Recently, the White House has released several new policies that have created a boom in the number of open positions and the amount of hiring being done. While this may seem like a great problem to have on the surface, the number of quality applicants to these positions have not increased as well, and this has in turn meant there are less qualified or talented people being hired for certain positions.
The cost to hire new bodies in certain markets has skyrocketed and higher salaries are leading to additional costs in placement fees. All of this new turnaround means that the people doing the hiring are spending more money and less time on making sure that positions are filled, and they aren’t necessarily getting everything that they have been paying for. These sort of hiring practices can have long-term consequences for companies.
Additionally, the pressure is on to hire the talent quickly before someone else gets to it. This doesn’t leave much time to make decisions or even do a deep dive to see if the person a business is considering adding to their staff is a right fit or is even really qualified to work in the position for which they have applied. The pressure is there to grab the talent before someone else can get to it. In many situations this is like firing the gun before you aim, hoping that the bullet finds the place it is supposed to go.
A lot of this is coming from the fact that businesses are focusing more money into branding and marketing and cutting the amount of staffers they use to help get open positions filled and filled properly. This is causing a disconnect with hiring managers who are not accurately representing their requisite skills for potential employees or even updating their lists of requirements to make sure they accurately reflect the needs and desires of the department. Some of the requirements that they are including in the hiring paperwork may not accurately reflect the tasks that the position needs in order for the new employee to be successful.
There may also be a problem with the fact that some of the job requirements are completely out of date. What new employees are being asked to bring on board is no longer relevant to the position, and then they find themselves floundering while they do their best, but ultimately are not able to deliver. This causes frustration for both employees and managers alike.
In realms such as IT, becoming an independent contractor has become a more appealing work option, as the schedules are more flexible and the demand for work that is actually appealing is such that they can get out there and do what they love. The problem with this is that when recruiters are trying to hire for positions such as this, there is a disconnect between both parties because neither understands what the other is looking for, or how to accurately describe their own needs and desires when it comes to working.
All of these reasons filter down to lead to one ultimate, glaring issue: the fact that there are bad applicants pouring in for these positions. The disconnect between departments in a business and then the expectations of the people doing the hiring with the realities of what a position may actually demand are causing an issue in the workforce. Having the wrong people in the wrong sorts of jobs can just lead to a snowball of bad hiring effects, and without proper remediation, this could become a serious problem.