the perspective of the employer, since it takes time to align and define the characterization of the opening, launch the job opportunity to the market, review CVs from all candidates, interview some of them in a few rounds, negotiations, etc.

However, from candidate perspective, that timing might not be so acceptable when there is a specific job opening already under discussion. Once you apply for that position, it should not take more than a couple of weeks to receive feedback about your CV and to know if you have been shortlisted to interviews. When positive, it should also not take more than a few weeks (not months) to go through the whole interviewing process.

Now the second and shocking part of the story: the candidate had to go through a process of six (6) interviews!!! Who in their right mind can think of this as needed?

From a reasonable standpoint, one interview with the HR department and one with the Hiring Manager sounds as a typical arrangement. Perhaps a third one with a cross-functional manager or with other future team colleagues, but more than that does not seem to add much more value. And even with 2-3 interviews you still have the chance to combine a couple of stakeholders in each meeting.

A program of 6 interviews it is no other than a clear symptom of inefficient management and mistrust in teamwork.

And to finish, the ice on top of the cake. The candidate, after those 3 months and 6 interviews just received a “template-type” email reply mentioning that his profile and background was not matching the current open positions. Unbelievable. How can that be? Is there nobody behind this process reflecting about the obvious inefficiency and waste (time and effort from all parties) of this whole story? Where are the experts in human affairs?

It seems obvious that a candidate who has undergone such experience will definitively not speak well to others about that employer, and what is most important, to other colleagues, the talent that could one day become potentially interesting for that company. Accordingly, such a lack of vision and linear thinking is in the end leading to erosion of brand and image, disenchantment and talent leak to other competitors. A complete disaster if looking to long term sustainable interests.

Candidates alone in the dark, poor talent management and stories that totally lack empathy. A lot to evangelize still… A lot of opportunities.

Ignacio Vilas Eguileta

zenotalent Owner & Founder