Pursuing Priorities: Where to Be Flexible During the Hiring Process

By Aaron Swartz on April 5, 2023

The job market these days is incredibly difficult to navigate. The boom of online services and portals has totally changed the game, and factors like economic stress and a continued global pandemic mean that many people seeking employment are met with employers who’re either swimming in applicants or struggling with a labor shortfall. The job seeker side of things is fraught with difficulty and stress, but the hiring side is just as complicated for all you hiring managers out there.

Sorting through a veritable flood of applicants to try and fit the few spots you have available can be incredibly difficult, especially when no one actually seems to fit the requirements of the position. When you’re stuck trying to cram a round applicant into a square hole, the time comes to ask yourself: are you prioritizing the right traits when it comes to this job? Where should you cut the applicant some slack? Are you ignoring the best person for the job because of a minor detail on their resume? We think it’s quite likely you are, so to help you broaden your horizons and find the right employees for your business, here are some places we think you should be more flexible when it comes to hiring staff.

Jobs and Internships

Image via Unsplash

Experience

It may seem counterintuitive that the person with less work experience may be the applicant you should hang on to rather than dismiss out of hand, but hear us out. As we said already, job hunting has become harder and harder on both sides of the divide. You know the struggles of an employer full well, but many employees are struggling to even find the most basic of positions in the career they want to pursue. Unpaid internships are not only in short supply, but they also aren’t a luxury everyone can afford; in order to work for a prolonged period of time without pay you need to have money to support yourself, or the ability to work multiple jobs at once, which is no easy feat when you consider how hard it is to find and hold on to just one.

So, to those people who either don’t have the financial support or the luck required to slowly begin gaining work experience through internships, where are they going to go? How many good employees have you turned aside from an entry-level position because it requires two years of previous experience, despite the fact it’s supposed to be an entry-level job? When it comes to hiring great employees, a lot more matters than whether they’ve done the job before. Find someone who’s a quick study or who has some transferable experience and you can train them up quickly, so maybe it’s time to take a second look at all those folks who don’t quite meet the experience requirement.

Education

This is another place where social biases come into play, especially socio-economic and racial ones. Not everyone can afford higher education and failing to understand that means you’re potentially turning aside a massive collection of fantastic employees. When you dismiss an applicant because they’re lacking a degree, you aren’t removing them from the pool because they’re not smart or capable: you’re removing them because they didn’t have the time, money, or privilege to get a diploma. Those are very different things.

Additionally, mandating a certain degree may be necessary for certain fields but in many others, a level of flexibility can be a great asset to your business. Instead of turning aside the English, Psychology, or Religious Studies majors because they don’t have a Journalism degree, give them a second look and examine their other qualities. While you may not want to hire a non-engineer to work as an automobile designer, people who have varied skill sets can be a great asset to your business, so consider broadening your horizons.

Spotty Work History

There’s no denying it’s been a rough couple of years. A pandemic still walks the land, there are economic and labor issues you’re well aware of, and generally, things have been hard on everyone. That being said, gaps in someone’s work history are honestly pretty understandable and shouldn’t discount someone as a potential hire. Maybe they’ve struggled with mental health issues in the wake of the pandemic, or they lost a family member, or they were fired from their previous job due to economic pressure; there are a lot of reasons someone was unemployed for a while, and it shouldn’t be held against them. To be a fair employer it’s the right choice to look past any gaps in work history and instead focus on the applicant. That’s where you’ll find out if they’re really a good fit for your business.

There’s a lot going on in this day and age, but we all still need to hold down a job to pay the bills. When selecting the applicants you want to try and bring into the fold it can be tempting to only look for perfection. However, if you wait until you’ve got an applicant with everything you want, you’ll be waiting a long time. Some flexibility can go a long way, and if you broaden your pool of applicants a bit we guarantee you’ll find great people to add to your business.

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