I read an article a few weeks ago on RNZ. I’ve only recently started reading RNZ articles after National cut their funding, working on the basis that if National don’t like them, they must be good for society. This one was a puff piece of marketing dressed up as journalism from our friends at SEEK. The article can be read here, but to summarise, bad hires are costing New Zealand SMEs $911 million a year. One in five hires goes wrong. Each one costs roughly $20,000. That’s a big number but probably not big enough. I know this as our sister business JOYN, in a cynical attempt to gain contact details of people who have recently sacked an employee, built our own “Bad Hire Calculator”. You can play with it here (that’s an actual link to the calculator, and not a picture of my old chap by the way). If you factor in the cost of recruitment, training, disruption, technology, licenses, lost opportunity, and an HR Consultant to mediate, you can get into six figures.
Now, I like Rob Clark. He’s always taken feedback from semi-drunk recruiters like a man. I doubt he’s even read the article – instead relying on a 50 strong PR machine, high on cocaine and surplus PTS credits, to churn out this stuff. And whether you like it or not, for most roles, SEEK is the most effective product on the market by a country f*cking mile. However, Rob’s/SEEK’s solution to the $911 million problem is, essentially, write a better job ad, include a salary range, mention that people can work from home, and of course use SEEK’s new AI tools to sort through the applicants. Apparently, 80% of ads still don’t have a salary on them, which is bonkers, but heaping such importance on an advert can only come from a firm who sell job ads, or someone who doesn’t understand recruitment. Sometimes, judging by the number of failed job boards, history has served up both.
I have written some excellent job ads in my time. Genuinely compelling, well-crafted, perfectly targeted. I have also written some absolute dog-sh*t ones, occasionally on purpose, to test a theory. You know what? The conversion rate was basically the same. Oscar Wilde’s job ad would do no better than Oscar the Grouch’s (or my favourite “Oscar” – stumpy-but-quick, gun-toting, girlfriend murderer Oscar Pistorius). Because the people who apply for a job are not reading your purple prose about “collaborative culture” and “fast-paced environment” and thinking “this is the employer of my dreams.” They’re thinking “this is a job I might be able to do, I’ll send my CV and see what happens.”. Often, they don’t even think that. The poorly-written job ad is not the reason you’ve ended up with Ted Bundy running a Bras N Things fitting room.
The industry continues to throw extraordinary amounts of money at this thesis however. Remember YUDU? They built an entire product around linking job ads to pertinent news stories about the hiring company. The logic being that if candidates could see that your firm had just won a contract or been named a great place to work, they’d be more likely to apply. Did the candidate give a single solitary damn? Do we need more applicants??? They did not, and we do not. The candidate is not doing due diligence on your LinkedIn presence at 11pm on a Sunday. They’re not reading your board report. They’re not thinking about the incredible growth opportunities that Number One Shoes offer. They’re just clicking apply. If you think I’m underestimating the intelligence of the average job seeker, well you can comment below. For me, it’s not intelligence, it’s basic human nature to not actually give too much of a f*ck. Recruiters soon stop giving a f*ck about great ad content, and job seekers soon stop giving a f*ck about doing their homework. This is a beautiful symbiotic relationship, not a criticism. Focus groups will tell you that everyone cares about this stuff and that I’m wrong, but people will say one thing and do the exact opposite for free biscuits and a $10 New World voucher.
EVP campaigns. Employer brand videos. “A day in the life” content. Glassdoor management responses written by someone in marketing who has just discovered ChatGPT. None of it moves the needle on hire quality in any meaningful, measurable way. What makes the difference is the skill or technology to engage with decent candidates (both “passive” and “active” – with neither caring about your job ad), the skill to assess them against criteria that actually matter, the good sense of hiring managers, and a sacrifice (human or goat) to lady luck.
There’s an irony that Rob’s press release carefully avoids. Most of those one in five hires that didn’t work out probably got the job via SEEK in the first place. So is SEEK telling us they’re very good at what they do, or very bad? Because it can’t be both. The $911 million dollar problem is, in large part, a SEEK-facilitated problem. And the solution SEEK is proposing involves paying SEEK more money for better tools. It is a perpetual cycle. Bad hire, redundancy, new vacancy, new ad, more money. For one party in this arrangement, that’s a really f*cking good business model. And it’s not the employer. Or you the recruiter. The actual reasons hires go wrong are mostly the same reasons they’ve always gone wrong. Hiring managers who don’t know what they want. Candidates who lie. Recruiters who lie. Hiring your mates. Probation periods treated as a courtesy rather than a filter. Pressure to fill a seat quickly. Racism, sexism, ageism. And yes, occasionally, a recruitment process so sh*te that a psychopath with good eye contact can end up with a face-full of boobs in a Sylvia Park lingerie shop.
^SW
