The Hiring Dilemma: An Expired System

I know the title might have you pissed off already—yeah, welcome to the club.

A decade ago, you'd apply for a damn job, do 1 or 2 interviews, and hear back from them within the week. It was simple, robust, and direct. Even for blue-collar work, you'd be able to do a walk-in and could potentially be hired on the spot.

However, in today's era, the hiring process couldn't be more difficult and frustrating. In a difficult economy, the job market has become severely impacted, resulting in a lot of competition for each role. Every time you apply for a new role, it feels like jumping through a bunch of hoops, only to have the door slammed in your face at the end.

As much as it may not be personal, it feels personal.

In this article, I will dive deep into the many frustrating practices that companies employ during the hiring process, and give my two cents on how this outdated system can be improved.

Keep note, this is my opinion and strictly from an outside perspective looking in. I have never been given the opportunity to be an interviewer and/or hire potential candidates (although I think I could do an excellent job at it).

Let's be real for a second.

Being just a number when applying for jobs is infuriating. You pour hours into customizing your resume, writing cover letters, and filling out endless application forms, only to feel like you're shouting into the void. Automated systems filter out applications based on keywords, so if you don't perfectly match the job description, you might not even get a glance from a human.

When you do get through, it often feels like you're climbing hill after hill—multiple interviews, assessments, and ghosting from recruiters. The entire process makes you feel like just another cog in a massive, indifferent machine, rather than a unique individual with valuable skills and experiences to offer. It's a crappy feeling.

With that in mind, let's cover all of the tough obstacles that applicants have to go through.

Picture this.

You apply for a position. They put you through many rounds of interviews, make you participate in technical/behavioral assessments, ignore your calls/texts/emails, and even in some cases, ask you to work a couple of days so that they can "analyze your work" before recruiting you.

Corporations will drag out the process however long they so please, and you don't have much of a choice because you need a job and are willing to do what it takes.

Through the power of the internet, job applications are more accessible than ever. Everyone and their mother is applying for the same jobs, especially the most appealing ones with a solid salary, juicy benefits, and a top 500 Fortune company (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.).

Not to mention, the majority of the people who are applying for these jobs aren't even serious about the opportunity. It's more of a "spray and pray" type of deal where they'll just grab their resume and throw it at any job opening they see. This creates even more of a waste of time because these companies have to take extra time to sort through these useless resumes and dump them out.

However, companies aren't making this any easier with the current legacy system. Like the photo displayed above, many companies encourage you to apply for the position even if you don't fully qualify but are quick to reject you because you don't meet those expectations. You can't possibly find the ideal candidates if the process is designed to cut the majority of people off based on fixed variables.

This one is a literal pain to deal with. Who wants to go through the hassle of being tested on technicalities?

Now, the concept itself isn't bad; and if used properly, can be a great way to onboard the right candidates for the available position. This is why assessments should be more of a thing later down the hiring process, not off the jump.

Unfortunately, a lot of companies don't know how to provide you with a good assessment. It can range from a couple of different things:

• Filtering out great candidates because of a stupid test.

• Make the application process a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

• The quality of the questions on the assessment doesn't accurately reflect one's performance or capabilities.

• If the assessment is before the first interview, there is no guarantee that an assessment even will land them one.

No matter how much you try to prepare for an interview, you never feel ready.

And that's not always the interviewee's fault.

The majority of interviews are not monitored by supervisors, and therefore the recruiters aren't always receiving necessary feedback and properly learning from their mistakes. Especially for behavioral assessments, untrained interviewers don't understand what they need to look for in an interviewee, what questions to ask, and how to identify unique qualities or the proper variables that would be a value-add for a team.

The bottom line is that interviews tend to be subjective rather than objective. It's more so based on the opinion of the interviewer, and that creates an avenue for misinformation, miscommunication, a loss of good candidates, and more. The system needs to be fixed with strict guidelines and professionally trained interviewers with an unbiased opinion, but can also analyze a person's strengths and weaknesses from single or multiple calls.

There's only so much that you can do on your end, which is: show up on time, be likable, be confident, and be prepared with the foundations of what the company is.

Just be yourself.

Can't get more simple than that.

Alright, it's time to solve some problems. And I got a couple of ideas.

Out of all the ways that you can get onboarded, having a connection with someone from the inside of a company is the easiest route. Every application in existence should have a box for referrals. The hiring team will have someone on the inside that they can reach out to and get verification + a second opinion on the interviewee. Furthermore, the hiring team could even have an application specifically for candidates who are only entering through a private pipeline.

By leveraging internal referrals, companies can streamline the hiring process, saving time and resources, and potentially bringing in more reliable candidates.

This one has a pretty simple solution. Across the board, all companies should create contracting positions to allow candidates to prove themselves worthy of their work ethic and see how well they get along with the rest of the team. Just because they aren't someone who can meet all of the qualifications, doesn't mean they don't have the potential to.

I've said this before: a passionate 20-year-old could be a better fit than a 40-year-old with experience. Because that naive, young adult is willing to learn and do whatever it takes to move up the ladder and gain more experience.

Companies that take a risk on people are the ones that are ultimately rewarded with the best group of employees.

This is probably the most important one because it sets the foundation of the hiring process. From A to Z, these recruiters should be knowledgeable in what they are doing.

As I previously mentioned, understanding various behavioral types and having an intuitive grasp of human dynamics are crucial skills for effective onboarding. Companies need to put more time, effort, and resources into ensuring that they have a support system for their recruiters to be grounded and can provide a smooth hiring process.

Hey, I never said I'm a professional at this and know all of the ins and outs, nor am I fact-checking to the maximum. This is just purely from my own first and third-hand experience, and strictly an opinion.

I also didn't want to make this article too lengthy, so I decided not to talk about resume building, the impact of a college degree, diversity hiring, and other aspects of the job onboarding ecosystem; this was only strictly pointing out flaws in the hiring process.

Alright, I've ranted enough. Be sure to hit the subscribe button if you enjoyed my content! Until the next written piece, later!