Let me invite you into the “Paul DeBettignies Time Machine” and let’s go back to January 6^th, 2020.

For most of us on this ride, COVID 19 was not known of. Here is what was:

• GDP while slowing from recent years was estimated to be 1.9%. Still a very busy year for those hiring.

• “War for Talent” and “Skills Shortage” and “Talent Shortage” were common phrases.

• Many (most) companies were having between a slight and hard time hiring at the pace they wanted to. Hiring, yes. Fast, not so much.

• Most recruiting teams were understaffed, underbudgeted and lacking proper tools.

Then the “shut down” came.

This topic is on the news, in client calls and going on in the C Suite. Let me give you the perspective I have been sharing. You may agree and/or disagree with some of this and I gladly hear your take on this => [email protected]

Rather than start with the list I am going to start with what would normally be the end, the conclusions. Mostly because I think we generally understand why it may be difficult to hire right now.

Conclusions and some philosophy:

- Some jobs are awful to do let alone at the wage that is paid for doing it.

• This is, well… obvious.

- Some companies/CEO’s/Hiring Managers/departments/subsidiaries are awful to work for.

• Just because you have open jobs and are having a hard time filling them does not mean it is a worker issue. It could be that you suck to work for.

- In many jobs, industries and regions there was a worker shortage pre COVID 19.

As we ended 2020, I was getting a much higher than normal amount of inquiries from people asking about what the expected job/hiring market was going to be like in 2021. At that time, I didn’t know. No one really had a good answer. We had not yet had a transfer of power in Washington and the vaccine rollout was uncertain.

As January started and through the month the inquiries increased substantially. These were people in Tech, Marketing, HR, Sales and Manufacturing and all levels of experience.

It had me thinking that this was not a blip on the screen but a significant trend.

I started asking my Recruiter friends (corporate, search and consulting) who were tapped into their part of the community if they were hearing the same things.

They were.

I’ve been doing a series of blog posts following my webinar => Pandemic Recruiting: What You and Your Team Should be Doing Right Now:

• Recruiting In A Pandemic: Add COVID-19 Content To Your Career Page And Job Descriptions

• Recruiting In A Pandemic: Check Your Career Page Analytics

• Recruiting In A Pandemic: Wake Up Your Company And Leadership Social Media Accounts

For this one… if I see your company is hiring or you are trying to recruit me, how do I know how the company is doing?

I’ve already suggested you Wake Up Your Company And Leadership Social Media Accounts. There should be some things to be seen now.

Someone needs to write a post that can be posted on your company blog and/or something your CEO can write as a post on LinkedIn and then have your team re-share it.

Question: when you are interviewing a candidate for a job, when you are interviewing for a job, when you are (were) on a date… do you find reasons to include or exclude them from the process?

NOTE: I am thinking out loud through a keyboard to get this idea out of my head… not a well thought out blog post so hang with me on this.

Try this another way… in any part of your life, when you are meeting someone new do you look for reasons to continue to speak with them and want to meet again or are you finding all the reasons not to?

Ponder that…

For me, I am always trying to find shared interests, commonalities and reasons to like someone.

That is my default.

I want to grow with people, share new ideas, be challenged. I want to be around people not like those who already are.

Take a moment and look at the social media accounts for your company, senior leadership team, hiring managers and… your own.

What story are you telling?

If When that candidate you have been recruiting does research on you all… what will they learn from the past months? Will they see Zoom photos of the team during a call? Will they see an image celebrating recent news? Will they see that you are hiring and have hired?

If the highly sought after person who you don’t know (don’t know is looking) is researching companies to pursue before the end of the year will they see content that appeals to them, gets them excited about you?

Or will they see… nothing?

I appreciate that a screen full of Zoom screen shots is not the most appealing… but you’re still telling your story. You’re showing people what it is like to work there now. You’re showing people what you are working on. You’re active and engaged. You’re showing pride in the team.

Or… you can continue to be silent.

And what message is that sending?

Click => Pandemic Recruiting: What You and Your Team Should be Doing Right Now to hear the webinar I recorded that talks about this, COVID-19 content for the career page, Check Your Career Page Analytics and other topics.

And… chat with me.

If you have a recruiting question, idea to run by someone or like me just want to nerd out about recruiting, schedule a 30 minute call with me. I want to have more conversations.

Click Paul DeBettignies calendar

Click Minnesota Headhunter for current blog posts, Work With Me if you are growing your team and Minneapolis Tech Jobs for Minnesota IT searches I am working on.

Stay in touch with me by clicking:

With the recession, pandemic, partial shutdown… whatever you want to call this, are you seeing the number of unique visitors and pageviews on your career page go up, down or do you know?

And how about the ratio of those numbers to applicants, resumes received and inquiries about your jobs?

Qualified applicants increasing or decreasing?

Are the sources of your traffic the same?

If your company is like most, these numbers, ratios and sources have changed a bit.

Some are seeing an increase in total and a reduction in qualified applicants. That makes sense.

A surprisingly higher number though are seeing a reduction in everything. That’s curious and needs to be looked at further.

Some are seeing their traffic from Indeed, LinkedIn, Social Media and Google change.

How about the specific jobs… changes there?

Question… these past weeks and months (and next weeks and months) what is the one thing that is on most everyone’s mind every day in some way?

Something related to COVID-19.

What is the one thing missing from 90%+ of all career pages and job descriptions that most people are thinking about besides salary?

COVID-19 content.

Another question…

If you were going to do a job search (voluntary or involuntary) wouldn’t you want to know what a potential employers current working situation is?

Likely.

So… why is it missing from your career page and job descriptions???

You should have to be addressing this when you're recruiting.

This is one of the many topics I covered in my mid-August webinar, Pandemic Recruiting: What You and Your Team Should be Doing Right Now

Here is what I would be doing if I were you…

POST WEBINAR UPDATE:

• I did a new recording of the session to take care of the video that was a bit off.

Scene: Friday afternoon Zoom with a corporate recruiter friend of mine who is doing some recruiting now and likely quite a bit before the end of year in marketing, sales, IT and HR.

“OK smarty pants, what would you do if you were me?”

And for the next 40 minutes I went off on some of the things I would be doing if I were my corporate recruiter friend.

At the end of my “soapbox” they say:

“Dang (different word was used), that’s some good stuff. You should do a webinar on this”.

I’ve already been doing this with companies for a couple of months… that’s why I had a “smarty pants” reply ready to go.

They were right… it is time to do the webinar.

“They seemed unfocused”

“There was distraction in the background”

“I can’t tell if they want to work here or are desperate for a job”

“That felt like a therapy session, not a job interview”

These are some notes I have seen over the past months regarding candidates and their interviews. I have no doubt these are accurate assessments.

My question to Recruiters and Hiring Managers is this… how are you doing?

How are you doing with Covid 19, social unrest, an election, distance learning, caring for a parent and all the uncertainty that is in the world, workplace and your backyard?

Now imagine you have been laid off or furloughed and are doing a job search. In a recession that is unlike any we have seen.

This one is going to be short… yesterday I posted => Conversation With A CEO: You Shouldn’t Stop Recruiting During The Coronavirus Shutdown about recruiting during the shutdown. I should have the sign up page for the Recruiting Into A Slowing Economy, Recession And Coming Out The Other Side ready in the next day.

But this is urgent and can’t wait…

Yes, I think we should be sourcing, recruiting, having phone and video calls.

Yes, I think we should be networking for what we are recruiting now, next month and the next quarter.

Yes, it is hard to predict when things are back to “normal”.

But for the love of Goldy Gopher make sure you are communicating what your hiring timeline is up front.

It should be in your job post and it should be spoken about in the first phone call.

DO NOT go through the interview cycle and not until the end say something like, “we’ll extend the offer when this blows over''.

Set expectations from the beginning and be completely transparent.

Treat others the way you would want to be treated.

Click Minnesota Headhunter for current blog posts, Work With Me if you are growing your team and Minneapolis Tech Jobs for Minnesota IT searches I am working on.

Stay in touch with me by clicking:

Last Friday I had a blog post => It’s Time To Go and in part:

Recruiting Into A Slowing Economy, Recession And Coming Out The Other Side

To be blunt… most companies are dropping the ball. So many groups have a blank career page. At a time when they could be communicating about future hiring needs and collecting contact information… they have nothing.

Whether we will have a V, W, U or L shaped recovery it will take most groups some (a lot) time to staff up again. This will increase the length of the slowdown for them. I don’t get it. They’re making it worse.

So… I will do a free webinar giving ideas that that leadership and recruiting teams should be doing during this time.

This morning I had a call with a CEO and they were wondering why I would do such a thing. They were not looking for how to recruit, but… why. Why should they continue to recruit during the shutdown.

We were on a video chat and I struck the pose above. I was wearing a hoodie but the facial reaction is the same.

I’m done sitting around reacting to the news of the day: Coronavirus, layoffs, politics and whatever else is bringing on stress.

Dealing with the Coronavirus has already been a part of my work for… eight weeks.

Eight weeks.

Eight weeks of me reacting.

I’m done.

It’s time to go forward now.

This weekend and into next week you’re going to see a number of things I will be promoting. Things that had been on my mind when 2020 started (and in some cases for years) and it’s time to do them regardless of what the current conditions are.

One of my greatest frustrations in recruiting… job descriptions.

EVERY time this comes up be it in a conference room with a client or an auditorium full of Recruiters and HR pros and I ask, “How many of you like your job descriptions?” the answer is 10% or less.

10%… what a freaking horrible number.

Now ask in a room of non-recruiters, the people you may be trying to recruit, something like “In the past 30 days how many of you have seen a cool job description?”

The response is somewhere between polite giggle and sarcastic laugh.

(Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels)

This is fairly easy first post on this topic… think back to when you were interviewing at your current company, what kind of content would you have liked to have seen?

Start there.

Seriously.

Make the list.

Now go to your team and ask them the same question and add to the list.

Also ask where they would like to have seen it. Tech pros may tend to have one answer while marketing pros another and the customer success team yet another.

Want to be really bold?

Do you want real time data?