Living in the Midwest and paying close attention to business news, the reports are very clear that the economy and the employment situation are not very good. Although I recently questioned how these reports added to the situation, I know from real life interaction and the stories that I hear that people whom have lost jobs or that are out of work are having a very difficult time finding employment. This also creates a challenge for hiring managers as they are being overwhelmed with job applications and many of the applicants do not meet the requirement of the job description, but it is left to the hiring manager to weed them out. A good example is a recent listing for 250 jobs at Office Depot yielded 4,000 applications, which is now up to the human resources department to choose the best 250.
In most cases, hiring managers will take the natural course of reviewing resumes and determining who is the most fit based on an applicants work experience detailed in the resume. There are other processes that are sometimes employed like pre-application surveys and personality tests to determine how well a candidate may fit a job, but after all of those processes that are developed to weed out applicants are used, someone still has to make the decision on who is the best candidate to hire.
That makes me wonder if in these trying economic times, with the overwhelming number of resumes that are received, if it has created an environment that has caused hiring managers to make hiring decisions based solely on past work experience more than evaluating the person, their work experience, and their natural instinct to succeed in a position.
My guess is that although many companies are down-sizing, this is also a great opportunity for many companies to upgrade their talent as many talented people are now searching for employment. But if their work experience does not closely match the requirements, will they get the opportunity? For instance, if a person has a history of success with increasing responsibility in a variety of positions and has the natural instinct to handle direct reports, communicate with clients, successfully direct teams, effectively manage upwards, and quickly adjust to changing business needs, would that person even make it through the screening process of the many job applicants. My gut feeling says probably not.
I am not totally discounting experience because it is very important, but I have often seen successful people succeed in whatever situation they are placed mainly due to attitude, work ethic, effectiveness, and approach. Although there is a learning curve to their new task or position, they typically ramp up very quickly and excel by the way they approach the situation.
I really don’t know how to best solve this problem because the challenge for a hiring manager is always tough to select the right person even before the complexity of stacks of resumes were added. I just think that there are so many talented people who could probably improve the quality of a work team who will never get the opportunity because their career path does not exactly match the requirements. There has to be some value placed on a person’s natural business instinct and how they handle situations and when combined with work experiences and successes, that separates them for the rest. Companies should use this time not to just piggy-back the recession and down-size because it is acceptable, but to use this as opportunity to improve their workforce and set themselves that much further in front of their competitors when the economy does turn around. I can almost guarantee, that the companies that take advantage of this opportunity and focus on the level of talent that is available during the recession, will benefit ten-fold when economic times improve. It only requires going one step further in your evaluation and using the natural instinct to determine if a candidate can be successful outside of limiting the evaluation to the items listed on a resume.
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