Meeting Expectations is a Two-Way Street

In the latest issue of Merit Guidelines™ we discussed the importance of approaching hiring from the "other side of the desk." The main point was that while we, as employers, expect candidates to come prepared for interviews, we must realize that the best candidates will indeed expect us to come prepared as well - with a clear definition of the job, an honest picture of the culture and management style, commitment to the next steps of the hiring process and so forth.

In short, if we don't anticipate and meet their expectations, we will lose our best candidates to other employers who do.

So why then do we see so many companies fail so miserably at meeting the most basic expectations of good candidates?

More and more we are hearing HR job-seekers share new stories that we've heard before, themes that occur especially during times of economic malaise.

• Submitting resumes to posted openings without response or even acknowledgement.
• Going to interviews and not getting any feedback or updates on status.
• Making networking calls and not getting any response.

Yes, this is happening to really good candidates. And the irony here is that this is often the experience of HR people dealing with other HR people!

How can this be the case? We at Merit Resource Group have had the good fortune to survive many significant economic downturns over the last 20 years, and we've seen the pendulum shift between buyer and seller employment markets. We've concluded that most often there are two reasons that minimum expectations of good candidates are not met.

Companies and/or the people who represent them either 1) have good intentions but poor execution, or 2) they simply don't care.

It is certainly no secret that many people in HR are overworked. As well-intended as they may be, they are just too busy to attend to all the needs of their various audiences. It's easy to relate to that, but unfortunately the appearance to the external world is that these companies are not well-managed and as a result good candidates are lost.

We have less sympathy for those that fall into the second category, those that don't care or don't think that they have to care. Some companies believe that a slow economy automatically means greater access to good talent. These are the same companies that take their eye off of the retention ball, that let their compensation plans fall by the wayside, and that don't pay attention to the most basic elements of human resource management — "they're lucky to have a job" tends to sum up this attitude.

There have been times in the past when this could have been true (remember 10% unemployment in the early 1980s?), but not today. Many of these people point to the oft-publicized unemployment rate as it steadily increases past 5% to make their point, without realizing that the unemployment rate among the college-educated workforce is just 2.2% or without thinking ahead to that moment when the unemployment rate will go down again.

To be sure, many companies do pay attention to all the details that go into an effective hiring process. These companies are often recognized as the best places to work or are branded as some of the most respected companies. Others pay attention to solid practices and although they are not publicly recognized they enjoy strong and reliable candidate pools, ensuring access to talent. They understand the link between what they do, how they are perceived, and the importance of their actions on talent acquisition and retention.

To those of you with these fine companies, thank you for establishing standards we all should strive for. If you're with a company that doesn't care, ask yourself if you're part of the problem or part of the solution. If you've got good solutions but upper management isn't buying into your ideas, run, don't walk, to your next career opportunity. If you are among the well-intended but overworked, send me an email or call me at 925-867-4400. I'd be happy to help you out of that trap.