Stop for a moment and think deeply whether you have a friend who's been looking for a job for a long time. This is a reality for many people. I've met 5 in the last month alone.
Some of them have been looking for so long that they're willing to take on almost any job, although they're highly skilled in a different field.
They are so desperate that they're willing to dumb down their CV, just so they can get a job and not get turned out because they're overqualified.
Now let me give you a little story to illustrate what's probably happening.
Adrian is looking for a job. His CV has been "on the streets" for a while now. He's been burning through his savings and it looks like there won't be a lot of runway until he runs out of money.
Lucky for him, he's recently been invited by Lucy, a recruiter, to an interview. He prepares and goes into the interview all enthusiastic. The interview goes well from Adrian's perspective so he politely says goodbye to Lucy and will be waiting at home for a reply from her.
One week goes by...
Two...
After the second week he decides to follow-up with Lucy and ask for feedback. He instantly gets an email from Lucy.
"Hey Adrian,
Thanks a lot for following up. It's been hectic around here. We had a lot of openings to fill and haven't gotten back to you and a couple of other people.
Your profile is great and you passed the interview but our team decided to fill the position internally.
Thanks a lot for your time and keep an eye on our careers page, for any other positions we might open up that suit your profile.
Lucy."
Adrian knows this stuff. He's gotten this sort of answer before. It's probably not that they filled the position internally, but because of the fact that he's 33 and he has two kids.
It was clear to him that the company's average employee age was around 25.
He's back to square one. So is Lucy, who is still interviewing people, or sourcing, looking for that 25-year-old to fill her open job.
They both wasted time and resources and nothing good came out of it.
What's unfortunate is that Ben, a recruiter who's looking for someone with Adrian's exact profile, is being pressured by his boss to find someone to fill their open position. One of the company's most important projects is grinding to a halt because they lack Adrian's specific skills.
The only problem is that Ben and Lucy don't share information. If they only shared Adrian's profile with one another, Ben would be able to fill his position and Adrian wouldn't be in this horrible situation.
And someone else, maybe Ben himself could help Lucy or point her in the right direction.
This is a common pattern, which leaves projects stuck, recruiters stressed out and good, hard-working professionals out of a job.
This is the main reason we decided to create a community of elite recruiters with whom to share the CVs of people who contact us for a job we can't offer. We hope to help them fill their jobs, and avoid the management pressure all while helping good professionals get hired.
We called it W6E Hire, which is short for WeRemote Hire, and a we also create a special hashtag — #w6ehire — for people to discuss the topic on social media.
It is our hope that this community will enable the sharing and circulation of information, and candidate profiles.
If you are a recruiter who wants to push recruitment to the next level and make a positive impact on people, join us using the form below, and you will get an invite to the W6E Hire Private Slack community in the following days.
If you're having trouble filling the form, use this link to access it externally.
We strongly believe that AI is not the ultimate answer to recruitment's problems, but people and community.