Does a Recruiter Treat You as an Individual or as a Number?
There is a fierce competition today among job seekers. The increased learning skills and ease of applying for jobs online brings up a big challenge to recruiters who try to fill a job with the right and best applicant. An advertised position could receive 100’s or 1000’s of applications and the recruiters has to sift through all, in a fair manner, that will do justice to both the employer and the candidate.
Applicants vary in their need for the job. Some for survival, some for advancement, some are in need for a challenge, and some are desperate for self confidence booster. So how subjective do we expect the recruiter to be.
There is common consensus among applicants that recruiters sometimes ignore their anxiety and increase it by either not replying to their emails or applications or not giving any reason for their refusal.
A half way solution is to have an automated system to examine and compare applications electronically in order to narrow down the number to a level that can be compared and evaluated manually. Such a system has the advantage of speeding up the process tremendously and it can carry out automatic replies to candidates by email. On the other hand, such an artificial intelligence algorithm could be technically immature or inaccurate in filtering (as this is relatively a new technology). It could be a big loss to the employer to miss a candidate that is truly outstanding and unique if his CV format and content does not match the filtering algorithm.
The human touch in the process...
Recently, I applied to a job position in USA through a British recruiting office (Ms Rebecca Dyke). She was an amazing recruiter and very different from others as for one, she replied to every single email I sent. Two, she carried out any request for follow up with the employer. Three, she returned all my calls even though they were long distance, and lastly, she pointed out any negative aspects in my profile.
Eventually, I did not get the job as there were other better candidates for that position. But despite the loss of the position, I am very happy to have gained a great business friend. I learned a lot from her kindness, respect, follow up and persistence. She treated me as if I am her only candidate for the position in spite of the overload of work she has (she has 5500+ LinkedIn followers). Ms Dyke understands the feelings and concerns of a job seeker and tries her best to extend help and care.
The biggest challenge to recruiters in my opinion is to read between lines when presented with a CV. Some applicants do not know how to write a CV that conveys their talents, others do not have the confidence to praise themselves and the list is almost endless. But how does the recruiter discover these? Getting to know a bit more about your applicant is very vital, One way, could be done by requesting the applicant to fill a form that asks questions that shed light about the personality of the applicant, his/her eagerness for work and his/her level of confidence.
The responsibility of the recruiter is far more important than finding “the right person for the right position’, it could have some psychological consequences on the applicants that could either make them or break them.
Mohammad Amer Shallah, Auto-ID Support, www.ai-support.com/blog
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