I'm delighted today to present the second post in our 'If I could change one thing about HR...' series to come from a US-based HR blogger (following on from J Keith Dunbar). Stefanie Fontanez is here to take a look at which side HR is really on in the "war for talent".
Stefanie is a senior copywriter and online community manager at US recruitment site SnagAJob.com. You can also find Stefanie on Twitter and Facebook.
Stefanie Fontanez: If I could change one thing about HR...
We all know that HR needs a change. We hear it from our clients, we hear it from our peers and we especially hear it from our job seekers.
It's serendipity to see this topic being addressed - right now we are asking our job seekers the same thing. What would you change about SnagAJob.com? We've found that the only way to make ourselves the best job board we can be is by being honest about our flaws and then trying to fix them. And although it might seem like a question that has nothing to do with the HR community, you'd be wrong.
Take a look on our Get Satisfaction page and on our Facebook. What job seekers would change is often the hiring process. They hate your unnecessarily long applicant tracking system. The screening questions you ask potential cashiers and waitstaff are more suited to a GRE. And you never call. They don't even get a form email letting them know that they didn't qualify for a job. You want them to apply for your jobs - but when they do, you ignore a large percentage of them.
And we get it. Job seekers frequently turn in applications that are less than desirable. When you get a resume with 87 typos and a ketchup stain, it doesn't exactly make you want to contact them. But when you consider these same forgotten applicants are also often your loyal customers, these excuses don't cut it.
Job seekers feel alone, frustrated and abandoned. Which, I'm venturing to guess, is exactly how you feel when trying to hire for hard-to-fill positions. Or for a difficult manager. Or at a company that doesn't treat its employees very well.
As we're finding out, HR and job seekers have more in common than you think. And my sincere wish is that we, together, can figure out a way to improve the hiring process for the job seeker and for HR.
So what's the one thing I'd change about HR? The perception that hiring is a war to be fought between HR, corporate, managers and job seekers. We are all on the same team. So let's start acting like it.
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Comments (1)
Great post. Interviewers face many dichotomies during the recruitment process – research tells us that it’s best to interview a potential candidate two or three times due to initial biases or discrepancies between interviewers, but aside from this being costly it increases the already lengthy interview process. Susan Lewis has an interesting viewpoint on the subject (http://blog.susanhiresaboss.com/2009/05/who-is-this-susan-character.html).
We discuss similar topics on HubCap Digital (http://alpha.hubcapdigital.com) – feel free to drop by and contribute!
Posted by Ashleigh | September 9, 2010 1:57 PM
Posted on September 9, 2010 13:57