How long does it take you to reject a CV? Answer truthfully. And I’m not asking about the “maybe” pile. I mean the CV that you won’t be progressing. The CV that does not require further consideration. I’ll go first. If it were to take me 5 seconds, I’d be surprised. Of course, most applications are way off the mark. Mostly, the applicant has not read the ad (or didn’t care for its contents). Or perhaps they’re desperate. Or mad. Or mad and desperate. Whatever the reason, our industry would not exist if a large number of applicants were in any way suitable for the roles they apply for. Our job is often one of a gold miner’s sluice: bent over for hours on end removing silt, sediment, and rocks in the hope of striking it rich. We think we’re hunters, but gold-panners is a more accurate analogy.
This truth is an unpleasant one for job seekers. Job seekers would be horrified to think a recruiter spends less than 5 seconds reviewing their 30 years of work. To them, we’re lazy, unqualified children who think we have the god-damn right to reject them after their long career with the department of treaty settlements and why can’t we see their transferable skills????!! These job seekers seem to think that we’re on a power trip. One that is only sated by rejecting the most appropriate candidates we can find. These people are of course…stupid. Every recruiter (and everyone with a passing grasp of logic) knows that we want an applicant to be perfect. Perfect applicants make us loads of money and give internal recruiters an afternoon off. We gain nothing by rejecting people, and the only way to salvage anything from a rejection is to do it quickly. The quicker we do it, the quicker we’re onto the next role, and this one might actually be right for the rejected candidate.
But of course we can’t articulate this to candidates because, well…we’re pretty sh*t at articulating anything. So we do really weird and disingenuous things like build in a delayed response for email rejections to make candidates feel like we discussed their applications with our spouses over dinner and a nice Central Otago pinot noir. What absolute performative nonsense. Those that don’t have a sophisticated CRM with built in time-delay, do it manually. Sitting there pretending to read and analyse a CV as we scroll “Bikini hauls” on Instagram to then nervously click a button that generates a pithy, inoffensive, unhelpful rejection email. “Did I wait long enough?” we ask ourselves. Is the phone about to ring with a pissed-off Murray explaining that he learnt everything he needs to know about project management from dairy farming in the mid-80s? Probably.
And that’s the thing. We pretend to spend longer reviewing a CV than necessary because when we haven’t, most of us have received a call from a disgruntled applicant telling us that we couldn’t possibly have reviewed their CV in the 20 minutes since they sent it (mate…I did 200 in that time). When we defend ourselves, we are told that we don’t know what we’re doing. We’re just a recruiter. They will complain. And by the way, who is our client/boss? Most recruiters hate being in this situation. Regular readers may not be surprised to know that I love it. I take my time to explain how recruitment works. How I would love it if they were right for the role. How rejecting quicker allows me to fill more roles. Roles for people like them. I give them feedback on their CV. I explain what they weren’t able to demonstrate on their CV. And to everyone’s surprise I’m sure – this has never landed well. Rejection is an every day occurrence in recruitment. It isn’t in other industries. So when someone finds themselves as a job seeker in this really shitty market, they’re not prepared for the rejections. I do sympathise with their feelings, I do not with their approach.
I saw an article this week in the Herald about a woman who keeps getting rejected by AI. How she knows this is anyone’s guess. The twist is that she actually likes AI as it provided some good tips around her CV, her skill-set, and how she can position herself. The article is of course as boring as other people’s family trees. It’s the comments section that gives us the real insights. “Ross H” informs us about an article he read on television highlighting the problem; “There was an article on television about the AI gatekeeper of job applications. Person who has been a journalist for decades and is well known, applied for a journalism position. They answered all the questions with the knowledge/experience/qualifications they had. They received a response back telling them they were not suitable for the job. No explanation as to why. many people are hitting the same wall.”. Thanks Ross. “C L” disagrees however, and places blame squarely on HR; “If you’ve ever watched the HR person mindlessly scroll thru CV’s you know AI isn’t the problem.”. How he can separate deliberate and detailed review from “mindless scrolling” isn’t answered, but if you’re reading this “C L”, don’t leave us hangin’! “C L” isn’t just some miserable know-it-all in the Herald comments section however. The very professional sounding “Stephen Crawford M” is playing wingman and adds “Yep I’ve seen many a junior member of the HR/People team do this, with no idea of what potential or transferable skills look like. I’ve also heard them doing phone screenings with the same lack of ability, just going through the motions of asking the questions in front of them.”. Stephen, who authored “From Barista to Barrister: the transferable skills playbook” clearly knows first-hand how often junior recruiters mistakenly reject Tokoroa fishmongers for SLT roles.
And that’s what we deal with. Everyone thinks recruitment is easy until they do it. Everyone thinks we reject with malice until they engage their brain. And everyone thinks we’re the gatekeepers, when really, we’re the ones trying our damnedest to get as many people as many jobs as possible.
Have a good weekend.
^SW
