Why COVID just made hiring that much harder

If you're sitting in the enviable position of a hiring manager with an open job req, you may be thinking "I'm one of the lucky ones." And you truly are. We have the highest rate of unemployment in decades and your team is not only surviving, it's growing. Nice work. As a result, your application count is probably through the roof and many qualified and overqualified candidates are begging for a first conversation. 

Now is the time to take a step back. 

A large influx of candidates may feel like a good thing, but given the current environment, it's worth being wary of the other implications that come with the gift of many applicants as well as some thoughts for how to find your best candidates from all the incredible folks knocking on your door.

Don't settle for those who are settling for you. It's tempting to focus on the most "on-paper" qualified applicants when you have an abundance of applicants. There are many candidates whose resumes pass the qualifications threshold for your role, and it's easy to conclude that those candidates with *more* will be the best hires. You asked for 3 (years, degrees, etc.) and they have 5. However, taking extra time to be deliberate now will pay off later. 

The candidates who will perform best in your role are motivated by the opportunity you provide. They are excited to contribute their many skills to your organization, and they see it as an opportunity for them to learn and grow. It could be that this is the first time they've held this role and title at a company your size, or maybe there's new exposure to an interesting side of the business. Regardless, your best hire will fight hardest when they have a path for growth at your company and they can see it. 

Compare this mentality to someone who has done the job many times before. Your open role might not be their growth opportunity and if that's the case, they probably won't treat it as such. It’s true that someone with more experience than your baseline might truly be a fantastic candidate. But the point is, no matter who you hire, you better have an extremely compelling story for how you'll be helping that person grow within your company. Their experience will not matter nearly as much as their drive to learn.

Commit to a standardized and inclusive process. You now have many more people to assess and if you're committed to running a rigorous process that truly elevates the best candidates, this may take much more effort now that you have a high volume of applications. You may already have robust systems in place, but no matter who you are, the intentionality with which you execute on your end-to-end hiring process can have implications on your brand, current employee morale, and of course the new employees you bring in. Importantly, do reply to all applicants no matter the decision -- it matters to hear a human response.

On the process side, the best hiring decisions stem from a clear articulation of the skills required for a role and a common understanding of attributes that a strong candidate would possess. This is particularly important to get right if you’re working through many applications and you don’t want to miss out on your best candidates. This starts with writing a job description that is void of coded language (you can check for it here) and invites people of diverse identities and backgrounds to apply. Be as specific on the requirements as you possibly can be, and keep that list short and honest. Does the candidate actually need a bachelor’s degree for this role?

Amongst the internal team, over communicate the chosen rubric and assign roles to the interview squad. Each person should know what they’re going to ask, and this set of questions should map to the same topic for every candidate. It’s important to design the process to intentionally collect only the relevant information that informs your hiring decision against the original rubric. There should be no loudest voice in the room.

Redesign your interview process around remote hiring.  The pandemic has blessed you with a company-friendly hiring market, but it also might be forcing you to make significant changes to how you run a hiring process. Gone are the days of handshakes and team lunches; now we’re operating entirely screen to screen. How do you hand out an offer letter without being able to show off your office energy? In short, the guidance is to authentically recognize the challenge of the moment, get creative about how company culture and energy are captured in a video call, and put in that extra effort to follow up.

Now is a great time to be hiring, but there are many new challenges to consider in our rapidly-changing world. Hiring is rarely a seamless process, and we’d love to hear how today’s environment is presenting new obstacles to finding your perfect next employees. Anything to add? We’re all ears!

A world on the cusp of societal change; how you can make space for your job search when so much is happening.

It’s a Monday. Sometime in June.  The world feels incredibly challenging right now even if it feels like it’s sitting on the brink of massive change.  And somewhere between the world’s shifts, the online posts of solidarity, and all the lockdowns/curfews/quarantining you may have found yourself in that unenviable position of facing a stark reality: You need a job.

We hear you and can say with complete honesty that for those of you on the job search there has undoubtedly never been a moment like this in history.  And yet, this moment provides a unique invitation to step into a more healthy and aligned headspace for choosing your next professional role.  

Here’s our advice for thinking about this important move at such a pivotal moment:

1. Slow down -  The world is urgent right now and in most cases that urgency is good.  But you do not have to drown your professional aspirations in that urgency.  Take a moment and relax your heart rate if you can.  Likely you’ve oriented a large chunk of your life around achievement and efficiency and there’s a good chance that approach has led you to this moment.   It’s tempting to want to continue at that speed, but we promise that taking a step off the treadmill, even for a second, can provide much needed context and rest.  

2. Remember your stars and constellations - This may be a foreign concept, but the moment you read those words you likely had images come to mind.  Your stars are your values; the qualities that you find yourself drawn toward in others often in ways that defy explanation.  You may not even know what your values are but you know how they make you feel.  A constellation is a collection of values (stars) that give you a brighter picture of something that matters to you.  E.g. “Love, trust, and ritual” as stars could make up a constellation of “community”.  Take a moment and write down your own.  They are unimpeachable and represent you in your most pure form.  Anytime you’re feeling direction-less, it’s important to re-discover your navigational tools.

3. Create new space - Once you’ve found your guides, spend time creating new mental space.  Recognize that there is a lot that you don’t know you don’t know.  There always will be! But that awareness is a gift.  Widen your mental aperture to be open to new possibilities, remembering of course that discovery is a necessity on the path to fulfillment.  Take a little time to explore something new that comes up, even if it feels hard to figure out how to integrate that into a job.  

4. Prioritize - When you’ve got all your raw ingredients in front of you it comes time to actually figure out what’s most important.  Your heart will usually give you a sense of what matters most under the guise of “Your head tells you want you want to hear while your heart tells you what you need to hear”.  Ultimately we must make choices about how we go after certain things, but our choices should reflect our priorities as we understand them internally.  Don’t be afraid to make those choices, knowing of course that your priorities are allowed to be dynamic.

5. Ask - Seek help!  By no means are you supposed to have it all figured out, so find resources that can help you.  There are a TON of free resources out there that can help you sort through your priorities and make decisions.  No one expects you to have it figured out, but no hiring manager is going to want to have that conversation once you’ve reached their desk.

6.  Own - Put it together by owning your choices, priorities, and needs.  At Sidekick we call this the “cilantro” effect.  Take a stand for who you are and what matters to you, and what you’ll find is that fewer companies will want you as an employee, but the ones who do will have a much deeper understanding of you and be able to meet your professional goals and needs.  Plus, they’ll be excited to work with someone who is a) capable of owning their truth and b) capable of expanding upon it.

By no means is looking for a job ever easy, but we do believe that right now offers a pivotal moment for each of us to rethink how we find our next position.  Taking steps like the ones above will offer new insight and put you on the road to more professional fulfillment.

Not to mention, we love doing this work on behalf of growth-minded individuals and our platform is 100% free to candidates.  It’s our belief that those willing to embark upon the non-linear yet enlightening path of personal growth will ultimately make the best employees and teammates.  They’ll understand how to elicit their work and how to empower others to do the same.

Need help on your journey?  We’re here for you.  Come learn more about how we’re doing it and how we’d like to get you set up for the next step!