We are one smart species. We can learn. We've learned a lot over our several hundred thousand years of existence, at least.
We can learn from our successes and our failures. We won't learn a thing, though, unless we tell the truth when it matters and say "That didn't work! Back to the drawing board."
Automated recruiting by means of keyword searching is undoubtedly the worst use of technology in the history of the business world, if not of mankind (the electric chair is right up there).
We should have known better. We should have known that when we put in a job ad "The Selected Candidate must possess interpersonal, organizational and administrative skills" nearly every candidate -- certainly every one with the intellect to connect the dots between our job ad and our hiring process - is going to put those very same keywords into his or her resume or job application.
Once that happens, all the keyword-searching algorithms in the world can't help us. We're back to the stone age, then. We have to sort resumes the old-fashioned way, begging the question "Why did we pay for all this technology in the first place?"
Pointless keyword-searching isn't the only knock against automated recruiting. At least as serious a problem is the way our automated recruiting portals make the job-search process tedious and insulting. How far would you go toward completing fields in somebody's online store if every two seconds they reminded you "Any fields left blank will lead to your immediate disqualification?" You'd tell the online vendor to stuff it, either in your mind or through your lips, and you'd buy from somebody who didn't seem to detest you.
Why would we think it would work any differently in the recruiting realm? It doesn't. The best candidates, the ones who could help you the most, will be the first to flee a talent-repelling job application portal. They'll figure that life is too short, as indeed it is, to trifle with people who can't be bothered to market to their talent communities the same way they market to customers.
Automated recruiting is a massive failure, and it's time we told the truth about that and found a better way. It isn't difficult to do. We can replace zombie job ads with human-voiced ads that tell the real story behind an organization and a job opening. We can screen resumes very easily by putting a logical gate ("If this job sounds like a fit, send me a 300-word email message that tells me why, and be sure to share your comments on what we could do better in our online store") that will make the sorting process a snap.
We can re-humanize the recruiting process from stem to stern. That's what we are doing, in fact, at Human Workplace -- putting a human voice back into the recruiting process and every other process at work. Why would we ever think a good process wouldn't require as much human feeling as anything else worth doing, from planting a garden to raising kids?
It would be mature and businesslike of us to throw in the towel on automated recruiting and say "We tried it, and it didn't work. Our hiring managers hated it. Our HR people bewailed it. Applicants avoided it, such that we gnashed our teeth over Talent Shortages that wouldn't exist if we could only keep in mind that we're hiring real people, and not cardboard cutouts."
As for the tired wheeze "The government requires us to use our antiquated ATS" that's false. The government couldn't care less, as long as you keep track of the people you interact with, an easy thing to do. Isn't it time to man or woman up and say "There's a better way to hire people" and stop trying to prop up the ATS monster? It can only help us if we do.
