What does today’s jobseeker want? By Bill Boorman

I was lucky to listen to Bill Boorman at an event organized by PeopleMatters. Lucky, because I was instantly able to figure out that I was going to learn something truly precious despite him looking quite out-of-the-place, yet unpretentious, diffident; dressed casually (rather shabbily actually), with a funny hat and his large stomach protruding out of his half-tucked shirt!

Bill is actually a very successful Recruitment Consultant and advises great global brands like CISCO, BBC, Oracle, Naspers etc. Bill has been an HR Director at a large global firm prior to his consulting stint. The 30 minutes session was full of gems and highly engaging.

Listing below some of the key messages in Bill’s talk:

• Today’s job seeker cares more about ‘Job Brand’ rather than ‘Employer brand’. He went on to clarify that jobseeker in the initial stages is keen to understand the job opportunity…So creating a great job opportunity that highlights jobseeker instant benefits is key. Once the jobseeker applies to a job, he/she rarely bothers to check anything about the company. It is only when he/she gets some news about him/her getting shortlisted that the jobseeker truly spends time in finding more about the company. So while Employer branding (content, videos, podcasts etc) are essential, they have to be targeted to the jobseeker only when they are being considered for next rounds. Very subtle, but very powerful. In essence, what it means is that don’t blindly spend of employer brand being flashed everywhere, but definitely ensure that brand content is sent to jobseeker once they are shortlisted; helping them stay committed throughout the hiring cycle.

• Biggest motivation for a Jobseeker to choose a particular job eventually is not salary or role (which has to be good in anycase), but his assessment about ‘whether this job will help me gain the right skillsets and strengthen my profile; that will help me get another greater job in the near future’ is the deciding factor. This Bill says is happening because the average tenure of employees has come down significantly in the last few years, so it’s no longer the old-school philosophy of ‘Get it, then forget it’. Globally, he said, the average tenure of an employee is 2.6 years!

• AI is not there in recruitment; Machine Learning on data gathered by automating manual processes is says Bill. This is quite profound in a way. His view is automation will enable time to recruiters to focus on top and bottom-end of the funnel, making automation taking care of all the manual tasks in-between. Most of the middle-of the funnel tasks are scheduling and calling in nature, which can be easily automated. Machine learning can be leveraged by automation to deliver personalization to candidates via targeted and specifically worded emails & SMSs. Instead of thrusting Employee Value Propositions (EVPs) to the jobseeker, let Machine Learning on your data deliver Individual Value Proposition (IVP) to the jobseeker. 

• Retention is not important! “Retention is the measure of how bad are you at not able to fire those who are not able to do their jobs” says Bill. He further then mentioned about that in today’s era, hiring based on history of work does not guarantee performance and neither does pure potential in the future (because the tenures have declined); while there is no clear decision point between whether you should hire for skills or culture match, he said that hiring should be purely focused on one single key element that whether the jobseeker I am hiring will be able to perform the job in best of his/her capacity and make a great contribution within the next 2-3 year horizon.

At the end of the session, one from the chaps from audience raised his hand to ask a question and when handed the mike, he said “While most of what you said went over my head, I have a question……”. Bill was probably more smarter in ignoring his comment, yet answering his question well.

Ladies and gents; here’s Bill for you…I hope you got his unique perspective, something that you rarely get in HR conferences today….because nobody really wants to bell the cat; they can’t!!!