Flaws in the System

Bob Weinstein is a journalist who covers technology, project management, the workplace and career development.

  Career Development  

Naively, you have entertained rich fantasies of being considered for an ideal job you were amply qualified for. Job-hunting has never been fun. There is no pat solution for enduring the interminable frustration accompanying job hunting. It's a depressing process unless you're lucky enough to see immediate results.

Worse still, the process at virtually all levels--resume preparation, submission to evaluation--is encumbered with bureaucracy. With a tight job market and an economy still crawling at a snail's pace, a turnaround still looms in the distance. Meanwhile, competition for jobs remains intense. Thousands of qualified candidates are scrambling for the same jobs. It's enough to keep you up nights if you happen to be one of them.

Conclusion: Job-hunting has evolved into an unwieldy behemoth where candidates at all levels--fledgling programmers, senior project managers and CIOs--are victims.

Former HR executives Mark Mehler and Gerry Crispin--principals of Kendall Park, New Jersey recruiting technology firm CareerXroads company--created an imaginary candidate to apply to 400 Fortune 500 companies in search of the very best online job-hunting experience America's flagship companies can offer.

Their meticulously executed survey reveals some startling and disconcerting results. Mehler and Crispin present a sobering look at a flawed recruiting process where talented candidates--experienced PMs for one--often can't break into corporate databases. Or, it takes far too long for their resumes to reach the desks of hiring managers. A few companies, however, provide easy, executable links to job pages and streamlined entry into corporate data warehouses.

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Mehler and Crispin said the business case for re-engineering companies' hiring process as a candidate-centered strategy has been made by educators, pundits and practitioners since the 1930s, which was reason enough to study the hiring process. The two men launched the project in May 2003, anticipating a large number of public firms would get their act together this year. Employment isn't rocket science, Mehler asserts. "We were wrong."

Surprise Surprise: Public Firms are Off Target

The former HR pros naively thought public firms would be the first to realize that their stakeholders are also customers and they (the customers) will, inevitably, enter the job market. Much effort and ink has been expended linking the job seeker as a valued customer, Mehler says. Website designers, hiring systems vendors, Internet hosting firms and job board services all extol their ability to help manage large numbers of candidates in a way that screens the best of them from the worst without turning any of them off as customers.

"These so called 'end-to-end, globally-integrated hiring solutions' that many of the largest firms have bought into offer such customer-centered features as multi-tiered, fuzzy-logic search engines to help visitors find the one special job, a 'refer-a-friend' button conveniently located near each position description and nearly-instant messaging to acknowledge the newly minted and registered candidates--those unsuspecting folks who are willing to spill their guts into a 'profile' firmly tucked away in the firm's database--that their résumé has been received and all is well," says Mehler. " There is also the 'Personal Agent,' a staple at many sites offering around-the-clock attendance to grab new job postings and forward them pronto to managers looking for qualified candidates."

Candidate Sorting Systems are Still a Mess

Many recruiters have the right idea, but they're missing the boat because they can't keep up with the volume of resumes. "It's lazy recruiting," says Mehler. "If you can't get from one million to 10 million resumes in 10 minutes, you're incompetent. An average size company has at least one-million resumes in their database, big companies get thousands a day."

Crispin and Mehler's research proved that despite the newest recruitment technology, companies are not getting the best candidates.

The Solution: The Big Crescendo

Corporate recruiting practices are flawed. Mehler and Crespin contend that candidates, the customers, must do more than send resumes into cyberspace. The Internet is a great tool for obtaining job leads and information, but alone it won't get you a job no matter how impressive your credentials.

As always, the best way to land an interview is through contacts. That could be anyone who works at the company--colleagues, former employees, an acquaintance on the loading dock or even the mailperson who knows every manager/executive (That's a potential goldmine of leads right there).

This basic tactic is the nucleus of a successful job hunt. It's also the most difficult. This is why the majority of job hunters give it short shrift. It takes persistence, confidence and mountains of ingenuity, says Mehler. But, it's worth the effort. You may be surprised where it leads. There are no miracles for landing jobs. It's just good old hard work. Trite but true. Adds a resolute Mehler: "Technology is never going to change that."

Bob Weinstein is a syndicated columnist for King Features. He writes a weekly technology career column that appears in daily newspapers throughout the United States. He has written 12 books.