Why Qualified Job Candidates Fail the Recruiter Screen

All right, so first thing that I want you to imagine is you've submitted your resume, you've boss hunted, the boss has scooted it over to the resume, maybe you targeted, sorry, the recruiters, maybe you targeted the recruiter or HR person, maybe you even applied via the applicant trashing system, and yes, you were one of the lucky ones that actually got an interview.

Either which way, what do I always tell you in interview, intervention, communication that gets you hired? If you're in a job interview, you are qualified.

On paper, they're looking at you.

Any recruiter that's going to set time on his or her calendar to talk to you, they're praying that they move you forward.

They want to move you forward.

Why? Well, number one, they don't want to take time on the calendar to talk to people that they can't move forward.

But I want you to think for a second.

Just step back.

What does the recruiter want more than anything? To fill the position as fast as possible.

So the recruiter is assuming they're going to move you forward.

And so what do you do from the time you go from being qualified when the recruiter wants to more than anything move you forward to you not moving forward? Well, I also want you to think about the recruiter's motivation from this standpoint.

Not only does the recruiter want to fill the seat, But 15 years of surveys that we've run at MileWalk with hiring officials, HR personnel, recruitment personnel, and others, we always ask the folks about the recruitment engine, especially the hiring officials who always chime in on this.

We ask them, to rank certain features of their recruitment engine, but also to write in what are the single biggest complaints that they have related to the recruitment engine.

We give them multiple choice.

We ask them to rank them.

Number one and number two, 15 years running.

First complaint, you probably know what it is.

Time to fill.

Time to fill the position.

It takes too long.

That's number one.

Second one, not enough qualified candidates.

That's always number two.

And even if you are a recruiter out there who I love, I love recruiters, even if you filled the position in a day, a hiring official will complain they wanted it done in an afternoon.

So I want you to realize that the recruiter is thinking, I want to fill this position number one, but it's not even my job to fill the position.

All right, so first thing that I want you to imagine is you've submitted your resume, you've boss hunted, the boss has scooted it over to the resume, maybe you targeted, sorry, the recruiters, maybe you targeted the recruiter or HR person, maybe you even applied via the applicant trashing system, and yes, you were one of the lucky ones that actually got an interview.

Either which way, what do I always tell you in interview, intervention, communication that gets you hired? If you're in a job interview, you are qualified.

On paper, they're looking at you.

Any recruiter that's going to set time on his or her calendar to talk to you, they're praying that they move you forward.

They want to move you forward.

Why? Well, number one, they don't want to take time on the calendar to talk to people that they can't move forward.

But I want you to think for a second.

Just step back.

What does the recruiter want more than anything? To fill the position as fast as possible.

So the recruiter is assuming they're going to move you forward.

And so what do you do from the time you go from being qualified when the recruiter wants to more than anything move you forward to you not moving forward? Well, I also want you to think about the recruiter's motivation from this standpoint.

Not only does the recruiter want to fill the seat, But 15 years of surveys that we've run at MileWalk with hiring officials, HR personnel, recruitment personnel, and others, we always ask the folks about the recruitment engine, especially the hiring officials who always chime in on this.

We ask them, to rank certain features of their recruitment engine, but also to write in what are the single biggest complaints that they have related to the recruitment engine.

We give them multiple choice.

We ask them to rank them.

Number one and number two, 15 years running.

First complaint, you probably know what it is.

Time to fill.

Time to fill the position.

It takes too long.

That's number one.

Second one, not enough qualified candidates.

That's always number two.

And even if you are a recruiter out there who I love, I love recruiters, even if you filled the position in a day, a hiring official will complain they wanted it done in an afternoon.

So I want you to realize that the recruiter is thinking, I want to fill this position number one, but it's not even my job to fill the position.