Talent Hoarding is Real! And it’s getting worse…

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Talent hoarding has been around since the beginning of time. If you were good at hunting and gathering, some bigger stronger caveman was going to keep you around and not let some other cavemen lure you away!

In today’s world, talent hoarding begins when a manager doesn’t identify someone who works for them as promotable when they most likely are. The organization uses its leaders to understand who is ready for that next-level position. Certain managers, tend not to openly report they have such a candidate in their group, so they can keep that talent performing for them. This makes their life easier.

But, let’s not just blame these managers of people. There’s another organizational design issue that causes talent hoarding. Manager performance, and often parts of their compensation, are based on “team performance”. That being the case, it’s to a manager’s advantage, and the team’s advantage to keep talent. Almost no organizations incentive managers to promote people off their team into other parts of the organization.

There was a study just released in 2022, appropriately titled, “Talent Hoarding in Organizations” that showed that:

“Temporary reductions of talent hoarding increase worker’s applications for promotions by 123%. Marginal applicants, who would not have applied in the presence of talent hoarding, are three times as likely as average applicants to land a promotion.”

What the study determined, was that if you did not have any barrier to letting someone apply for promotion, your way more likely to be promoted! Things like you must first have your manager sign-off on your readiness, or things like having managers put names forward, etc.

Organizationally, we know also that talent hoarding often pushes talent to leave. Basically, if you aren’t going to promote me, I’ll use the free market to get a promotion somewhere else. In a talent market, as we have right now, that is happening at a massive scale. We see organizations implementing new internal mobility strategies to help counteract this, but it’s barely making a dent still, primarily because most of these strategies still rely on some sort of manager performance metric to allow someone to move internally.

Can we eliminate or reduce talent hoarding?

Short answer, yes. The longer answer, it’s hard!

First, we are talking about centuries of institutional dynamics at play. Generation after generation of leaders were raised under this framework. Thus, we have major change management issues to conquer.

Second, we would need to eliminate the negative side, or at least counteract the negative side of team promotion, with a positive side for the manager and team. This is the “coaching tree” analogy. Great coaches hire assistants and teach them how to be great coaches and those coaches go on to peer level roles. When you talk about the greatest sports coaches of all time, one major factor is their coaching tree. How many other coaches did they create? And, how good were those coaches?

If we can find a way to reward, and not punish, managers for promoting talent within the organization, which is greater than the reward for keeping great talent, we will have a much better chance at stopping talent hoarding. That is difficult. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an organization that has figured out the value of the theoretical “coaching tree” for a manager. Meaning, if I promote someone off my team, what is that worth to me, as the manager?

It’s a hard question to answer because it’s very specific to position and organization. If I’m at Apple and I “grow” a new Engineering Manager, from a Software Engineer, that I’ve mentored, there is considerable value in that happening! If I’m managing a fast food restaurant and mentor an hourly worker into a salaried manager, that is less valuable, by dollar amount, but still very valuable to the organization.

The reality is, you have no shot if you don’t try and answer that value equation!

You can have some success, by just eliminating all barriers to promotion and allowing anyone to apply. You will still have some that won’t, as managers will still have formal and informal influence over those that work for them. So, it’s not perfect. But, you’ll get more, than by asking your managers alone.

Also, just eliminating barriers could create a gender issue as we know through many studies men or more willing to apply to jobs they aren’t qualified for than women, so barrier elimination will most likely get you more male applicants, who you will promote, leaving more women behind. We actually need our leaders to help us identify and promote our great female next-level hires.

When talent is scarce, like it is now, talent hoarding will be worse. Talent hoarding is bad for your culture and it’s bad for your talent. And it’s happening right now in your organization.

The Weekly Dose: @TheRecruitBot – Recruiting is tough, Recruitbot is here to help!

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Today on the Weekly Dose I review the recruiting technology and machine learning-based sourcing tool, Recruitbot. There are a handful of really good sourcing technology tools on the market and each of them is working to carve out how they are unique and stand out from the rest. Recruitbot definitely has some key characteristics that help them achieve this.

RecruitBot uses machine learning to understand your hiring preferences, so you can intelligently source from our exclusive database of 350+ million global candidates, as well as every resume in your ATS. But, wait, Tim, I’ve seen others say they have 700+ Million candidates!? Isn’t that better? That’s one of the first things you notice about Recruitbot is the candidates you source from their database are constantly being verified for active email addresses. So, yes, the number is smaller, but all have been validated!

What do I like about Recruitbot?

  • The great thing about sourcing tech is that you can literally find millions of candidates! The bad thing about sourcing tech is you can literally find millions of candidates! Sourcing tech is not a resume database, the vast majority of these profiles have no idea who you are, so this really takes you back to true outbound recruiting.
  • Recruitbot has a very efficent and easy to use interface that allows day-to-day recruiters to build simple and effective nuturing campaigns in minutes to reach out to these candidates and work to get them to respond.
  • Recruitbot has a unique feature that allows a recruiter to pull a search and then easily send those profiles to a hiring manager who can then “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” each one, so the machine learning can quickly begin to learn what it is your hiring manager likes and doesn’t like, and it will continue to learn over time making it even more effective.
  • I mentioned above, but it can’t be understated, it’s not all about the number of profiles, but the number of profiles you can actually connect with! This is a Recruitbot strength.

My team got to test out Recruitbot for the past six weeks so we got a great inside look at what works great and what the challenges are using sourcing tech.

With any outbound recruiting/sourcing tool, you can not treat it the same as inbound. It’s awesome to be able to pull a great list of potential candidates, but you then just can’t spam them and think you’ll get any kind of decent response. You might, and it’s worth a try, but don’t hold your breath. It’s very “profession” and “market” specific. I can send out a mass campaign for “Sales Pros” and I”ll get a decent response. If I do the same thing for “Software Engineers” I might get zero response.

The key is personalization, on a mass scale, which is an art form when sourcing at a large scale. Being able to word your outreach in a way that feels and sounds personal, but that can also be sent to 25 potential candidates. You learn very quickly with Recruitbot, you need this still to take full advantage of the tech.

One of the great things my team loved about the tool was the ability to source a list of candidates, build the campaign and then just let it run and forget about it, while they sourced and recruited on other things, and then through the next days candidates would pop up from the campaign that had an interest. This did change their workflow a bit, but it was welcomed. We get so set in source, contact, source, contact, repeat. Instead of sourcing a bunch, then letting the tech do its thing!

Recruitbot is well worth a demo if you’re in the need of some sourcing technology, and your TA team has made the decision that some outbound recruiting is needed at your organization.

Performance Feedback for a New World of Work!

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It really is a choice.

Either you can decide to perform the job you have, or you can decide to work someplace else. Maybe that someplace else is working for yourself. Good luck with that, truly!

Either you believe this is the right company for you, or you can decide another company is right for you.

Either you treat your coworkers as peers, or you are welcome to go treat someone else’s employees like crap, but you can’t treat these coworkers like crap.

Either you follow our rules, or you will follow someone else’s rules, or you can follow your own rules. I find most people who want to follow their own rules, struggle at following their own rules.

Either you make a positive contribution to the organization, or you make me make a choice about your future and the contribution, or lack of contribution, you’ll make somewhere else.

Earning the right to work here isn’t hard; it’s just a simple choice that you control. Losing that choice is up to you until you make it up to me.

This new world of work is amazing! It’s your life! It’s your choice. Really, just like the old world of work, but you just didn’t see it that way…

Can I ask a favor?

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We all get asked for favors on a daily basis, sometimes on an hourly basis. Most aren’t really favors, they’re just requests for something the person probably is getting paid to do or it’s their responsibility, but it sounds nicer if we say it’s a favor. I get asked for a lot of favors and I probably go overboard on trying to accommodate most. I can blame my Midwest upbringing, but honestly, most folks asking for a favor find it hard to ask to begin with and I know that. Having the courage to ask should be rewarded.

I had to ask for a favor this week. Kind of big favor (you know who you are if you’re reading this – thank you for your help!) that had to do with my business. Because I tend to give a lot of favors, I don’t feel nervous about asking, but I also don’t ever assume the favor will be granted. I go in eyes-wide-open, I’m giving favors without any guarantee that someone will be able to give me a favor back in return. But, it’s rare when someone can’t.

I find business can frequently be a favor economy. It’s not always about signed contracts and cash changing hands. In fact, most of the business I do is paid in favors, with the hope that one day a signed contract and cash might come!

The biggest favor I ever asked was when I wrote my book. I went out to my entire network and asked them to buy a book. That’s a big favor! To the tune of $24.95. I could actually put a price on that favor. The reality is, most favors we would consider much more valuable. The book favor was less about the $24.95, and more about the support of my content and all that I had given to our community for many years. The funny thing about that favor is while so many bought the book and made it very successful, not as many as I thought bought the book as I expected. Turns out, $24.95 is a giant favor to ask of some folks!

In comparison, I’ve asked folks for the favor of an introduction that has turned into a seven-figure deal for my company. That same person wouldn’t spend $24.95 on my book, but they would give me a seven-figure introduction! It’s ironic how we value favors!

Favors are the currency of our everyday business interactions. You need something from me, regardless if I’m getting paid for it or not, and if you give me a favor it almost is a guarantee that I’ll reply with a favor back. Yet, we place no monetary value on favors. Well, at least most people don’t place a monetary value on favors! But sometimes we run into someone that has a definite favor they need in return that might turn into a monetary or resource-driven favor that is really hard for us to obtain.

I’ve had many folks in my life, as a favor to me, push a candidate I was supporting in front of the hiring manager with a good word. No guarantee of hire, but getting to the top of the pile sometimes if the push you need to get some of that “favor” luck! I’ve done the same, too many times to count. We’ll say it’s just our job, but in reality, it’s more than that.

I believe it is in our nature to want to give a favor. Not because we’ll get something in return, but because we like to help others. I truly believe this is a built-in emotion of the human condition. If we can do something for you, that will help you, at a fairly low cost to ourselves, why wouldn’t we want to grant that favor? It gets a bit tricky as the cost to ourselves starts to feel uncomfortable.

No big aha moment to end on. Just simply think about all the favors you give and take today as you navigate around. It happens so often, sometimes we forget how common it is.

The 1 Factor You Must Have to be a F500 CEO!

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It’s not what you think.

Right now you’re sitting there reading this thinking, “I need to know what this is so I can see if I have it or can get it because it’s in my life plan to be an F500 CEO!” You probably are thinking it must something like grit, determination, maybe smarts, attractive looks, or maybe it’s Tim talking about this it’s probably height because he’s a short motherf@cker!

Something truly, statistically interesting has happened over the last 14 years to CEOs of the Fortune 500. It really defies logic.

In 2005 the average age of an F500 CEO was 46 years old. Feels about right. 46 feels like young enough but also old enough all at the same time. The perfect combination of youth and wisdom.

In 2019, do you know what the average age of an F500 CEO was? You would think in 14 years that line would probably stay about the same. Maybe because of all the Baby Boomers leaving the workforce we would see it fall, but probably not too much. If a few Boomers were hanging on, we might see it rise a little, but again, it’s hard to move the average all that much.

In 2019 the average age of an F500 CEO was 59! Basically, over 14 years, the average age went up one year every year! It’s hard to even imagine that could be the case!

So, what is the one factor you need to be an F500 CEO? 

You need to be a Baby Boomer!

That’s right. Stop going to that Ivy league college and working on your MBA. Don’t worry if you’re ugly or short or fat or female or black or white or a dude. The only thing you really need to be is OLD!

Turns out, big giant companies like Old folks running their company!

Why?

If you are running a multi-billion dollar company, maybe even closing in on a trillion (Trillion is the new Billion!) you don’t want some kid at the wheel. You want someone with seasoning who will tend to be less reactive to major events. They’ll be a bit slower in how they move the company, a bit more conservative in how they manage the assets and resources.

Also, think about what’s happened over the past 15 years. We came out of the great recession. We had this young 45-ish CEO taking the lead in turning us around and putting us back on top. It actually worked! We’ve had this great decade of prosperity! Do you know what companies do when things are going really well? They don’t change anything! Including their CEO!

In fact, many times if the CEO wants to retire, and they trade that CEO in for a younger one, and 12 months in the company is slightly underperforming to expectations, they’ll fire that CEO quickly and bring back the old one to right the ship!

So, 37-year-old Millennial who is chomping at the bit to take over. Calm down and wait until you’re old! You really only have about twenty more years to wait until it’s ‘your time. That isn’t that long, just 25% or so of your life. You’ll get there, be patient!

Also, Short Kings, don’t hang your head, while you probably will never be a CEO because of your stature, you have so many other redeemable qualities, like,..well I’m sure you’ll of something… keep the faith, my tiny brothers! Turns out, besides being old, you also need to be tall!

Just do your damn job, Timmy!

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It seems like frustration is at an all-time high. On a daily basis people are coming unglued over things they have no control over, and never will.

We are told to be more empathetic. We are told our employees need us to be “X”. You fill in the “X” because it changes pretty much article to article, generation to generation, leader to leader. One day I’m just supposed to care more. Then the next day I need to listen more. The next day I need to understand more. Today, I need to be more flexible.

Somehow we’ve gone from running businesses to managing a daycare.

I’ve stopped listening to people who don’t do the job I do. To the people who haven’t done the job in the past decade. To the people who claim to be experts but haven’t worked in my field, maybe ever, but certainly not in the past few years with the massive transformation that has taken place in the workforce. 

Instead, I’m going out and talking to my employees. The young ones, the old ones, the ones in between that we’re not supposed to pay attention to anymore because they don’t matter because they’re not young or old, or female, or a minority, or gay. I’m going out and talking to them all equally. Since I need them ‘all’ to move my organization forward. Especially, today with all the issues we have in finding talent.

It doesn’t matter what my employees are telling me. That’s for me, to help them. The thing that will help my employees, most likely won’t help your employees. You work in a different culture, location, industry, climate, etc. No one is a better expert on my employees than I am. 

Just like you will be the expert of your employees, your team, your department, your organization.

 But, here’s what I think you’ll find out:

 – Your employees are all individuals with very specific problems, concerns, and desires.

– Their problems start close to them and then move outward. Sure it sucks Trump is making massive change and they want to help America and the World, but first, they have an issue with daycare and paying student loans, and a health scare. Those problems are bigger than the world problems you keep shoving down their throat. Help them solve the problems close first, then solve the world.

– Your millennial employees became adults, and you keep treating them like they just left college and are still kids.

– Your ‘new’ youngest employees are much different than millennials, and they’re not. They’re still young people with young people’s problems and passions.

– Your employees want to be successful. Across the board, it’s a driving and motivating force. You helping them become successful is the most important thing you can do as a leader. What’s successful? That is also very individualized. Your challenge, as a leader, is to find a way to tie their success to the organization’s success. It’s hard to do, and you have to figure it out for your employees.

We keep letting other people tell us how to do our jobs. Have fun with that. I’m going to do the job I was hired to do, the way I know it needs to be done because no one knows how to do this job, better than me.

Everyone Wants to Work at the Party, Until They Do…

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This past week I got a chance to head down from frigid cold Michigan and spend a couple of days in Phoenix (Thanks, Paradox/Olivia!). Some work, some play. I went to the PGA event being held in Scottsdale. If you aren’t familiar with the Waste Management Open PGA Event, and you love golf, this is a bucket list event to attend. If you hate golf and have zero interest, this is STILL a bucket list event to attend!

Basically, the Waste Management Open is what happens when someone said, “What if we have a party with 250,000 people and threw a golf tournament into the middle of it! I wish I was exaggerating, I’m not, it’s unbelievable fun and mayhem, and it’s a professional “boring” golf tournament!

It’s a giant party.

I got a really cool opportunity to spend the entire morning walking the course with a golf agent of one of the top players in the world. Super cool guy and very generous to let me tag along with him on his “job”. We were following his player. And of course, me being me, I was grilling him with questions and talking shop.

Because of all the crowd insanity going on, which is the opposite of a normal golf tournament, my belief was these golfers must LOVE this! The agent agreed, for one weekend, it’s very cool and most of the golfers love this unique experience. But. There’s always a but, right? This is their job. It’s a super stressful, performance-driven occupation where a missed put can mean you get paid to play golf on the weekend or you fly home early with nothing. Or a missed putt at the end of your round can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So, it’s great for one week, but it would be a nightmare having to deal with this every week!

Too many people think they want to work at the party!

Working at the party is fun, until you never have time for some calm. For some focused time. For some sanity in a stressful world. It’s why constant motivation and energy are unsustainable, the body and mind love to have it in doses, here and there, but it would be destroyed having it all the time.

I hear leaders tell their HR team, “I want an upbeat, high-energy work environment all the time!” And the HR team tries to build it, but it always fails. We can produce this for certain events, certain points in time, but constantly would be a nightmare. It would be some drunk dude screaming your name as you’re trying to make a $250K putt on the 18th green, but instead of this just happening once, it’s happening every single time you putt!

I think too many people mistake “fun” with “success”. I find that most employees who are successful in their job and career describe that success as having fun at work. As work being positive, etc. It’s very rare where you’ll find a successful employee who describes their work environment as not fun, boring, etc.

They think, if I’m having fun at work, that will feel amazing. But I can provide a fun environment and if you’re failing, you’ll still feel awful because you’re failing. “But, Timmy, there’s a roller coaster in the lobby! And we have beer anytime you want!” Yeah, but I can’t figure out how to do my job and I can’t reach my goals.

As a fan, I absolutely love the Waste Management Open and before I had a chance to hear and see the other side, my thought process was why hasn’t every PGA event turned into “this”? It’s because for how much everyone involved loves this ‘one’ event, having it over and over again, would no longer be fun for the main attraction, the golfers who are trying to do their job.

So, what’s the moral of this story? A little “party” goes along way!

Is it a power play to send someone your Calendly link? #HRFamous

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On episode 96 of The HR Famous Podcast, long-time HR leaders (and friends) Tim Sackett, Jessica Lee and Kris Dunn come together to discuss a reported uptick in Glassdoor reviews mentioning inflation and the power dynamics (or lack thereof) of making someone use your Calendly scheduler.

Listen below (click this link if you don’t see the player) and be sure to subscribe, rate, and review (Apple Podcasts) and follow (Spotify)!

SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:

3:00 – JLee’s dry January quickly devolved into drinking wine on a Wednesday. She just finished Station Eleven and is watching And Just Like That. 

5:20 – Tim has been loving season 2 of Righteous Gemstones. He says it’s his guilty pleasure. 

9:00 – KD recommends Southside on HBO Max. He calls it “lighter fare” in comparison to the post-apocalyptic Station Eleven. 

11:45 – KD found a Twitter thread from an economist about the rising concern from employees about inflation and how it affects their pay. KD asks JLee how much concern there actually is about inflation. 

18:00 – Tim doesn’t think the average Glassdoor reviewer is mentioning raises due to inflation but the average employe e may be discussing inflation while asking for a raise. 

21:20 – KD poses a situation to Tim where an employee comes in and tells him that his company’s pay isn’t keeping up with inflation. 

23:20 – Next topic: the power dynamics of using automated calendars. KD mentions this tweet about the etiquette behind Calendly. 

26:00 – Tim doesn’t get how it’s a power play for someone to send a meeting link to someone else for a pre-arranged meeting. JLee offers a different power play scenario that fits the bill. 

28:30 – If you click a Calendly link, does that make you somebody’s b****? JLee and Tim don’t see what the big deal is. They also both do not use an automated calendar system. 

33:00 – KD says that the person that sends their Calendly link after someone has already sent one is the true power graber. 

40:00 – We’re pulling for an early summer!!!

You Do NOT Have a Short-term Recruiting Problem!

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I’ve been trying to preach this for what seems like forever, but we tend to be so short-term focused in almost every business process and decision we make in the modern world. How can we make a profit today, F the future!

Your current recruiting issue is not a short-term problem that eventually will just go away on its own. Also, your current recruiting problem has nothing to do with the “Great Resignation”. That was a made-up term by a professor trying to explain a short-term issue we were currently facing, amongst a much larger long-term problem.

The “Great Resignation” is simple economics. We have more jobs than people looking for jobs, so workers have “buying” power. Other companies will pay me more for the same work or give me a promotion with my lessor skills because they have no other options. Straightforward supply and demand economics.

We are already seeing the “economics” of this situation play itself out with higher inflation driven by wage growth and we’ll see more and more adjustments made by organizations to figure it out. Most likely that involves technology replacing parts of jobs, adding human capacity through technology, etc. Organizations can only eat so much in wages before they’ll find a “better” way to skin the cat.

Our problem IS and will continue to be, we have a shrinking workforce that we are doing absolutely nothing to turn that demographic fact around.

Peter Shanosky, wrote a good piece on our aging issue:

The median age in the United States is currently 38.1 years old — a number that reflects a consistent rise in recent years, but not too terrible. That number has been moving up about .15 per year as our largest generation, the oft-discussed boomers, age…

In our professions, then, we would expect to see a median age of around 38. Naturally, that’s not the case, specifically when you get into some of the trades or other professions that aren’t necessarily glamourous. Still, these jobs are essential to our everyday lives. We should not ignore them.

So how far off are they? Well, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we’ve got some wide discrepancies. Looking at just a few:

· Real estate agents: 49.1 years old

· Automotive mechanics: 47.4 years old

· Facilities managers: 50.1 years old

· Bus/Shuttle drivers: 55.6 years old

· Housekeeping/Janitorial: 50.1 years old

· Home health aides: 47.2 years old

· Electrical trades: 46.8 years old

Yikes. There were plenty of professions even older than that, but I picked these for a reason — there’s little barrier to entry. You don’t need a $200,000 piece of paper, and they’re located across the country. You don’t need to live in a growing metropolitan area to have any of these jobs. In other words, based on ease of access, they should be younger. But they’re not.

Why aren’t younger people moving into these roles?

Basically, we have a problem with younger generations not actually wanting to work. There are probably a million reasons, social media, NFTs, influencers, Bitcoin, Meme stocks, etc. If you are 18-30 in today’s world, you are inundated with examples, constantly, of how you can be rich, by not really working, and it all looks so easy!

The problem is, we can’t rely on GenX and young Baby Boomers to keep building our shit! Eventually, they’ll be dead and you’ll be sitting there wondering why the fucking lights won’t come on so you can film your next TikTok video about how to make a million dollars trading make-believe money. Turns out, we need folks willing to get their hands dirty from time to time.

The obvious solution is to increase immigration and create a constant pipeline of workers who want to come to America and actually work. Turns out, regardless of want mass media is trying to get us to believe, millions of immigrants still want to come to America! We actually have jobs that pay money and benefits and overtime and provide training, simply if you have a work ethic! Isn’t that a crazy concept!?

I don’t want young people to think this is all their problem, it’s not! Your parents own a portion of this as well. Someone should have made you work when you were younger. Mow a lawn, babysit, work the fryer at McDonald’s when you were 16, but they were doing pretty good and you were basically not annoying them with your face in your phone, so you didn’t get the opportunity to value work. I think older Millennials, GenX, and Baby Boomers all worked when they were 16 for two main reasons: 1. Our parents refused to give us anything, so we needed money if we wanted something. 2. Our parents couldn’t stand watching us sit around and do nothing, so we were forced to leave the house.

All of this rant about how young people suck, still isn’t the problem!

We aren’t having enough babies!

Probably starts with we aren’t having enough sex, but that’s another post.

Turns out, babies and puppies are a god damn lot of work, and if you don’t like work…well, it’s kind of comes around full circle!

There are 3 ways this will be fixed, and I do believe it will be:

  1. More Immigrants, like millions and millions more. (BTW – every industrialized, rich country is in the same boat as the US, we just really such at immigration)
  2. More automation and technology to replace workers. (Already happening, get used to it happening a lot more)
  3. More babies! Won’t happen anytime soon, and I would guess we might never be able to turn that around.

Or, you and your organization can just believe this great resignation thing will play itself out and we’ll all be back to normal by summer. Have fun with that!

And P.S. – Get off my lawn!

Why do candidates ignore recruiters?

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Oh, Lord, let me count the reasons! Can I get an Amen!?

Basically, candidates ignore recruiters because as recruiters we have sucked too many times for them to pay attention any longer! Also, it’s a lie, candidates don’t actually ignore you, they see you, but they don’t respond, because we can be worse than a used car salesman who’s about to be fired if they don’t sell one more car before the end of the month!

There was a brilliant article written recently by a Software Engineer, Alex Chesser, Career Advice Nobody Gave Me: Never Ignore a Recruiter. From his post:

“The obvious adaptive response that I suspect the vast majority of us use is to roll our eyes and ignore them. We tell each other jokes about the problem all the time. We’ll gripe and moan about how annoying it is, how obvious and crass it is.

No one ever explained to me that recruiters are also one of the best career resources you can find.

If you think about it, who better to be completely honest with about what you want from your career? Who else has real and direct insight into how much money any given role pays?“

Alex shares the script he uses to respond to each recruiter outreach he receives and it’s brilliant –

BTW! Alex says “Steal This and Use it!”

Candidates Ignore Recruiters Because We Waste Too Much of Their Time!

This is the reality. Because we, as recruiters, don’t really know enough about them, we tend to waste a lot of time discovering if a candidate is right for us or not. Maybe, Alex has found a better way to communicate this back and forth that is valuable for both parties. The candidate gets what they want and we get a response, that might lead to a positive outcome. No response leads to no outcome!

The truth is, every candidate does actually want to hear from a recruiter. Recruiters think this isn’t the case. Candidates mistakingly say this isn’t true. But it is. If I contacted Alex, today, and I had his dream job, he wants to hear from me. If I have a crappy job that is four levels lower than his ability, he doesn’t want to hear from me. But, as he found, you don’t know that until you know that!

Alex’s response to every recruiter, while canned, is perfect in getting positive responses from him. If more candidates did the same thing, I’m sure we would see more positive interactions across the board between recruiters and candidates.

Candidates ignore recruiters simply because far too often recruiters are reaching out to them with positions they wouldn’t be remotely interested in. Why do recruiters do this? Desperation. Ignorance. Overconfidence. Lack of clarity on what the hiring manager wants/needs. Lack of basic worldly understanding of what someone would possibly want given the information they have. All of the above.

Candidates don’t ignore recruiters who deliver the goods and treat them as a professional. As someone who values your time. There’s hope, because of the Alex’s out there helping us be better by being very specific about what and how that looks.