Recruiting on Steroids

“Human Resources”—this phrase reeks of an outdated narrative where employees are the company’s assets, almost a property, really. No wonder it finally caused that very “Great Resignation” effect which we observed in 2021: millions of angry and dissatisfied workers left their jobs seeking better attitude and more fulfilling work.

Those who already quit or think of quitting will eventually need to land somewhere. How do we get them to choose our company as their safe haven? What are people expecting from their employers? What do we need to compete against?

The “Great Attraction” philosophy is a new trend that needs to get adopted to get ourselves a piece of that global “Talents Recomposition” cake. The whole former IT staff augmentation services and IT outsourcing domains are now mutating and evolving, and here are a few of the changes that are coming (or already came) to our lives.

Buckle up, we’re going to the future! We do need some magic steroids to recruit Talents in 2022.

Due to the switch to remote work, people are no longer tied to the office, company, team the same way it was before. It not only opens up an opportunity to work from home, reducing commute times, but also allows working from any place on the earth and hiring nearly anywhere. Talent pools are becoming wider and more diverse, which allows quicker access to both trending and unique specializations.

In the remote mode, companies won’t have the possibility to closely monitor what their workers do and when exactly they do it. The focus will be on the actual end result. And maybe letting it go is a good thing? If a person or a team does what’s expected or beyond while meeting their deadline, the way how the goal is achieved becomes secondary. And that should be the norm as long as communications are done properly and team interactions are healthy, of course.

Before covid, office work was a must. To make it worse, add strict schedules, time reports and monitoring people’s computers on top to create the most toxic mix. According to a 2021 survey by ExpressVPN, 78 percent of firms are using software to measure employee productivity. No wonder all these measures made millions of regular workers unhappy.

Very little flexibility, poor work-life balance caused heavy burnout and brain drain processes. It leaves a little room for trust and substitutes accountability with a “parent control”.

There will no longer be cheap labor destinations; there will be consultants and high-level professionals who do qualified work. Cheap vendors competing for someone’s business are a thing of the past. It’s time for qualified and perhaps costly consultancies providing global top-notch staff-augmentation services.

The sooner the clients get ready to pay high dollars for premium service, the faster they will solve their business goals and get a return on investment. In return, vendors who want to charge more will need to go the extra mile increasing quality to deserve that premium attitude.

Heavy differentiation between countries outsourcers and countries vendors in the past made us stick with the “outsourcing for cheaper labor” philosophy for decades. We had this client-dominated market with thousands of vendors dumping the pricing and constraining salaries. That had to change some day, a revolution of mindsets was needed.

Of course, everyone still wants to hire experienced workforce. However, in the modern reality, that means lowering the bar and hiring not only for skills but also for POTENTIAL.

Imagine a candidate who does not match the job description 100% but who is smart, energetic and ambitious. When given a chance, they will appreciate it more and stay longer. Having room for growth, being mentored by more experienced peers, and believing in common goals produces a high level of performance.

“We are too good to be hiring unworthy candidates” philosophy led to a recruiting nightmare both for companies and for candidates. When the bar is too high, hiring criteria become too complex, the interview cycles last for weeks and become exhausting. For a candidate, it’s easier to drop out of this rodeo than to go all the way through.

When are we going to stop rejecting perfectly good candidates due to frequent job changes or gaps on their CVs? We have to stop treating CVs as an artifact with reasons to reject, but rather as proof of someone’s skills which may become useful in the required job.

Hiring cycles will become much shorter and will follow the “Rapid Recruiting” philosophy. Companies will only get one chance to impress, so recruiting SLA’s need to be short:

• One stage interview (maybe a bit of online coding)
• Quick decision right after
• No take-home tests

A candidate needs to know exactly what is going to happen at each stage of the process. Make sure that you clearly explain what needs to be done in the job and give all appropriate feedbacks along the way.

The battle for candidates’ attention has begun. To interest them in our offers, we have to bring our A-game: be friendly, be human, be honest and stand out. Noname brands will need to invest to start getting recognized, or they won’t have any chance to compete for talents at all.

We used to make future employees jump through hoops, wait for months before we declined them with little to no feedbacks, asked to complete an extensive test task and dismissed it with formal generic letters. With so many offers on the table today, we cannot afford this type of behavior anymore. A candidate can easily trade that for someone less annoying.

And let’s be real, take-home tasks deserve a special space in hell.

It’s an era of partnership and mutual commitment between companies and employees. To keep people motivated, we want to fulfill their basic needs:

• Meaningful work and a sense of belonging
• Clear career path and potential for growth
• Feeling heard and valued by company and management
• Caring and trusting teammates
• Empathy, the feeling of care, and attention
• Work-life balance

When these needs are not met, the person may start considering other options. And it’s not about employees being disloyal, it’s about a company failing to meet their needs.

Companies used to dictate the rules of this game. An employee does whatever is told, works from dusk till dawn, dedicates to the company more than to a family or oneself. We gave you a job, what else do you want? A salary raise? Oh, what a shameless, ungrateful request.

These old outgrown mentalities: “employees need to be thankful for the job” and “A person who wants to leave is not our person”—are a sure way to failure and oblivion.

On remote, people have more time to do extra work. Some are already taking a 2nd or 3rd full-time job, seeking more financial freedom. For example, in the US people make an average of $10,972 a year on their side-hustles like blogging, teaching, freelance coding, etc.

We may just be appalled: No, it’s against the rules! Or we can open our minds and work options to allow taking more paid work within the same company. Otherwise, people will find these options on the side.

Due to high talent demand, faster hiring, burnouts, employee loss, the nature of work itself will become more intense. That means shorter deadlines and faster projects which need to be done while the talents are still there. As a result, gaps in the resumes will become even worse, but mostly all have logical explanations.

We’re leaving behind classic “from 9 to 5” jobs where your desire to make some money on the side is forbidden, your interest to try out different jobs or management styles looks like a Black Mark on your CV. Want to run a little consulting business of your own outside the main employer—deal with a stigma of an “unreliable employee”.

KISS (Keep it stupid simple) approach will be saving a lot of time and money when used wisely. No need to automate things that will bring back no to little in return. It is better to study candidate background and customize the first message than to rely on mass mailings. Too many of those lately.

And that is an answer to the question of whether recruiters will get replaced by machines. They won’t until they are good at their job 😉

In the past years, with less and less personalization, the chase to use automated tools made many companies seem like cyborgs with no sign of human identity. We’re getting automated mailings and follow-ups with little to no personalization. Sometimes it’s hard to find the actual person to speak to! Hey! Anybody there? It gets pretty lonely, you guys.

Compensations will keep growing until they even out globally across the board. Until there is a growing demand (too bad cloning people is still prohibited 😊), the need for talents will only grow further. While some companies still freeze in shock when they hear crazy compensation requests, others are already willing to pay those.

The 2021 growth in compensations is based on 2 major drivers. The first one is a growing demand for talents, of course. The other one is a globalizing economy. Many corporations went into partial or full remote work and realized they can hire around the world and become location independent. That global hiring trend levels out compensations of newly hired Talents no matter what their physical location is. Do we still think IT professionals are becoming too greedy? Maybe, but oh well, they can afford it.

How do you feel about this direction we’re headed? Ready for the next leap of the “Great Attraction” revolution?