Liz Ryan, author of Reinvention Roadmap, wrote a superb piece by for Forbes Magazine about how HR is broken. Here is an important except:
“Job ads are written in a terse, unfriendly and talent-repelling language that signals job-seekers “Don’t even think about wasting our time if you don’t have every qualification listed here!” HR and Staffing departments tend to know little or nothing about marketing. Many do not understand that their job is a sales and marketing job. No one pays Staffing people to screen out resumes, a task that has no business value. They are paid to hire great people, fast!”
Consider that only 0.5% of the world population makes over $50,000. This is also roughly the media income of Americans. In North America, only 3% of people have 6 figure incomes. Only 7% of the world population has a post secondary education. What does this mean for you and your reputation?
As you move into higher income and more specialized fields, there are only going to be a few candidates for positions you are applying for. Most candidates either have jobs already, or are located in another part of the world or somewhere else in North America, and it will take more to interview them let alone convince them to move.
The truth is we tend to grossly overestimate how many people can replace us. We also tend to overestimate how much time human resource professionals spend weeding out candidates and analyzing each potential applicant. As Liz points out, they are paid to hire great people fast.
With so few options, you would think that the HR process would be longer and more arduous, but in reality the scarcity factor does not allow for a very long lead time when having to make the final cut on the few standout candidates. According to Liz, more time is spent weeding out unqualified people than deciding between the few that clearly qualify for a given position. In the end, a few credential checks, references and a background check will help decide the order in which the offers should go out. This has to be done fast, and it will not be very thorough.
ONLINE REPUTATION PROBLEMS
If you know you qualify for positions that you have been applying for, it is unlikely that you will loose out for every single application. In most specialized fields, especially in a tight labor market like we are in now, there are simply not enough candidates for an indefinite string of rejections or “close seconds”. There is something systematically wrong in your vetting. Either your references are weak or you have something coming out in your background checks.
Most people do not take time to properly anticipate a background check. One of the most common checks HR makes is to Google you and have a look at the first couple of result pages.
If you have an online reputation problem, see a reputation management specialist. We often work with individuals on their ORM situation. Most of the time a suppressing of negative search results will do the trick, we also like to help turn a bad situation into a good situation by leaving digital breadcrumbs that help the candidate win their contest, because yes, like everything else, the job interview process is a contest and hiring a reputation manager can help you win.
REPUTATION PROBLEMS AND ROI QUESTION
Often times, people will question the ROI of reputation management. Is it justified to pay a few thousand dollars to suppress negative information and promote positive information?
Much like buying a means to transportation, the ROI calculation cannot be answered without amortizing the cost of the ORM over a number of years. If you are earning $80,000 a year and you can get a job 6 months earlier, that’s a $40,000 stream of income lost forever. Over many years our jobs earn us millions of dollars, we buy or lease vehicles against that income certainty. Much like any of those buying decisions, one has to view payments for ORM as an outlay that helps us generate a substantial source of income for a long period of time, which affords us a certain lifestyle.
The payments made to ORM firms must thus be amortized over decades to truly put it into perspective. Each person has his or her own ROI equation to figure out and it is likely that the short-term cost might be discomforting. At our agency we are looking at financing solutions in 2017-2018 for our clients that seem to be increasing in size and background.