It’s 2021 and nothing has changed in the world of recruitment. Everyone is still using the same old tired system of job boards and resumes. This practice has changed very little going back to when jobs were posted on cave walls; ‘hunter gatherer needed, must have own spear’. Sure, we eventually moved onto parchment, then print and finally the internet, but it’s still the same crappy system, just with new fancy packaging.

There are many factors driving the stubborn adherence to job boards and resumes, but it’s primarily because there’s really nothing better to take it’s place. Or is there? There have been attempts to introduce AI, powerful search algorithms and mobile apps that are supposed to streamline the process of linking job and resource seekers, but they all fail miserably.

AI Disappoints

AI sounds like a great idea until you consider that these bots are limited to whatever data is present on the net. There’s no magic formula here, AI will build a profile of an individual based on their internet footprint; social media, shopping, interests, resumes, etc. And they will do this without the individual’s consent or permission, which brings up all kinds of concerns over privacy.

The US Congress is already pushing for more legislation to rein in Big Tech and the unregulated power they have to invade every detail of our personal lives. AI relies on access to this unregulated power and without it will be reduced to just another fancy ATS that shuffles the data available on resumes.

And, regarding resumes, to quote Ex-Google engineer Richard Liu, co-founder of Leap.ai — a platform that uses machine learning to analyze resumes, personal values, and job descriptions to suggest perfect-fit candidates for open roles, “Resumes suck!” Liu declared in a Fast Company interview back in 2017. But we already know that; Garbage in, garbage out.

 

Even if the net remained unregulated and AI became the new gold standard for recruitment, the main concern would be that most corporations wouldn’t want detailed information about their top employees’ accomplishments to be readily available on the Internet.

And yet, this information would need to be made available to enhance the quality of data being fed into AI recruitment tools.

According to a recent HR.com/IBM study, only 25 percent of talent-acquisition professionals feel their recruitment technologies meet their current hiring needs to a high or very high extent.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg:

• 68 percent of talent professionals have difficulty finding candidates with the right skills
• 51 percent of talent professionals would like to spend less time sifting through resumes
• 31 percent of hires are regretted

Is AI really the best the future of recruiting has to offer?

Death of the Resume

In 2017, Jennifer Carpenter, Accenture’s former global head of recruiting, predicted the death of resumes.

Yet, resumes continue to be the go-to doc for the majority of companies. Many recruitment agencies still hand-craft resumes for their senior executives.

With as many as 300 applicants per job opening, the competition is intense. In this world of “The best resume is all that matters” the emphasis is placed on selecting the best paper stock, font and colors, graphics and writing style. When it should be placed on who is the best candidate.

It’s a deeply flawed world where those that seek out a professional resume consultant could get their CV placed on top of the stack over other candidates who have superior qualifications. This ineffective system plays into the fact that many recruiters are lazy and simply go along with the status-quo. They practice ‘post and pray’ and then give the tsunami of resumes that pour in the ‘6 sec scan’. Resumes that catch their eye get the most attention. This is equivalent to buying a car strictly based on it’s paint job. The entire engine might be missing, but dang! It sure looks pretty!

Then there is the other downside to this strategy, which is time. Cutting off the resume spigot after a 2 or 3 day run limits the deep dive to those resumes of whoever applied in that time frame. Once again, this is hardly an effective strategy as it has nothing to do with who is the best candidate, but instead, who was fast enough to apply in a short time span. This is one of the reasons that 31% of hires prove to be a disappointment.

However, life beyond the resume could happen easily — and instantly.

The Status-quo

Big Tech job boards and resume repositories like; LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, ZipRecruiter, etc. could easily come up with a better way to improve their platforms and do away with the resume forever, but they won’t anytime soon. The main reason is they are currently making a fortune having all of us chase each other in a big giant circle. These are Billion dollar companies and they aren’t going to be slaying the golden goose anytime soon. They have a strangle hold on the entire recruiting/job searching system and they love every minute of it.

The other inherent flaw in the many ATS platforms and Career sites currently being used is that they all attempt to incorporate every career sector on earth. When you want to buy insurance, do you go to a car dealer site? If you want to book a vacation, would you expect to find good trips to Mexico on a furniture store website? Of course the answer is no. There is a huge difference between a career in Automation and Accounting. They are as different as night and day. So why do we go to LinkedIn and look for very specific candidates for a very specific application on a site that has over half a billion users from every walk of life imaginable?

But, we go to these sites, regardless of the logic, as they have been so good at promoting themselves as the only choice available that the majority of the people using their platforms would be reluctant to leave them if something else came along, even if it was a superior product. It’s similar to when Henry Ford first started mass producing the Model T Ford. He is quoted as stating at the time ‘If I had asked people how to improve transportation, they would have said ‘build a faster horse’!’

But change is inevitable, history proves that. Everything eventually succumbs to the ever-changing world. This recent world-wide pandemic could very well be the catalyst that pushes us into the next phase. There are several very real possibilities that could result because of this unprecedented world-wide shutdown.

First and foremost, there has been a massive amount of people who’ve lost their jobs. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis had predicted last month that the unemployment rate could eventually reach 32 percent — higher than levels seen during the Great Depression. Desperate people will ‘shotgun’ job boards whether they are qualified for a job or not. This astronomical number of people looking for jobs could quickly overwhelm the current system and possible break it completely.

It’s also clearly demonstrated that we don’t need to live on top of each other in order to do a lot of our jobs anymore. When this emergency is over, we will begin a new decentralized phase of our economy. Certain professions will be gigging more than ever and we’ll be doing it from the suburbs, not after packing like sardines into a subway or choking off the Interstates in our cars, to head to an office downtown. This could mean the end of big, crowded, expensive cities and we’ll gravitate to the other parts of the country to live and work….remotely.

The people with the vision to anticipate this seismic shift in how business will be conducted in the very near future – maybe this year – will be the ones who benefit the most. And we’re going to need a new recruiting tool to facilitate this new reality.

If and when, the current system splinters and dies, what will take it’s place?

A New Way

No matter what new tool is created to either replace or enhance the status-quo, one thing will never change; human vetting will still be required in the final analysis of any placement. There is no way to skip this critical step in the hiring process. No amount of bots or algorithms are going to be able to replace two people having a constructive chat.

That being said, how can we streamline the stuff going on prior to the chat? Cause right now, that ‘stuff’ is complicated, expensive, inefficient, ineffective and already overwhelmed. Here’s a hint, the entire commercial world has already gravitated to a system of searchable databases. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for cars, sunglasses, insurance, vacations or houses to buy. When you go to these sites, you’re doing the exact same thing on every one of them; executing a detailed filter-search for the product or service you desire.

This search is facilitated by a SQL database that is embedded into the website you’re visiting. It contains all the categories and sub-categories that are visible in the pull-down menus you use to select what you’re looking for. It’s fast and easy and very powerful. You can quickly get to a short-list of cars you’re looking for on eBay within a few seconds out of thousands that are available. You can imagine how difficult this would be if people selling a car simply posted it in a general list and you had to look at every single car ad in order to find the one you wanted. That would be insane right? No one would put up with that, so why do we do that in the world of recruiting?

Given all the problems and pitfalls associated with the status-quo and the limitations of AI, there is only one way to go; it’s called a Skills Matrix database. Skills Matrix’ are nothing new. Companies quite often employ them for internal purposes for quickly assessing where their talent lies. But why not utilize a Skills Matrix on a nation-wide basis for each job sector?

That is what we are doing at Engineering Job Czar.  Our skills matrix is specifically designed for each discipline within the world engineering. No resumes, no more job boards.

It really is an incredibly simple, yet powerful solution, that addresses every single concern and pitfall of the current and proposed systems out there. By not utilizing a ‘one size fits all’ strategy, each Czar site becomes a specialty for each job sector. Having all candidates create their career profile via the same skills matrix database, we now have a standard baseline. No more spelling mistakes, unusual acronyms, information that is scant or missing altogether – like a resume – but all the data on the same playing field. This allows legitimate, easy filter-searching for the exact skills, industry experience and education required. And it can be accessed in seconds, not days.

If you’re a resource-seeker, whether a recruiter, hiring manager, or working in HR, you will never have to post a job again. Get to a short-list of qualified – and available – candidates with the exact skills you require before you get back to your office from a resource strategy meeting down the hall. Think of the time and money saved. From your short-list you will then carry on with your usual person to person vetting, but the time and expense expended to get to that point will be minuscule. A resource-seeker membership can be had for as little as $30 per month for unlimited searching.

If you’re a job-seeker, once you detail your career profile, you simply sit back and wait for the offers to roll in. Your career database will work for you 24/7 to match your profile with resource-seeker searches. No more ‘spraying’ the net with your CV and your membership will always be free. And your data will be safe and protected from the general public as only paid resource-seeker subscribers can see your profile.

Even if legislation is enacted by Congress to curtail Big Tech privacy invasion, the Czar platform will not be affected. All career profile data is safe and private for paid memberships only.

Occam’s Razor states ‘If there are two competing solutions for the same problem……it’s the simplest one that is always most effective’.

We believe that Czar is that simple, elegant, yet very powerful solution for a world in need.

Try it Free today!

STEVE NOVAK

Steve is an Industrial Automation Technologist with over 30 years experience, working mostly in Oil & Gas. He created a job search/recruiting site after becoming frustrated with platforms like LinkedIn, Monster and Indeed.

snovak@czarcareers.com