I have been in this game for 30 years now. Over that time, the market has changed and shifted - but the biggest takeaway today - companies have lost the ability to assess and hire. But importantly - have lost the ability to attract people.
Where to start on this…
First off - Advert companies put out… 90% “WE ARE WONDERFUL” and 10% “YOU GOT TO BE PERFECT” - not realising they’re a shitty little company in the back streets of a city, or town, people dont really want to work for - but have too, because they are desperate.
Posting a job - believing they are doing you a favour.
Taking either too long to respond or ghosting. (Most recruiters can tell you, they get ghosted a lot by companies.
BAD management - within the first 10 mins of meeting a company, candidates tell me they think the place is shit, but need a job. And this happens more often these days.
No promotion, training or development - all talk BTW - but zero evidence, bear in mind - we recruiters talk to people exiting these companies - and know what is really going on.
Salary - where to start - let me quote an MD first “I dont want the salary advertised, because I pay my staff a lot less than this” - I shit you not. So basically, there is no progression of salary or growth - this is why you are losing people.
Progression planning “hey can you find me a new Dave - he is retiring next week - and does 4 people’s jobs - so we need a direct replacement” - what? How? And when you replace Dave, the candidate discovers that Dave was very good at doing nothing for 10 years. True story, I placed a guy replacing Dave once, found out there was no job, and Dave was pretending to solve problems and have meetings. His emails were in the region of 10’s of thousands of unread, adverts from gambling sites and p*rn sites.
“We dont hire grads or apprentices, but we can’t understand why we can not find good people to work for us”
Then - the other way around then “yeah we have been looking for a sale person for 2 years, but we can afford to use a recruiter” - i ask "so what is that sales target that is being missed… " one time a manager said “oh the target would be £$1.2 million” - so that is 2.4million in missed revenue - and you cant pay me £8k to find you the right person…OK…
Candidates if you are reading this, this is the mess we have to deal with - companies HATE recruitment - they hate replacing people - the hate to reflect and realise that the owners and maangers are the problem - they dont engage with their stafff, under pay and treat them like shit - then hate recruiters because “we have to pay you to fill our jobs” - well - duh…
Sorry, I felt like I needed to rant this today.