Recruiting new staff

ThundyCat

ThundyCat

ThundyCat

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Down under mate!
Hi all, I work for a food wholesaler. And getting staff is near on impossible!

Anyone else running a business having the same issues?

The CV's come in, they either don't answer the phone/email, or they don't turn up for an interview.

It's like people don't want to work, or they want top dollar, but don't want to put the effort in.

:(
 
Stu999 said:
I guess they’re probably being offered something else then not bothering to have the courtesy to say they’re no longer looking.
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Would be my guess as well, they've more than likely applied for a number of positions, and others have offered better in salary/hours/location etc.
 
Really hard at the moment.

Trying to find Mech engineers is like rocking horse **** at the moment. Salary's have to rise soon so you will see people jumping ship hopefully.

As for non qualified staff so to speak around here Amazon/Toyota/Bombardier etc are offering a 3K sign up bonus etc.

It's going to get worse as well as your better off on the social for free stuff & energy discounts rather than working to pay bills alone.
 
ThundyCat said:
Hi all, I work for a food wholesaler. And getting staff is near on impossible!

Anyone else running a business having the same issues?

The CV's come in, they either don't answer the phone/email, or they don't turn up for an interview.

It's like people don't want to work, or they want top dollar, but don't want to put the effort in.
Click to expand...

Being on the opposite end of the rope - I spend ages giving the company a lookup and it's news/values, tailoring the CV and a cover letter then receive no response or even automated acknowledgement. It's assumed by HR that if you've not heard then you've not been selected for interview. Yet that can be anything from 1 day to 21 days from experience if they come back at all.

Companies using a workflow engine (workday/SAP etc) then don't notify you of changes, so the individual has to spend effort checking each day.

Just recently I was advised that a position had been cancelled due to having budget withdrawn. I've seen companies where projects don't want to cancel the job req out to recruiters when they their budget has been cut to prevent any legal issues or suffer any management hierarchy bad PR. It's easier to simply let it expire and say any proposed candidates aren't right.

I've also noted a "and the kitchen sink" approach where job reqs have basically everything and then people wonder why their job req gets ignored or HR reject all the applicants.

A little tired, so I apologise as I know this reads as if a little peeved.

I think there's something very broken in the world of job applications right now. Not to mention not being in the EU may have something todo with it.

What is interesting is that within 30 minutes most adverts seem to get about 10 applications, only for that figure to sky rocket. It makes me wonder if there's some DOS attack :D

Just out of curiosity - how many have tried the application experience for your company? I mean actually apply for a role using a spoof CV application?
 
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Edit - to give you a real world example. I'd applied to AWS, no contact, not an email or communication. Yet the application went from the start state to a different Archive tab with "No longer under consideration" without an alert or notification.
 
Because employers and agencies ghost applicants. Applicants now ghost employers.

Employers over spec jobs so people willing to do the job for the money are ineligible to apply. People who meet the requirements want better pay and conditions than the job is offering.

In my own job I can no longer apply to most the internal positions the requirements are too onerous. So most new positions are filled by new people. Who don't stay long because they can't get promoted. Older staff also leave for the same reason.

I see the same pattern across lots of industries and positions at every level.
 
OspreyO said:
Because employers and agencies ghost applicants. Applicants now ghost employers..
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This is a really good point and something that I feel is becoming more common.

I've personally ignored a few companies recently when they came calling, a number of years after I submitted rather onerous and lengthy applications for them.

If they couldn't be bothered to even acknowledge my application at the time, then I have no interest in acknowledging them now.
 
m@rty said:
This is a really good point and something that I feel is becoming more common.

I've personally ignored a few companies recently when they came calling, a number of years after I submitted rather onerous and lengthy applications for them.

If they couldn't be bothered to even acknowledge my application at the time, then I have no interest in acknowledging them now.
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I've had companies that have had CVs from 2010 timeframe wandering if I have an updated CV. New CV sent across and *poof* nothing. Just recently a recruiter after passing the initial interview, then ghosted - when she picked up the phone the role had moved to their Bristol office and was being handled by "Claire". I asked if she had Claire's phone number to chase up - no she didn't. So basically baloney.

I agree with OspreyO's comments. I'm also of the opinion that the recruiter market is so saturated that it's become a low margin, low investment commodity tin-can sale. The companies saturated with 'one click CV applications' simply reinforcing and driving the market engagement down hill. It destroys the investment by the applicant in the job and destroys the per-application investment by the poor saturated HR consultant who then has to resort to zero-tolerance automated software packages to filter. It is the downward spiral of a time investment price-war by both sides.

It also explains why companies are moving to poach staff from larger companies. The larger company takes the price war hit and invested cost whilst the smaller companies fund the headhunt salary with the savings - especially if they will only stay 2 years or less before the next jump (low cost of head hunting vs broad application interviews/filters).

This is probably why you see a growing number of "No agencies or agent representation" statements.

I learnt from before - it is more productive to seek individual companies, spend 6-12 hours tailoring with research, then apply. Alternatively a headhunt from an organisation takes priority.

As an aside - I've seen a UK gov position that has a proper workplace description, role description, renumeration package laid out and (get this) a complete schedule with dates for each step including interviews and the final offer date if successful. Impressed. Although the final date is the end of April (from before March)!
 
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It's not new, my whole adult life (and I'm not young) this the way recruitment has been. I consider CV and applications fire and forget. I expect not to hear back from 99% of them. I avoid agencies where possible. I just assume most of their jobs are data trawling and fake.
 
I also have pretty strong opinions on the application software - simply wanting a regurgitated list of current employment history. Young staff aren't interested in employment history. They are interested in expressing and finding a match for their values and ambitions/motivations.

My CV is in the "achievements" then employment history style. I think this quickly highlights the matching highlights. I do have gaps in my CV - part pressed innovation and part for things like redundancy etc. I am proud of my failures and I learn from them. Also being closer to 50 than 40 seems to be a key issue where age denotes that you should have learnt from all your failures by now, and that you're some how unable to talk or work with younger people (I have mentored leadership grads). Perhaps people thing working for younger people or age is somehow going to cause a rift. No I've worked with younger smarter managers no big issue. I also feel that people expect the older generation to make their own business(es) as that's basically what is expected of seniors and execs..
 
OspreyO said:
It's not new, my whole adult life (and I'm not young) this the way recruitment has been. I consider CV and applications fire and forget. I expect not to hear back from 99% of them. I avoid agencies where possible. I just assume most of their jobs are data trawling and fake.
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Good point - there's also my favourite "interview homework presentation" which basically is "give the applicant the problem we can't solve and get them to present their work rather than doing it ourselves". I've had that twice - one they company seemed to magically change it's products to the presentation (I left a copy of it) and the second time I caught the red-eye Eurostar to Brussels for a face to face presentation interview (they paid). I've even heard people suggest this in meetings - bad values. and shows that they're not doing the leg work to understand the problem/market to start with (so how do they evaluate?).
 
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