Why the Best Candidates May Not Be Applying to Your Positions

Our guest blogger is Judy Tilmont, owner of JST Search Group in Indianapolis, Indiana (USA) and a member of the NPAworldwide Board of Directors. JST Search Group places professionals in a wide range of manufacturing, engineering, operations, and finance roles.

Okay, so you’ve written the perfect job ad. You’ve paid to have it highlighted on page one of Indeed. You’ve brought it to the attention of everyone on LinkedIn with even one of your keywords in their profile, and you’ve tweeted out the link to everyone on Twitter. Your metrics show that people are visiting your website and reading your job post. Your position is with a great company in a favorable location. Why, oh why, aren’t candidates applying for this position?

Have you ever gone through your online application process? I was helping a very close friend negotiate the online job market this month. She found the perfect job and she believed herself to be a great fit for the position. The last line of the job posting was the killer for this applicant. “Please apply on our company website.” I told her, “It won’t be difficult. They just want some contact information, salary history and a copy of your resume.” Shows you what I know. The job portal at this company had 18 pages that required data to be entered. Not only did they want an MS Word copy of the resume attached, they wanted her resume recreated and educational history back to grade school. And the last page instructed her to write a cover letter including salary expectations.

The internet has made searching for a job a far easier exercise than it was even five years ago. It also has made the online application process a nightmare. If you are asking high-powered, in-demand candidates to apply on your site, have you checked lately to see if your portal is helping or hindering your efforts? Is the process so cumbersome that the best candidates are throwing their hands up in frustration at the time required or the duplication of information found on a well-formatted resume? It’s possible that in your effort to streamline your process, you are turning away the candidates that are most suited for your company.

I challenge all hiring authorities and third party recruiters to go through your portal. Pick a job and actually apply. Ask yourself the following questions as you go through the exercise:

• Is this information necessary to pre-screen this candidate for this position? Is it necessary to decide that I am interested in talking to him or her?
• Will this information be duplicated in a well-written resume?
• Do I need this information if I am not going to hire this person?
• And most importantly, does everything work?

If you are asking for more than you need to properly pre-screen candidates, you may want to rethink your online application process. Your process should be encouraging a large pool of candidates to actually apply to your postings, not just to read them.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / www.freedigitalphotos.net