Digitally Enabled Job Searches
Job searching in 2024 sucks so bad because it’s not digitally enabled.
It’s easy to move processes online and think we’ve made them better. Instead we often make them worse.
Digital enablement takes old processes and fundamentally changes them into something new and users would not go back to the old process because the new one is clearly better.
Let’s use spotify as an example….The analog process of acquiring and listening to music bears little resemblance to the process before and given the choice I suspect few of us would abandon the new one. Having all the music in the world in your pocket for a reasonable fee (I would argue the fee is too low) is incredible!
The job search process isn’t all that different from how it was in 1995. We’re still asking for resumes and cover letters, we’re still doing the same formatted interviews, just now that resume is online (even if that doesn’t make any sense for the job) and now some of the interviews are on zoom.
Job searching now is just an analog process on a computer.
If we take the customer/problem/solution matrix, I think the customer and problem are the same.
Customer: People looking for jobs and the companies who want to hire them
Problem: How do we connect employers who want good employees with candidates who want to be those employees?
Solution: it’s hard for me to believe, absent the context of the past, we would come up with the following
create a one page PDF of your resume
submit that online
fill out the same information in some other forms.
If a company has hired a different software company to manage this, you may have to fill out a totally different form.
Even if they hired the same company (cough, workday), no your data will not transfer across systems, why would you want something simple and logical like that?
If you tried to pitch this as a solution, people would HATE IT, yet we have retained this system and a massive cottage industry has sprang up to help people from going insane trying to navigate it.
It’s dehumanizing.
Bad technology dehumanizes us. Good technology enables human connections.
Any point of connection with the technology should facilitate a connection to a human.
I think the actual customer here is the future employee. Do companies really want their first interaction with a potential employee to be annoying the crap out of them?
The employers control this process, the employees will do what needs to be done because they need the job.
Let’s redesign this….
Customer: people looking for jobs
Problem: they want to get connected to a good employer as expediently as possible so they can keep getting paid and doing work that matters to them
Solution: I am going to adapt the concept of a minimum viable product.
That is, what’s the least we can do to determine if a candidate and an employer are a fit?
As an example, what’s the blood pressure screening of job hunting? Blood pressure screening has become a first pass measurement for so many ailments of the human body. It’s relatively simple but can often determine if more tests are necessary or whether you’re relatively healthy.
What if a candidate could answer 3-5 simple questions as the first round rather than even submitting an application or a resume?
If they passed the question screener, they’re given a 5 minute video to explain why they think they’d be a good fit for a job. This isn’t a live connection with a person but it IS more human than a PDF.
The third round would be a real interview.
I’m not saying this is perfect. But it does accomplish some goals
It brings real human faces into the process faster
It limits the candidate time and interaction if they’re not a fit.
It forces employers to focus on the critical questions.
Now who’s going to be the brave company to test this?