Pitting Snails
Employer resentment and better recruitment
You may well be familiar with the concept of candidate resentment.
If not, it’s the notion that bad experiences elsewhere inform how an individual may interact with your hiring process.
And that these experiences are shared online, both directly from candidates and talked about by TheInfluencers (“Dear hiring manager, do better, yours the world” type viral posts).
You can read my take, and how it can improve our recruitment efforts here: Spitting Nails.
One practical example of candidate resentment is ‘£competitive salary’:
people who experience being lowballed after applying for an advert that states £competitive salary may assume this is a red flag
this conversation widely happens on social media “list the damned salary”, making any such non-disclosure seem cynical
some people will refuse to apply to an advert that doesn’t list salary, because they see them as a waste of time
Without discussing the legitimate issues of salary non-disclosure, this is a microcosm of candidate resentment.
You might argue such candidates cut off their noses to spite their faces.
But of course, this is their choice.
It got me thinking.
Recruitment is a business built on reciprocity - what you put in, typically reflects what you get out.
So if candidate resentment is a widely acknowledged phenomenon, what about its reflection?
What about employer resentment?
What can we learn and how can we use this to improve how we recruit?
Look at anything a candidate resents and it typically reflects something a hiring process resents.
“I never hear back from applying to adverts that have 400 applications, so why bother applying”
reflects
“I don’t have time to review 390 wholly unsuitable applications, and the other 10 probably aren’t right either. Why bother advertising?”
“There’s no such thing as overqualified. Why don’t employers give us a chance?”
reflects
“We gave a chance to someone overqualified. They took another job within three months. Why would we risk having our fingers’ burnt?”
“I won’t apply to an advert which says £competitive salary”
reflects
“It’s not that simple. Our compensation philosophy pays top 1% and is negotiated on an individual basis”
And so if a candidate cuts off their nose to spite their face, aren’t hiring processes doing exactly the same through our resentments?
Rather than look to the outcome, why not find the root of the problem to improve your return?
Rather than state £competitive salary, why not explain your compensation philosophy, if you can’t indeed give the detail?
Adverts attract high volumes of applicants for a number of reasons. Automation and the state of the market are out of our control. The words we use are in our control, and affect both attraction and repulsion (given we can help candidates who aren’t suited choose not to apply).
Get to the root of why someone is overqualified, and that word isn’t relevant. What are their aspirations and needs? How does this reflect the trajectory and context of your role?
It’s the same for any bias - these typically come about because we assume an immutable element of a candidate makes them non-viable as an employee.
But if you strip back assumptions, you get to the truth - which may be that they are suitable; they are suitable with reasonable adjustments; they’re unsuitable for clear reason; or that there’s a fundamental problem that needs fixing.
Whenever we find ourselves resenting something in process, why not lean in to understand why and what we can actually do about it?
This is where accountability and problem solving are huge opportunities for both ends of the hiring process.
While we can’t do anything about candidate behaviour, and they can’t necessarily influence ours, we do have a measure of control over our strategy, messaging and approach.
Get these right first before resenting things out of our control.
Thanks for reading.
Regards,
Greg