Job-seekers: Understand the Buyer before You Start Selling

Recognize that when looking for job, there are a bunch of systems and procedures that actually determine whether your resume will be seen, whether you'll be interviewed, and the type of job you'll be offered. Knowing how this is done will help you better navigate the twists and turns of job-hunting, while avoiding the frustrating dead-ends. (We're hosting a public webcast for job-seekers on this topic on October 10, 2013).

The Buyers and the Buying Process

1) The government: there are a lot of compliance rules for hiring that are intended to ensure equitable treatment for minorities and protected classes, (e.g., age, race, gender, religion, physically challenged and military). However, most companies misinterpret these rules, using filters that actually exclude these protected classes from consideration. (For more on this critical point, here’s a white paper by one of the top labor attorneys in the country.)

2) The legal department: their focus is on compliance with government regulations. To be safe, they emphasize the need for a list of skills and experiences to be used as objective criteria. However, if these skills and experiences aren’t scientifically determined, they’re as subjective as first impressions. This is how protected classes and high potential candidates get inadvertently excluded.

3) The compensation department: to ensure internal equity, companies want to make sure that everyone with the same level of skills and experience gets paid within a similar range. Of course, the best people aren’t willing to accept average compensation levels, so they’re eliminated from consideration. Point: be careful when discussing compensation.

4) The organizational development (OD) group and the interview: OD people have a background in behavioral interviewing and statistics. They design the interview process. Somehow they’re satisfied with one sigma effectiveness in a six sigma world. That's why most hiring managers use their own pet techniques, but you still need to prep for the behavioral interview.

5) The Applicant Tracking System (ATS): this is the underlying system used to manage job postings, resumes and candidate flow. These systems have built-in algorithms that match candidate skills and experiences with job requirements. Most recruiters won’t even look at resumes that aren’t an 80-90% match.

6) The HR department: in general these people follow the dictates of the legal, compensation, OD, and ATS criteria. Due to their conservative and “let’s not rock the boat” nature, they are unwilling to challenge conventional wisdom, even if it's not too effective.

7) Recruiters: they need to follow the rules. Most corporate recruiters are handling 15-20 requisitions, or more, so they have to rely on the matching systems they’re using and the rules imposed by their company’s hiring processes. They’re not given a lot of leeway.

8) Hiring managers: most of them avoid the need to define real job requirements, despite the fact that every piece of research demonstrates that clarifying job expectations up-front is the primary job driver for performance and job-satisfaction. Regardless, most just follow the skills and experience mantra, since it’s easier than bucking the system. The others trust their gut, or focus on how smart people are, or how assertive they are in the interview.

9) The hidden vs. public job market: before the job requisition is made public, hiring managers consider internal people who can be promoted or transferred, or they seek referrals from employees or trusted resources. The focus of the hiring decision for these known people is on their past performance and future potential. In many cases the job is modified to meet the requirements of the person selected. Once the job is posted, the criteria shifts to skills, experience and industry background. That's why it's important to find jobs in the hidden market, i.e., before they're posted.

The Importance of Applying Through the Back Door

Based on this, I suggest that job-seekers should not apply directly to a job posting, unless they’re a perfect fit for the job. Instead, they need to be recommended by someone in the company for the open job. This is what I refer to as the backdoor. The idea is to use the job posting as a lead, and then find someone in your extended network who can recommend you. (Here’s a recent post on how to do this.)

A recommendation is important, since it will get you to the top of the resume pile. If the recommendation is strong enough, a perfect fit on skills and experiences is less important. If the strong recommendation occurs before the job is officially posted there is even more flexibility on how the job is structured. Hiring managers often modify the job around the needs of the person selected, rather than selecting a person to fit an ill-defined job.

The relationship between the quality of the recommendation, the focus of the assessment and the predictability of the interview is shown in the graphic. The short take: a known, or highly referred person, is naturally judged largely on his or her past performance and future potential. Equally important, the accuracy of a performance-based assessment is far greater than one based on skills and experience. For direct proof, just consider the fact that an internal promotion is highly predictive, despite the fact that the person selected, by definition, does not meet the skills and experience requirements.

For job-seekers, this should be eye-opening: entering through the back door is far more likely to land an interview and a job than using the front door. While trying to get your foot in the backdoor can be a bit overwhelming at first, once through it, it makes a world of difference on whether you’ll get hired. If so, it will also likely be for a much better job.

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a full-service talent acquisition consulting firm. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), covers the Performance-based Hiring process described in this article in more depth. For instant hiring advice join Lou's LinkedIn group and follow his Wisdom About Work series on Facebook.