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Realistic Expectations for Candidates

Nov 26, 2009 / Recruiting / Trackback

spiralI have been notic­ing some­thing lately that’s both­er­ing me. That is an elit­ist atti­tude and unre­al­is­tic expec­ta­tions from many of us versed in social media recruit­ing. One of the most dis­turb­ing com­ments  in this dia­log came from some­one who said, “can­di­dates don’t need cover let­ters, they need to know how to bypass gatekeepers”.

How many job seek­ers even know what gate­keep­ers are and is it rea­son­able to expect they should?

I don’t think so…

Would you expect some­one who focused on the job they had the past 10, 15, 20 years or more to know how to look for a job in the web 2.0 world? I’m talk­ing about nurses, accoun­tants, qual­ity assur­ance ana­lysts, para­le­gals, drafts­men, and even those in HR pro­fes­sions like ben­e­fits spe­cial­ists, coor­di­na­tors, etc. In fact, a lot of peo­ple do not use use the Inter­net, and many not even com­put­ers, in their jobs. Think man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­porta­tion, con­struc­tion and agri­cul­ture to name a few of the very impor­tant and fun­da­men­tal indus­tries that make the world what it is.

While so many of us are caught up in the “ether” of social media, the fact is, many more are not quite there yet and we don’t have a right to demand they par­tic­i­pate or learn to love it.

I sent a co-worker a Google doc so we could work on it col­lab­o­ra­tively. She sent an email back say­ing she absolutely refused to get cre­ate a gmail account because she does not want to “have an Inter­net pres­ence”. She is a tal­ented pro­fes­sional and spread­sheet whiz who sim­ply refuses to go online. Her job never requires Inter­net use and those times she does use it she surfs anonymously.

One could argue that if she wants to move ahead in the world she should do what a few thou­sand recruiters using social media want. But, is it a rea­son­able expectation?

Another co-worker has flat out told me the Inter­net will be the down­fall of mankind. I went in his office one day to show him the ani­moto photo video I cre­ated of a recent event. His com­puter did not have the required soft­ware installed to view it. His com­ment was that he only uses Microsoft Office prod­ucts on the hard drive and has never used the Inter­net. He does not have a per­sonal com­puter at home. He used to work for IBM.

This isn’t uncom­mon. I man­age a human resources task force made of HR pro­fes­sion­als in the com­mu­nity who, with the excep­tion of one mem­ber, are leery and con­fused about social media. Very few of the com­pa­nies they work for have a social media pres­ence and none of them are involved, even those who are gen­er­al­ists and recruit­ing is a part of their job. The most they do is use major job boards.

I’m assist­ing a grad stu­dent doing her the­sis project. She needed to make a con­tact with some­one at a par­tic­u­lar research com­pany. I sug­gested she search my LinkedIn con­tacts and I would make an intro­duc­tion. She asked what LinkedIn was.

I could go on and on. In real life is a dif­fer­ent demo­graphic than in the social media sphere. Online appli­ca­tions and assess­ments are scary to a lot of people.

This brings me back to cover let­ters and the recent dia­log regard­ing them. Justin Hillier makes a case that the best way is the video inter­view in his Social Recruit­ing 360 blog in response to my post Stand­ing Out in the Crowd, on the art and pur­pose of cover letters.

Two days ago I received a resume and cover let­ter from a down­sized 15 year VP of a bank. I searched him on LinkedIn, he wasn’t there. I searched him on Google and there were some men­tions of him in cor­po­rate newslet­ters. That was it. I doubt sug­gest­ing he ditch his finely con­structed explana­tory cover let­ter in lieu of a video pro­duc­tion is the prac­ti­cal way to go at the moment.

What do you think?


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  • hrmar­go­mar­gorose

    You clearly artic­u­lated a com­pelling case for the real­ity many of us who use social media for­get: many of our col­leagues don’t get it, nor do they want to. Com­pas­sion: it’s so impor­tant to remem­ber, and respect that not every­one thinks or acts the way we do. I’m a social media hound. I love it, can’t get enough of it, and I use it daily for job­search and net­work­ing with col­leagues. It was also inter­ested to observe the “cover let­ter” debate that took place on twit­ter this past week. There was a strong, vocal group of recruiters who stated they “hate” cover let­ters. There was a vocal group of pro­po­nents of a well writ­ten cover let­ter, and the pos­i­tive impres­sion a let­ter can make on an employer. I found the argu­ments on both sides con­vinc­ing. While I’m still not sure of the defin­i­tive answer, I will trust my gut. My gut instincts tell me that if I am email­ing my resume, the body of an email should be a cover let­ter that matches my skills to the spe­cific require­ments listed in the job descrip­tion. I care­fully stayed out of that debate, hon­estly because I don’t know the “right” answer. How­ever; I trust you Karla. If you think cover let­ters are a good idea, by golly I’m going to make sure I add one. I always love your posts. Thank you so much for being in my life, Karla. I truly value your input.

  • hrmar­go­mar­gorose

    You clearly artic­u­lated a com­pelling case for the real­ity many of us who use social media for­get: many of our col­leagues don’t get it, nor do they want to. Com­pas­sion: it’s so impor­tant to remem­ber, and respect that not every­one thinks or acts the way we do. I’m a social media hound. I love it, can’t get enough of it, and I use it daily for job­search and net­work­ing with col­leagues. It was also inter­ested to observe the “cover let­ter” debate that took place on twit­ter this past week. There was a strong, vocal group of recruiters who stated they “hate” cover let­ters. There was a vocal group of pro­po­nents of a well writ­ten cover let­ter, and the pos­i­tive impres­sion a let­ter can make on an employer. I found the argu­ments on both sides con­vinc­ing. While I’m still not sure of the defin­i­tive answer, I will trust my gut. My gut instincts tell me that if I am email­ing my resume, the body of an email should be a cover let­ter that matches my skills to the spe­cific require­ments listed in the job descrip­tion. I care­fully stayed out of that debate, hon­estly because I don’t know the “right” answer. How­ever; I trust you Karla. If you think cover let­ters are a good idea, by golly I’m going to make sure I add one. I always love your posts. Thank you so much for being in my life, Karla. I truly value your input.

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  • Justin Hillier

    Firstly Karla, thanks for the men­tion, flat­tered. Nice post and I cer­tainly do agree that not “every­one” is online and not every­one uses a com­puter and the inter­net for their daily job. But I think this misses the point.

    Broad­band pen­e­tra­tion glob­ally is increas­ing at the rate of knots, and oddly it is some of the more under-developed coun­tries that are lead­ing the way in take up. Whilst you may not use the inter­net or a com­puter at work, what’s to say that the peo­ple you have men­tioned above do not have home com­puter and inter­net access. After all, like most of us, we are hardly going to be able to sit at our desk and surf the major job boards for our next role dur­ing busi­ness hours.

    I don’t think the peo­ple you have men­tioned above are all that com­mon, apart from the grad stu­dent who nor­mally wouldn’t have any other use for LI, why would they. It is a net­work­ing site for pro­fes­sion­als, and grad­u­ates haven’t started down that path yet. So no real big sur­prise here.

    It is more of a worry that the peo­ple you have men­tioned above are afraid or not will­ing to enter the world of a sim­ple com­puter or the inter­net. Try as they might to avoid it, be it a morale or eth­i­cal view point, there is no deny­ing that “tech­nol­ogy wins”. How many peo­ple have mobile phones today, Ipods instead of walk­mans and how many HR peo­ple were against online job board adver­tis­ing (yes still a few but we all agree they need to catch up).

    Video may not be for “every” per­son. Be it that they are truly cam­era shy, are not com­fort­able with the con­cept or sim­ply feel it’s not for them, how­ever it would be fool­ish to deny that video has no place in can­di­date mar­ket­ing or per­sonal brand build­ing. I wrote this arti­cle recently ( http://bit.ly/5aXJdX ) on the hypocrisy of Employ­ers who use video to attract and Brand and don’t allow can­di­dates to do the same.

    The stan­dard, tra­di­tional resume will never die. The word.doc for­mat might, as we move to dig­i­tal for­mats like http://www.visualcv.com and really nor should it. Cover let­ters how­ever are at the break­ing point, you said it your­self “Cover let­ters are a dis­ap­pear­ing art”, there is a rea­son for that. Video allows for more cre­ativ­ity to attract and “imprint” a can­di­date to an Employer, if done cor­rectly of course. The most impor­tant thing we need to do is be open to it, give guide­lines and advice and use it as a tool in the kit bag, not as the ever last­ing solu­tion to every­thing. And if done well wouldn’t this make you stand out from the crowd even more?

    Justin Hillier
    http://www.socialrecruiting360.com

  • http://socialmediacrashsite.blogspot.com/ Tom Owens

    There were many tal­ented peo­ple in the buggy whip trade who could have suc­cess­fully tran­si­tioned to the auto­mo­tive indus­try but chose not to out of fear and a mis­placed sense of pride and enti­tle­ment. Those who choose to ignore the real­i­ties of the cur­rent envi­ron­ment are doom­ing them­selves to irrelevance.

  • alcon­cal­cia

    I think you make some very good points Karla and I am very firmly on the side of the cov­er­ing let­ter rather than the video. I was at the Recruit­ing Uncon­fer­ence last week and a thought struck me. Yes, it is great that there are so many peo­ple who are con­sid­ered gurus of social media and already look­ing at the way ahead, but one must always remem­ber that for every one of them there are maybe ten or twenty who have not the slight­est inkling of how to access social media, and no desire to do so, let alone use it to their advan­tage. I think some­times it is easy to for­get that not every­one out there wants to be social media savvy or fully wired for the web.

    I fall some­where in the mid­dle. I am inter­ested from a busi­ness point of view, how I can use social media to my advan­tage, but in many other ways I am some­what of a techno­phobe. I refuse to get a phone that does any­thing other than answer and make phone calls, I do not have a wire­less set up purely so that I can­not work on the train or in a cof­fee shop and I refuse point blank to ever be seen with some­thing clipped to my ear whilst walk­ing down the street talk­ing to some invis­i­ble being.

    The world of tech­nol­ogy is to be mar­veled at, but we’re not all at the cut­ting edge. Equally not every­one wants to be. Yes, I will use twit­ter and linkedin for net­work­ing pur­poses and I have firm views on recruit­ment mat­ters as that is the busi­ness I work in (adver­tis­ing not con­sul­tan­cies), but, I have no desire to be out there with the big boys, eulo­gis­ing on the future, posi­tion­ing myself as an expert and turn­ing my nose up at any­one who “doesn’t even have a com­puter in their home”. At the same time I think it is wrong to sug­gest that can­di­dates should make videos of them­selves. it is unnec­es­sary and just one more pres­sure on the already stressed job seeker who can often find it hard to see the wood for the trees when look­ing for a job. Let’s not make it harder for them than it already is? Let’s not give the con­fi­dent ones a head start. Let them be judged as they always have been. At inter­view on the basis that their appli­ca­tion was of suf­fi­cient merit (PS you can still reject the ones writ­ten in blood or made up from cut­tings from news­pa­pers. I actu­ally wouldn’t mind see­ing what sort of video they would make!)

  • shen­nee

    Karla–
    Thank you for say­ing, what I have been think­ing!
    Your kind­ness, and gen­eros­ity is just amaz­ing. I hold our friend­ship close to me,.
    Thank you for help­ing me in so many ways,
    Your friend,
    Shen­nee

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  • mark­birch

    How many job seek­ers even know what gate­keep­ers are and is it rea­son­able to expect they should? The answer is Yes, if they want to stand out from the crowd, espe­cially the peo­ple that you cite in your post as they need the most help.

    I would also state that an equally elit­ist atti­tude is to tell peo­ple that the sta­tus quo is okay because that is what peo­ple are used to. This is no time to cod­dle peo­ple. The real world? That is chang­ing at a blind­ingly fast pace and if peo­ple do not adapt by learn­ing new skills, then they risk los­ing out on opportunities.

    The real truth is that the Inter­net is 40 years old, the HTML spec is 20 years old, and the first web based job boards started over 10 years ago. Whereas peo­ple used to go to the local news­pa­per to hear about job open­ings or through tra­di­tional net­work­ing, now they are search­ing cor­po­rate web­sites, post­ing their resumes on employ­ment boards, apply­ing online to jobs, using social media tools to enhance tra­di­tional networking.

    Some of the exam­ples you men­tion are truly dis­turb­ing. Some of these same peo­ple are going to have a real chal­lenge ahead of them, and I hope you are able to help them under­stand the risks they face and assist them in adopt­ing these newer meth­ods and tools. Let’s be hon­est, there is noth­ing scary or com­plex about post­ing a resume on a job board. While some indus­tries and pro­fes­sions are slower in the tech­nol­ogy adop­tion cycle, any­one in the infor­ma­tion knowl­edge arena has no excuse.

    Really, if some­one is get­ting a grad­u­ate degree, is a whiz-bang spread­sheet guru, or worked at IBM, it is not unrea­son­able for these tal­ented and obvi­ously intel­li­gent indi­vid­u­als to learn some­thing new and to adopt new tech­niques. That would be a min­i­mal expec­ta­tion for any new hire, whether it is social media, new soft­ware, new processes, or new methods.

    Harp­ing on ways to tweak resumes and cover let­ters is not really help­ing any­one. That is not help­ing peo­ple to stand out from the crowd.


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