What? Internet Recruiting is like Internet dating?

We have read a number of good articles and blog posts recently regarding the difficulty recruiters are having in not only hiring qualified workers for open positions, but just getting them to show up for a scheduled interview. Because we deal primarily with hourly recruitment this is a complaint we are hearing more about even right here in Pittsburgh. Although this phenomenon is occurring at all levels of recruitment, it is most prevalent with hourly and entry level positions.

The primary reason is not just the “millennial mentality” or increased lack of common courtesy anyone over 30 proclaims to be experiencing with those under 30. It could be due to the fact that because so much recruiting has shifted to large online job boards, the effort in applying to an advertised position has become so small that job seekers are able to spray their resumes to literally hundreds of listed jobs, agree to interviews with anyone who bothers to email them, and only then decide which interview they would rather go to, or whether their social life will permit investing the time required to go.

Internet based recruitment has become virtually anonymous (pardon the pun) with very little “sweat equity” involved in its use by either job seekers or recruiters. The old fashioned print ads required much more work on both parties. Job seekers had to actually print a resume, sign a cover letter, lick a stamp and put it in a mail box or, heaven forbid, actually walk in and fill out an application. That’s not easy to do 100 times in a week. Here come Internet job boards and a job seeker has almost unlimited ability to send their information out.

Conversely, recruiters can write a job description one time and easily post it on enough job boards to reach literally millions of job seekers within a week.

Of course this leads us to the title of this posting. Whether you are a job seeker or a recruiter this approach can result in response overload. Just like a consumer utilizing a dating site and putting embellished information about who they are and responding only to those who appear to meet their needs (which is also embellished). How many “dates” set up through anonymous dating sites have resulted in no-shows? The recruiter will be confronted by hundreds of resumes that he or she could not possibly have time to view, let alone respond to, with a high percentage of them unqualified due to the sender not having to expend energy in applying (throw it against enough walls and see what sticks). Job seekers who complain about recruiters who do not acknowledge the receipt of their response are also victims of this development.

Perhaps this will cause the Internet recruitment backlash that newspapers have been praying for since their classifieds began losing dollars to the web six years ago. Print will offer the potential of better prequalification of applicants for recruiters while making serious job seekers more likely to know whether their response has been received.