Our efforts to recruit the right candidate for a position are hampered by the large number of resumes we often receive from people who clearly aren’t qualified for the job. We have to scan these resumes, track them, and file them, and this just pushes our costs up. Why do people apply for positions when they know, or ought to know, that they’re not qualified?

One of the main reasons for focusing on retaining employees, we’re told, is the high cost of replacing them. And there’s no question that this is a costly exercise. So organizations place value on retention as a way to, among other things, reduce costs. But even the most enlightened practices won’t reduce turnover rates to zero. Employees will leave for reasons that make sense to them. New employees will still have to be recruited. Rather than emphasizing only turnover prevention, there are other ways for organizations to reduce costs when hiring new employees (which inevitably they must do anyway).

Unfortunately, job seekers often bring me stories of disconnects between the job content of the positions they see advertised and the job content of the positions they end up being interviewed for.

Here are a few examples:

1. Manager of Organizational Development

The job posting emphasized succession planning, career management, work/life balance. But the hiring manager spent considerable interview time probing for corporate training experience – needs assessment, design, evaluation. The posting was completely silent on this.

2. Director of Training and Organizational Development

The candidate learned during the interview that the posted position was really about coordinating and tracking the progress of high potential employees through pre-determined developmental paths.

3. Director of Training

It turned out that this role was responsible for printing and shipping training materials.

4. Director of Learning Design

The candidate had a telephone screening interview. Emphasis was placed on her experience supervising teams of instructional designers. In the face to face meeting with the hiring manager, she was told that the designers pretty much supervised themselves. The job was really about increasing sales of the training products.

What’s going on out there??

What’s happening is that organizations are making high cost, low nutrition selections from the menu at the Recruiting Restaurant. Here’s what they’re choosing:

Appetizer

Peacock Puree

There’s nothing wrong with organizations presenting an attractive face to the world. After all, job seekers “glam up” their resumes; so it’s only to be expected, in this courtship dance, that employers will do something like that, too. But there’s a big difference between trying to look your best and trying to look like somebody else, a big difference between an enhancement and a disguise. Employers who (rightly) decry misrepresentations in resumes might do well to check their makeup trays.

A peacock in full mating display is just trying to be the most attractive peacock he can be. His objective is to attract peahens, not flamingos. Employers who are frustrated at being unable to attract the candidates they’re looking for should remember that you usually get what you actually ask for.

Mains

Mixed Grill with the Works

You don’t find specialty goods in a variety store. There’s something inconsistent about posting a mid to senior level specialist position on Workopolis. The people you’re looking for aren’t looking there, and the people who are don’t meet your needs.

Wag The Hot Dog

Sometimes the person who creates the posting is not the hiring manager. The manager may provide excellent detail about the position to be filled. The posting person then processes the information through the sausage grinder of HR policies:

“Our postings have to look like this, not that. They have to use certain words and phrases and not others.”

By the time you’re compliant you’re no longer able to attract the right candidates.

The BLT (Boggled, Loaded and Tired)

Sheer quantity of work can cause otherwise competent people to miscommunicate. A recruiter I know confided that she was one of two people working on filling two hundred vacancies. The volume of resumes and of job requirements, and the parade of faces in interviews cannot be anything but a blur in such circumstances.

The Beef Cattle Auction

A former manager of mine, originally from Texas, liked to describe bringing projects forward like this: “Let’s dress this pig up and take it to the cattle auction.” She had the ability to talk her way out of whatever jackpots this technique landed her in. As an approach to hiring, however, it’s seriously flawed. If your position looks like an accounting manager, but you really need an accounts payable clerk, you’re bound to notice that the people applying are overqualified.

Bait and Switch Peanut Butter Sandwich

Unpalatable to most people, this dish is more easily digested by those who delight in pulling a fast one, or seeing what they can get away with. Here’s the recipe:

• The posting deliberately overstates the size of the job. The hiring manager is looking for candidates who are currently between jobs, or who are desperate to get out of the jobs they’re in.
• The candidate selected for the hire is told that the posted job has been filled or withdrawn due to changing business needs. A smaller job (the one that existed all along) is put on the table.
• The candidate is on the horns of a dilemma. To continue with our menu analogy, you’ve been enticed (not too strong a word) by the offer of a steak dinner, only to be told there’s no steak any more, and all that’s left is peanut butter, and by the way, the kitchen’s closing.

 

How hungry are you right now? How much longer can you wait? If successful, the recruiter will brag to others how he got you for peanuts.

The Two For One Special

There are times when the hiring manager has two jobs to fill but only one salary to pay. These situations can arise when, over time, an employee has taken on two different sets of responsibilities. These different responsibilities look like a single job because they’re being carried out by one person, when in fact, they’re two jobs. When the incumbent resigns or retires, the manager looks for one person as a replacement. But there isn’t one person.

Here are a couple of job titles and related duties that I’ve seen recently that suggest this phenomenon:

• Director of Training and Regulatory Compliance
• Director of Organizational Development (supervise a team of hiring specialists)

 

I Can’t Decide What To Have (It all looks so good)

Then don’t decide! Just pile everything you can think of into the posting. And to make sure you don’t miss out on anything, inflate the job requirements.

• When you mean “supervise”, say “strategize”.
• When you mean “schedule”, say “marshal resources”.
• When you mean “motivate”, say “inspire”.

 

You know you’re in the presence of this indecision when you see combinations in the requirements and qualifications like this:

• Formulate a vision for your team
• Must have excellent Microsoft Office skills

 

Beverages

Doctor Discord’s Diet Drink

This low-nutrition, high-cost preparation is served in situations where there is more than one decision maker on the hire, and the parties haven’t reached agreement on what the position is about. But interviews are happening anyway.

It’s a diet drink because all it does is burn off resources. No decision can result as long as the decision makers are looking for different things.

Chateau Kool-Aid

Ah, the wine list! Or rather, it would be a wine list if we could wait long enough for the fermentation process. But we’re thirsty now!

Sometimes the hiring manager knows exactly what she needs in a job, but can’t find budget for the salary. As the old saying goes, she has champagne taste and beer money. So she posts for the job that she knows she needs, but tells the recruiter to screen out salary expectations above what she can pay. This recipe, if followed as written, should produce nothing. But the manager is hoping that she can somehow buy vintage wine with her pop money.

Cheque, please!

And a Bromo. But it’s hard to get sympathy for your indigestion when there were other choices on the menu that you could have made. To reduce hiring costs, here are some healthy approaches:

1. Be careful what you post for. Take care to ensure that your efforts to present an attractive employment opportunity don’t spill over into misrepresentation.
2. If your position has senior level responsibilities, be sure to display your advertisement in appropriate media. If it’s highly specialized, post where the specialists tend to look.
3. Don’t let the compliance people determine the content of your posting.
4. Don’t try for brownie points by hiring on the cheap.
5. Recognize that a need to replace a departing employee is an opportunity to rethink how your department gets work done. Resist the temptation to replace someone quickly just for the sake of a quick hire.
6. Before posting be sure that all parties to the hiring decision are on the same page.

By all means take measures to reduce turnover. And remember also to take a peek at your recruiting practices. Healthy choices from the recruiting menu lead to cost-effective hiring.

To submit a question for a future column, or to comment on a previous one, please contact editor@charityvillage.com. No identifying information will appear in this column.

Tim Rutledge, Ph.D., is a veteran human resources consultant and publisher of Mattanie Press. You can contact him at tim_rutledge@sympatico.ca.

Disclaimer: Advice and recommendations are based on limited information provided and should be used as a guideline only. Neither the author nor CharityVillage.com make any warranty, express or implied, or assume any legal liability for accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided in whole or in part within this article.