The key to getting hired, whether or not there is an opening, is to customize your approach. If not, you won't stand out or get an interview.
Companies hire people to solve problems (both positive and negative). Your ability to uncover your target employers problems and position yourself as the solution is what will get you hired even when there are no job postings.
Here are a few potential problem areas. Completing projects on time and on budget, improve product quality, improve service, increase sales, reduce costs, enhance online marketing, etc.
Once you isolate a problem area, where you have experience, identify the hiring manager and focus your marketing campaign on delivering answers and recommendations to that person.
Done well will lead to an interview!
Bob Prosen CEO The Prosen Center for Business Advancement 30+ Years Fortune 500 Executive
We've seen this happen in the past 25+ years and it still happen. One measure we used is incorporate a "trial period of 3 months" clause in which employment can be terminated if the candidate proves unfit for job. It helped but we still lost a lot of screening time and recruitment steps thus far.
Unemployment among citizens runs ~20% while existing foriegn workers are ~30% which is very odd. The governments therefore atrficially jack up the cost of foreign labor to encourage local hiring. But local workforce lack many job required skills, seriousness & drive to work diligently.
The problem gets compounded when you have to deal with recruitment from other countries that requires obtaining work visas (expensive, time consuming, and legally demanding). The cost of replacing staff/employees then goes through the roof and we are talking about lower skills jobs only.
"We reach for the stars." Yes, managers often presume that they must hire other employers' star employees in order to hire successful employees. They are wrong of course and hiring other employers' stars is a sure fire away to hire many under performers.
"Garbage in, garbage out." The problem is not job descriptions and it isn't the interview either, the problem is what hiring managers don't do; they don't identify nor measure the specific talents demanded by each job. "Hiring managers don't know how to interview." Even managers who have a clue how to interview candidates cannot choose the best employee. Interviews are not very effective at identifying future successful employees.
"Everyone's desperate." You are correct that managers often don't have the time to do it right but that is not their fault. They were hired by competent executives, we would hope, so the manager does what he does best, i.e., the work of the people he supervises. Too many, and I do mean too many, hiring managers bet their careers on the incorrect assumption that past performance in another job reporting to a different boss at another employer predicts job success in any job for any manager at any employer.
"Our priorities are screwed up." You are correct that "... managers simply don't give the hiring and recruiting process the priority it deserves because that's not their primary function," but hiring people who do the work successfully for a long time is their job. So in fact, hiring is their primary function whether they like it or know it. Without the labor of employees there would be no need for managers. The problem resides with HR since they are the ones who need to provide hiring managers with the tools, training and knowledge to hire successfully.
"The "Peter principle." I agree completely but who is responsible when an incompetent manager is hired? It is not the incompetent manager since he did not hire himself. The responsible party is HR since they are the ones who need to provide hiring managers with the tools, training and knowledge to hire successfully.
"Bad recruiting." As far as I know recruiters do not decide who is hired, that is the responsibility of hiring managers. When hiring managers make bad hiring decisions they often shift the blame to the recruiters, which is unfair and inaccurate.
Before members of the HR community get too angry at my comments the ultimate responsibility resides with CEOs who tolerate hiring managers who make bad hiring decisions. I know that HR reports to the VP of HR who reports to the CEO so we must start be educating the CEOs about how to hire successful employees. It is not hard to do and I teach my clients how to do it during a short telephone call. My time is free but not the method. Cost is not an issue since the method saves 3 to 10 times or more the cost of the method. The method requires about an hour of the applicant's time and about several minutes or more to the hiring managers time.
I don't fully agree with many of the reasons or failure listed on this article. The author seems to forget that we don't rush the hiring because we are lazy, we do it because when positions are created is because we desperately need the help. Some times people who interview phenomenally well end up being under performers, and some other times people who suck interviewing are exceptional performers. The one true statement is that hiring is like dating and as such, it takes a few bad hires before you find your one true amazing candidate.
Hello JOURI, you are correct that, "The one true statement is that hiring is like dating and as such, it takes a few bad hires before you find your one true amazing candidate," unless we hire for; competence, culture and job fit, i.e.,has the talent for job success. Our clients would be furious if they had to suffer a few bad hires to find a successful employee.
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Companies hire people to solve problems (both positive and negative). Your ability to uncover your target employers problems and position yourself as the solution is what will get you hired even when there are no job postings.
Here are a few potential problem areas. Completing projects on time and on budget, improve product quality, improve service, increase sales, reduce costs, enhance online marketing, etc.
Once you isolate a problem area, where you have experience, identify the hiring manager and focus your marketing campaign on delivering answers and recommendations to that person.
Done well will lead to an interview!
Bob Prosen
CEO
The Prosen Center
for Business Advancement
30+ Years Fortune 500 Executive
We've seen this happen in the past 25+ years and it still happen. One measure we used is incorporate a "trial period of 3 months" clause in which employment can be terminated if the candidate proves unfit for job. It helped but we still lost a lot of screening time and recruitment steps thus far.
Unemployment among citizens runs ~20% while existing foriegn workers are ~30% which is very odd. The governments therefore atrficially jack up the cost of foreign labor to encourage local hiring. But local workforce lack many job required skills, seriousness & drive to work diligently.
The problem gets compounded when you have to deal with recruitment from other countries that requires obtaining work visas (expensive, time consuming, and legally demanding). The cost of replacing staff/employees then goes through the roof and we are talking about lower skills jobs only.
Thank you for an insightful article.
"We reach for the stars." Yes, managers often presume that they must hire other employers' star employees in order to hire successful employees. They are wrong of course and hiring other employers' stars is a sure fire away to hire many under performers.
"Garbage in, garbage out." The problem is not job descriptions and it isn't the interview either, the problem is what hiring managers don't do; they don't identify nor measure the specific talents demanded by each job.
"Hiring managers don't know how to interview." Even managers who have a clue how to interview candidates cannot choose the best employee. Interviews are not very effective at identifying future successful employees.
"Everyone's desperate." You are correct that managers often don't have the time to do it right but that is not their fault. They were hired by competent executives, we would hope, so the manager does what he does best, i.e., the work of the people he supervises. Too many, and I do mean too many, hiring managers bet their careers on the incorrect assumption that past performance in another job reporting to a different boss at another employer predicts job success in any job for any manager at any employer.
"Our priorities are screwed up." You are correct that "... managers simply don't give the hiring and recruiting process the priority it deserves because that's not their primary function," but hiring people who do the work successfully for a long time is their job. So in fact, hiring is their primary function whether they like it or know it. Without the labor of employees there would be no need for managers.
The problem resides with HR since they are the ones who need to provide hiring managers with the tools, training and knowledge to hire successfully.
"The "Peter principle." I agree completely but who is responsible when an incompetent manager is hired? It is not the incompetent manager since he did not hire himself. The responsible party is HR since they are the ones who need to provide hiring managers with the tools, training and knowledge to hire successfully.
"Bad recruiting." As far as I know recruiters do not decide who is hired, that is the responsibility of hiring managers. When hiring managers make bad hiring decisions they often shift the blame to the recruiters, which is unfair and inaccurate.
Before members of the HR community get too angry at my comments the ultimate responsibility resides with CEOs who tolerate hiring managers who make bad hiring decisions. I know that HR reports to the VP of HR who reports to the CEO so we must start be educating the CEOs about how to hire successful employees. It is not hard to do and I teach my clients how to do it during a short telephone call. My time is free but not the method. Cost is not an issue since the method saves 3 to 10 times or more the cost of the method. The method requires about an hour of the applicant's time and about several minutes or more to the hiring managers time.