atw: Recruitment - Long
- From: "Birtley-Kent, Christine" <birtleykentc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "'austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2004 16:37:24 +1000
Hi all
A few weeks back I completed a little two week contract with a Sydney
recruitment company (not one that deals with us). This was so instructive
that I wanted to share some of it with the rest of you.
With a staff of about 30 recruiters, all were between 20 & 30 (where do all
the old recruiters go I ask - into HR I was told).
Although this company does recruit specialists in their own field and train
them to be recruiters, the vast majority had never worked in any role other
than agency recruitment, with the obvious implications regarding their
understanding of the roles they are recruiting for.
However, this lack of understanding does not really matter, because the
whole of the recruitment effort is by formula. The formula is to get key
words from the customer for the role they are advertising, put that into the
ad and we all know what these ads look like now. All the phrases roll
meaninglessly off the tongue. They are formulae.
Then once advertised they peruse the CVs - literally as long as it takes to
scroll through the first page or two (they told me they often don't look at
the covering letters), and if they think you are a possible they classify
you accordingly. Most are simply trashed and never see the light of day
again.
If they think your CV looks OK, the CV you send to them is imported into
their software as an RTF file (yes, even a PDF gets this treatment) and
reformatted according to their template to be sent to the client if
required. If you have used revision marks, beware, because these often show
up on the import - meaning they can see how you have sanitised your CV to
suit their buzz words. This company is non-negotiable on re-formatting CVs.
Your CV will now stay on file forever more (along with every other version
you have sent in) and is available for searching for future roles. In this
case they will search the CVs on their records for the keywords. Another
learning - go through your CV regularly and make sure you are using ALL of
the buzz words being used in the current generation of advertisements.
Particularly make sure that the CV you send for the role you are applying
for includes the buzz words for that role. Don't forget - it is all formula
driven. For example, some jobs way back use the term 'Instructional
Designer' no-one know what that is so it may be wise to change it to
'Training Developer' - even though it is a lot more than that.
Then when they talk to the applicants, they are looking for the buzz words
and phrases. Personally I feel embarrassed about spouting this jargon back,
but in some cases that is all they are able to understand. We must remember
all the time that the recruitment process is formula driven. You are a CV,
not a human being, and your CV either gets a high enough statistical match
to the advertisement or it does not.
With this particular agency, they will not send you to the client for an
interview unless they interview you first according to a set interview
script. They then score you against a set of criteria on their system. For
example, they may give you 2/5 for corporate dress, 3/5 for general grooming
and 4/5 for verbal communication skills. If the company is looking for
someone with an average of 4/5 you will not show up on their search. Yes
folks, formulae. And heaven help you if you have a stutter. One recruiter
gave a man on the phone 1/5 for verbal communication skills because he was
stuttering on the phone. No understanding of the variability of stuttering
or issues relating to discrimination - after all, how would she get caught?
If you get past this, they present you to the customer, and if the customer
wants you, they check your referees. Again they have a set of questions,
deep questions like 'Does he/she arrive at work on time?' and they ask your
referee to give you a mark out of 5. From these mostly meaningless
questions that they apply to ALL applicants irrespective of role, they may
filter you out or give their scoring of you the customer. The questions
were largely focussed at junior and young staff and simply don't apply to a
professional. Yes folks, formulae
So now you have a CV and two score cards stored on their records. One score
card is generated by their conversation with you and one generated by their
conversation with your referees - and these score cards now determines if
you can get a job through that agency or not - ever. And remember that the
person who has scored you is someone between 20-30 who has never had another
job and has almost certainly never had your job.
Then, to add insult to injury, they 'do business development' with your
referee to try to source work through them.
I sat and listened to them for 2 weeks and was left with a nagging feeling
that they had no idea of the power they were wielding, and just how
irresponsibly they were wielding it. They have disassociated the CV or the
voice on the phone with a living, breathing human being with talents that
may fall outside of their formulae. They are youngsters will little life
experience and with almost life and death power over job seekers. This is
very dangerous for those job seekers who do not conform to the plastic
personas they require.
What I learned is that we have two choices. We can choose to work our CVs
and applications to comply with the formulae, and/or we can turn ourselves
into flesh and blood in their eyes. If we 'fit the profile' then imposing
ourselves on their consciousness is good policy, but if we are not the right
kind of flesh and blood (age, weight, beauty, height (for men), dress, voice
etc etc) then that may not be a successful policy.
I'm in Queensland now, where they are still old fashioned enough to employ
'old' people over 40 and work outside formulae - but for how long?
ck
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