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Job hunting feels like a scam.

And recruiting? Just as bad.

It's all ghosting, fake promises, and awkward interviews no one wants to be in.

In this episode, we dive into the mess:

✅ Why hiring sucks for candidates, managers, and recruiters

✅ The truth behind “competitive salary” and shady job posts

✅ What to do if you're stuck in the system—or trying to fix it

We’ve got sharp takes, real horror stories, and a few ways out of the chaos.

Comment below: What’s the biggest red flag you’ve seen in a job post?

Subscribe for more ways to make work suck less.

📌 Chapters:

0:00 – Intro

0:45 – “Don’t List the Salary”

1:29 – What to Expect in This Episode

2:36 – Recruiting Hell: The Lies, Ghosting, and Exaggerations

5:08 – Is Hiding Salary Ever Justified?

8:31 – Why Recruiting Is a Nightmare for Everyone

16:01 – The Netflix Study: Why They Pay Top Dollar

22:24 – He Took His Shoes Off… Mid-Interview

25:53 – Why Recruiting Hell Exists

36:48 – How to Make Recruiting Not Suck

44:00 – Positive Examples of Recruiting Done Right

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Welcome to the Make Work Not Suck podcast.

Hiring today is basically online dating. Everyone's pretending. Nobody's happy. Everyone's swiping right, desperately hoping for something better. Welcome to recruiting hell where job descriptions lie, resumes are exaggerated, and everyone leaves disappointed.

That's right. Today, we are diving into why recruiting sucks for absolutely everyone involved. The hiring manager, the candidate, the recruiter, and most importantly, how can we fix it? I mean, I think we've got some good spicy takes. We got some hilarious, horror stories from Reddit and some actual steps to stop recruiting hell.

Let's get started.

Thing though. Recruiting isn't broken. Recruiting is designed to stuck. So so let's stop pretending that it's an accident. Because if your job posting says competitive salary, but you're not gonna list the salary, you've kinda already lost credibility.

You know what? It's funny. Everybody's like, don't list the salary because maybe they'll come in lower and they'll request less than what we're asking for. And I've like, very rarely have I seen that actually work. And usually, by the time it's all said and done, the person's making the

the money that you're willing to pay anyway.

Or they find out and they're pissed.

Oh, yeah.

$80,000 job and they took it for 65 because they didn't know. And now they just feel like you've taken advantage of them. Right.

Let's stop pretending.

Today, we're gonna explore some real stories from the recruiting trenches, some shady job posts, some misleading competitive salaries, and even some candidates gaming the system. I've got a hilarious story about one of my friends. So we're gonna look at both concrete ways that businesses and job seekers can end the madness of recruiting that we're seeing in the market today.

Well and plus, we're going to tie it all back to our framework. Right? Vision journey, culture, results, and ultimately how everyone can benefit from making hiring process honest, transparent, and respectful.

Yes. Now my name is Daniel Steer. I have hired and been hired dozens of times. I've experienced recruiting, both the good and the bad and the ugly of recruiting as a candidate and as an employer, as a hiring manager. I know exactly how much it sucks and exactly how to fix it.

And I'm Ryan Hodges, and I've seen poor recruiting drain productivity, crush morale, and kill company culture. And today, we're gonna bring solutions and how to make this make work, not suck. So let's talk about recruiting hell. The reality behind recruitment, the lies, the exaggerations, the frustrations. There's a hilarious meme going around on Reddit right now, and it's two Spider Men, like, I guess, from the multiverse.

Right? And they're both pointing at each other. And one of them says, you know, manager, and it says, you lied about your resume or you lied about your experience on your resume. And the other one says, you know, employee, and it says, you lied about your competitive salary. And it's it's it's really what start, sparks this topic today and how much misperception there is on both sides and how that lack of, clarity and transparency is making work suck for both sides.

When I was in grad school, there was this girl that I was in, in classes with, and she said that the point of dating is to hide the crazy until commitment. Like, you gotta hide the crazy long enough until the person on the other side commits to you. And I think that's a lot of what recruiting is like these days. It's like both the employer and the candidate are trying to hide the crazy as best they can until they get the other one to commit to them. Whether it's, you know, the company trying to hide their toxic culture or the employee, the candidate trying to hide the fact they don't really they're not really qualified.

Like, everyone's trying to put their best foot forward, hide the crazy, hide the reality until they can get the other person to commit to them, and then you find out what it is you actually got. How's that working out for us?

This is basic stuff. I mean, here's a Reddit comment. It says, if the salary was actually competitive, they would post it. Fact.

Yep. And and check out

this other one. They lied about the job. I lied about my experience in my criminal history. Let's call it even. Clearly, there's trust issues on both sides.

Yes.

It's like I mean I mean, here's some stats. Right? Seventy five percent of job seekers have reported frustration with with unclear job postings. That's from Glassdoor from 2023. You got competitive salaries as ranked as the one of the top five most frustrating job posting phrases from a LinkedIn survey in 2024, and companies withholding salary information often experience low quality applications wasting recruiters' time and applicants' time.

It's pretty clear that everyone's lying in the recruiting process and that nobody's winning. So, Ryan, let me ask you a couple questions. Where have you seen hiding the salary range ever be beneficial? Like, in what instance is that actually helping anyone achieve their objective?

I I've never seen it effective. I mean Okay. And and trust me, I I mean, going back in the day when, you know, just just starting out, you know, fifteen, twenty years ago, you know, it was just you didn't publish it then. It was just kind of the way and and you played that stupid game. I think today, now with especially with, you know, the Internet, not that the Internet's a new thing, but just information's more available.

You can go to salary.com and plug in a job and say, this is where I live. Like people know what they should be paid. Now, there's always a band, right? Like smaller companies are going to be on lower end, bigger companies are going to be on a higher end. But there's pros and cons to both, to work in the small business space versus the enterprise space.

But the reality is it just starts the entire conversation off on the wrong foot, especially when a business owner is trying to let's get them cheaper. If we get them cheaper, then we can save money.

I have seen organizations do it because they don't want their existing employees to keep pace with the market, and so they will not publish the salary of you know, let's say it's a director role. Well, if I tell them the salary I'm gonna pay the new person, then all of my internal candidates are gonna know what they're worth, and I'm gonna have to give them raises to get them up to a comparable band. And so now I gotta pay everybody what they're worth. So I'm just gonna hide the salary and only tell the new people. And that sounds like that can work, but, eventually, it gets out.

Like, eventually, people, they come, they go, they talk to their friends who are still there, and they're like, oh, yeah. I was at $1.50. And everyone's like, hold on. $1.50? We only make $1.25.

Like, you came in from the outside, and you made significantly more than everybody else. And so I think that transparency and integrity on salaries is is a much better long term strategic approach than trying to kid yourself in into believing that people don't talk about salary because they do.

Yes. Everybody, you know, officially, nobody talks about salary because in some cases, it's against the law. But you're right. In reality, in the grapevine, everybody's talking.

Yeah.

And I think if you're if you're hiding if you're hiding the fact that you're paying a a higher wage for a similar job than somebody on staff, I mean, hiding that is just you're band aiding a different problem.

Right.

Like, if you can't if you can't uplevel all of your people to be a similar pay band now trust me. I get bands. Like, there should be a range for it, and, you know, a junior person or a less experienced person's probably gonna be on the bottom of that band, and, you know, more senior person or experienced person's gonna be on the higher band. And I think it's fine to publish the band.

But I

think but I but but make the qualifications for the band public as well. The experience, the expectations, etcetera. But if you're basically your people are below that band because you've moved it up to attract, you know, higher caliber talent

Mhmm.

You've got a different problem. And and and if on honestly, you're only making your recruiters process harder because it's just gonna expose a business problem.

So why is recruiting such a nightmare for everyone? I know a couple of recruiters, and they're just they're they're saying crazy things about what's happening now. Like, people just ghosting interviews, candidates showing up for an interview, never hearing back, so they just have no I mean, it's like, okay. It's been three weeks. They haven't said any they haven't said anything, so I guess I'm not getting the job.

Why is recruiting such a nightmare for everybody right now?

I love this I love this other comment on Reddit. All salaries are competitive. Minimum wage competes against 6 figures. It just competes very poorly.

Nice. Yes. It competes. It just doesn't ever win. Similar to maybe to to this other one that I saw on Reddit where it says, an internal applicant gets offered a role one level below the posted job just so they can post a lower salary.

You know, I think it's I don't know if that's just incompetence or if that's ego or or what that what that is, but it it's just nonsense that makes everybody frustrated and everybody angry at the process.

I think people think they're playing games and they're winning. There's I mean, this is this is some sort of ego driven game to see if I can just get somebody lower. You know? I mean, I I've actually seen where recruiters are incentivized for lower salaries. If you could recruit people at lower salaries, then you get a bonus because unsaved the company money.

That that's not a win win situation to get top talent or high caliber people.

Right. So I've got a funny story about that. When I was at a Fortune 500 company, I went through one of their leadership development programs. And if you wanna look me up on LinkedIn, you could probably figure out who it is. And as part of that rotational leadership program, for a couple of months, I was in charge of recruiting.

And we had these recruiting partners, third party partners that we worked with. And my job was to, you know, work with those to get the best candidates possible at the lowest price. And we were not able to fill the open headcount that we had. And at some point, I was talking with my boss and a couple of other people and somebody brought up the big picture question of, well, what does it cost us to not fill this role? Like, if that seat stays empty for a whole year, like, who cares?

What what's the cost? And this was a group of people that was going around fixing problems around the company, and we were saving, let's just say, a million dollars per person per year in bottom line savings to the business. And so we started talking to ourselves like, okay. Hold on. Time out.

So so every person I don't put into a seat is a million dollars of profit that we're not gonna find. And we're not filling these seats because the recruiter gets paid 25% when they give that candidate to somebody else, but they only get 21 when I hire them because I've beaten them down on the rates. And so we started looking at ourselves and we're like, is this really winning? Because they're going to give their best candidates to the people that pay them the most, and they're gonna give me the leftovers because I pay the least. So what if we did the opposite?

That person cost me an extra $5,000 to save a million. Shouldn't I do that? Like, shouldn't I go back and renegotiate all of my contracts and tell my vendors I want the best people you've ever found? I want first shot at them, and I'm gonna give you 5,000 extra dollars because $5,000 compared to the million is nothing. It is a rounding error.

Now I get not every business is that size. It was a fortune 500 tens of billions of dollars. Right? But I think the logic is applicable to a lot of people. Right?

Think through what it is costing you to not have that seat filled. Why does this role exist? And is it really worth 5,000, 10 thousand dollars a year to beat that person down and, you know, not pay them a competitive salary? Like, is is your business really running on that thin of a razor that a thousand dollars a month is gonna make or break you, like, why not be more abundant? Why not be more generous?

Pay them what they're worth and then encourage them to help be a partner with you in driving the business forward and creating profits.

Oh, yeah. You know what? You just had a good good example there because you talked about the or the outside recruiter that gets the paid on the commission. Right? Yeah.

So in this case, the recruiter was beat down to get a lower rate. So if you're if you if you think you won by getting a better deal with your recruiter, then you're probably getting lower value candidates.

Yeah.

Two, if you have an internal recruiter inside your organization, you have someone designated for doing it, and they're incentivized for getting people to accept lower salaries, again, you're you're surfing from the bottom of the well. Are you really gonna solve your problem, and are are you really winning or just playing games that make you think you win?

It it's a game that's easy to track. It's easy to keep score. And so you think that you're winning, but you're not necessarily winning the game that matters because you're you're undervaluing the talent. And really good people don't go places where they're undervalued. They know what they're worth and there's a there's demand for good people.

So if you're winning, quote unquote winning, by getting people who are taking 10% less, you're probably getting the people that are worth 10% less or worse. Right.

Right. Well, and and and I wanna clarify here because we've had some pushback on some of our our salary bands or, some of our base conversations. Right? I think there you may be you may get somebody that's willing to take that 10% less, and they still may be a great candidate, but they might be less experienced. And so they're take they're for them, this is an upgrade.

Mhmm. And and they're stepping into a new role, and this is an upgraded salary for them. But for you, you're expecting someone with a higher caliber or you're expecting more throughput, and you're really setting that person up for fail failure. I mean, that's the same thing of of the meme. You lied about your experience and you lied about the the competitive pay.

Mhmm. If if you're expecting me to perform and do all these, you know, duties and responsibilities, but the pay is lower or you're you're misaligned with the expectation and you hired a a lower candidate, you're just setting yourself up for failure.

Yeah.

I mean, the opposite can can can be true too where you have it priced too high, and it's non competitive with the market, but I don't think anybody's gonna complain about that.

You know, it's interesting Netflix says they pay top of market. I think this is a fascinating, case study. What what Netflix found was that for technical talent, engineers, scientists, mathematicians, like, you know, STEM people, if you were to force rank them from the best person in the world to the worst person in the world and find the average again, can't actually do this, but conceptually think through it. What they found was that the best person in the world was 10 times better than the average. That's crazy.

Right? You think about it. Let's say in marketing, the best person is twice as good as the average. But in technical field, it is 10 x. And so they said, it makes financial sense to always pay top of market for technical talent.

Because if I'm overpaying this guy by 30%, right, I'm paying him 30% more than the average, I'm still getting, like, a 900% return on this guy because he's 10 times better than the average guy. I pay the average guy the average salary. I pay the best guy 30% above average, and I'm getting a % better results.

Yeah. Well, that's the that's

the good old Jim Collins, you know, good to great. Right. Instead of having 10 people paid like 10, hire five people, pay them like eight, and work them like 10.

And Right.

Basically, everybody the company gets a higher throughput, and they get a higher salary.

You don't even need to work them like 10 because they're so much better. They'll produce the work they'll produce the output of 10 and only work like eight.

Right. Right. Right. Well, let let's take this back to the some of the the problems like ghosting and Yeah. The what what makes this this hell.

Right? Like, what recruiting fails it was quote here says recruiting fails because both sides treat it like tender. Swipe right then ghost. Let let's let's talk about the ghosting side of it. And I think the ghosting goes to both sides, both on the recruiting side and on the on the, candidate side.

I'm gonna talk on the the company side for a second.

Okay.

There's organization we I work with had a q one rock to do all of these people moves. Great HR recruiting department. Recruiter went out and found some really sharp talent. I mean, did did a recruiting job. And then the when it came down to the financial metrics, then all of a sudden, the the the upper level leadership changed moved the goalpost.

Oh, nice.

And what was approved was not approved. And and all of a sudden, oh, this reallocation, no, is no longer valid. And and at the end of the day, what end up happening is the recruiter had to basically put all these people on ice.

Mhmm.

They were all, yep. We're ready. We're gonna offer you a job. We got it lined up. You're a great candidate.

You pass qualifications. We're just going through final approvals. And then all of a sudden, top of the top of the organization moves to goal post, and now you got all these candidates. But guess what? Guess what happened?

Take a guess.

What? None of them were available when you got your act together.

One of them wasn't.

Another one had done some other interviewing and had a better offer.

Yep.

And so not that our offer wasn't bad, but they got a better offer for better.

A better one.

Yep. It was a larger organization that was paying a slightly higher salary. And so now they came back and renegotiated. And there's some other perks and benefits that had to there there's more work that had to be done to get these people into the organization because of the putting on ice.

I saw this stat that, from Indeed that said that over half of the recruiters admit to struggling with internal bureaucracy that delays hiring decisions.

That is exactly what created this. And it was a ghosting like, it wasn't and and the HR team was doing a great job of of trying to communicate with these people.

Mhmm.

But at

the end of the day, there's only so much of still working on it, still working on it, being in touch. Yep. Mhmm. Because they're obviously looking for a new job for a reason.

Sure.

So if you don't have everything clear and ready to go and your recruiters are not, you know, weaponized, if you will, to make these hires, then don't put them out there to be hunting.

Yeah. It's funny that we would use this dating analogy because I think this is, in a sense, very true of both dating and recruiting. The best candidates always have the most options. Right? The prettiest girl is gonna be the one who's getting asked out on the most dates.

The the candidates that have the best qualifications, the best resume, the best experience, like, they're gonna have options. And so if you wanna compete for top talent, you gotta have your shit together. Like, you can't interview top talent people and then not call them back for three weeks and expect that they're still gonna be happy to hear from you. Just like in dating, you can like, you can do that if you're just wanting to date the yahoos. But if if you're serious about getting somebody who's quality, you've gotta take the process seriously, and you've gotta have your act together.

That's seventy seven percent of job seekers were ghosted by the by the company trying to employ them? Oh my gosh. That's embarrassing.

Well and and I'm willing to bet the 77%, ghosting on the other side is people are, you know, they're looking for a job, they're applying at multiple places, they may do a first round, and then they found a company that's more professional. They found a company that's posting the salary on there. They they found out, you know, here's another survey. It said fifty eight percent of job seekers decline offers due to negative interview experiences. It's a career builder survey from 2024.

Of that seventy seven percent, how much do you think it's they had a negative experience on the recruiting side and just said, screw it. I don't wanna work for these people if they don't get their crap together.

Okay. True story. I while I was running recruiting for that Fortune 500, leadership development program, there was a candidate that I ghosted. Probably more than one, like, I just didn't remember, and they got lost in the shuffle because I was managing too much and something hit the floor on accident. But there was one person that we just flat out ghosted.

We got in an interview, and I swear to you that he took his shoes off in the interview and then put his feet up on my desk.

What? What the hell are you thinking? How What? I just end

I just ended the interview. I was like, we're done.

I've seen enough. And

Wait. You

know, like, were you

Did he confuse your job interview as a foot model? Like, was he applying to be a foot model or something at the wrong company?

He was a CPA. Like, this wasn't an a 16 year old kid. This was somebody who graduated from college and had two to four years of experience. And I walk out of that interview in, like, five minutes, and people like, done so soon? I'm like, oh, yeah.

We're done. And they're like, there's no way you can know in five minutes that he's not qualified. I was like, he took his shoes off and put his foot his sake feet on my desk. And they're like, okay. Yeah.

Good call.

I you know, I I've never I've I've I've had some weird weird ones, you know, guys dressed in weird things or women in provocative clothing. Mhmm. I've had some weird stuff said in an interview, but I've never had anybody take their shoes off, put their feet on my desk. That that's you you you win the prize there.

That is yeah. That's that's one of my favorite all time recruiting stories. Yes. There is there is professionalism that is expected in both directions. Right?

The company needs to have their act together. If you're a candidate, you gotta get your act together too, man. Take a shower, put on some nice clothes, keep your shoes on, be professional, be prepared, do some homework on the company, know a little bit about what they do, what they're trying to accomplish, why this role exists, do a little bit of homework. Those kind of things set you apart from the noise and the nonsense that is, I think, just overwhelming so many hiring managers right now. There's just so much crazy in the world that the people that just do the basics well, their resume's easy to read, they're they're on time, they're professionally dressed, they shake your hand, they look you in the eye, they say thank you, they ask intelligent questions, they've done their homework.

Like, that was just the the bare minimum in my mind ten, twenty years ago. And now that puts you you're already part of the decision set. You're already a candidate that they're considering just for doing those basics because 80% of the candidates aren't.

Jeez. I still can't get over the the foot on desk. Alright.

Are you aren't you glad you're not dating these days, Ryan?

Yes. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Alright. Let's let's let's move on to this.

Why recruiting hell exist? Vision journey culture results. Alright. Let's bring it back to the the simplify method. How can we transform recruiting hell to recruiting heaven?

Let's start with vision.

I think a lot of it starts with vision. I think you've gotta set clear expectations for the role. And and I mean that in in every facet. We're like, one, why does this role exist? You have a job description.

It tells me what you want me to do, but why am I doing this? Like, why should anybody care if this role exists or not? So I've one of the best practices I've seen, I'm working with a client right now that has a job description and a mission document. And the mission document is why this job exists. The job description is what I expect you to do.

It's like, okay. Great. Like, vision, journey, great. Somewhere in one of those documents is probably your your values. Okay.

So we've got some culture, and we've got some results. We this is how you're going to be evaluated. You're gonna do you we're both gonna know that you're doing a great job when these numbers move in this direction. Right? So vision, journey, culture, results is actually a helpful way to even just think about the job description.

But within that even, right, transparent salaries, realistic job descriptions, honestly align on what we're looking for in this role. Because if we can't be honest about why this role exists, what you need to do, how you're gonna behave, and how you're gonna be evaluated, there is zero chance we're both gonna be happy a year from now.

Alright. So let's move on to Journey. This is a simple one. You take Journey. I love I love Journey.

Journey is my favorite. And and this is a simple one. Just streamline communications. Simple updates. Stop ghosting people.

You can't control the candidate side. Now I guess this is a two way street. Right? Like, let's be professional people. Just tell people yes, no, not yet.

Silence is the real hell.

Mhmm.

And I think from the employer side, what do we say? It was, like, 46 of candidates experience, ghosting from the employer. Right. That's just not acceptable as the business. Just get your communications streamlined and just give people honest answers.

And if the answer is not yet, still not yet is a better answer than just no reply at all.

Yeah. Yeah. That that's always the worst. Right? And I've been in the job hunting situation where I'm managing conversations with multiple companies.

And when you just don't hear back from somebody, it's like, look. I'm I'm moving forward with somebody. And if you think I might be a candidate, you gotta at least talk to me, and and tell me what's going on. Culture. Alright.

Vision journey, culture. I find a lot of companies struggle with the culture side of recruiting because they're not really honest with themselves about who they are and their culture.

I think they're abiding by their culture of the of the company, but they're not establishing a culture between in in the recruiting process of like, I think you said this more in the the the vision component Mhmm. Is the mutual understanding of how we're gonna interact in this process.

Okay. That's a different take.

Because because the culture aspect of it, yes, there's culture from within the business, and you would expect your your personnel to follow the core values of the business. If they're not following the core values, that's a totally different problem. But keeping it to the recruiting process, the the culture aspect is the mutual culture between the recruiter and the candidate.

Okay. I like that. How would you establish some norms in that process? Right? It's like dating.

Right? Between the recruiter and the candidate. Right? Those two people are dating. How do you establish those norms to make sure that it's actually a good process of engaging?

Well, Well, I think you could even use it as a measure of success between the two and this kinda goes into results in just a second. But I think it's one of those when you start the either on the job description or in the application process or the first communication out, I think it set the norms. Hey. I'm gonna respect your time if you respect mine. I'll respond to you quickly if you do this.

We have a core value of teamwork, so we wanna make this a collaborative process. You can pull the company's values into it for sure. Right. And and you can start setting those expectations. But I think if you if you said, hey.

I will follow-up with you on time. If you'll respond back to me on time. If we've got, you know, if you've got something, let me know. Let's communicate. Let's stay on top of this, and we can make this process smooth.

You know what's interesting? This is maybe kind of a part journey, part culture. The best organizations that I've interviewed with have structured the interview process such that if you enjoyed going through this interview, meeting these people, having these kinds of conversations, going through these types of activities or exercises or assessments, like, if you enjoyed that, you're gonna like working here. And if you hated this, you're not gonna like working here. And so can you, through both the process and the people, really give them an experience of what working here is gonna be like so that by the end of it, you could say, look.

If you liked the last six weeks or however long it took and that was an enjoyable experience, you're probably really gonna like it here. And if you didn't, this is not the place because that's a lot of what it's gonna be like to work here. And if you didn't like it, probably shouldn't accept this job offer.

That's absolutely and that compounds right into the next one of results. You know, measure success through every step of the process. Right? Like, even what you just talked there. You can have a if you're struggling with the success there, you can have a conversation before the candidate gets too far.

And then I even think it's, measuring your velocity. Like, how fast are you getting people through the pipeline? Because if people are looking for a new job or if you pique somebody's interest, you need to make this a smooth process or you're wasting everybody's time. And I think it's quality hires. I think, again, having a loopback system to make sure that you're hiring good candidates and working with your the if you're the recruiter or the HR person pulling these candidates in, you need the feedback from the managers that you're hiring or recruiting for to make sure that you're getting the right talent in.

Because if your recruiting efforts are pulling in the wrong people, then you're wasting everybody's time. You're wasting the candidates that are coming in that are not a fit, and you're wasting the the recruiters are wasting their time targeting the wrong people. And that's a feedback loop within the organization. So, I mean, it's it's measure everything. You can't manage what you don't measure.

Hiring is not really rocket science, but companies treat it like it's some sort of alchemy, you know, turning these golden candidates into lead employees. It's not that hard. It just requires some intentionality. And the companies who make hiring a miserable guessing game deserve their own turnover problems.

You have no idea how true. Advocated accountability literally in an l 10 last week because of this exact, problem. Yep. Here here's a few stats for you. You know, transparency in the hiring process can reduce turnover by 35%

Mhmm.

Because you're you're more transparent upfront. And then companies, known for positive hiring experience receive double the applicants of than their competitors. Mhmm. So it's it's a journey. Right?

Just like you manage the customer journey, you have an employee journey, employee success. And if you can make the positive hiring experience, you're gonna reduce your turnover, and you're gonna have a higher applicant rate because people wanna work for a great company.

So when I was working for this one company I keep using all these experiences because it was probably the best experiences I've had in in recruiting on both sides of the table. Our recruiting process had an interview where we'd interview two peep two people would interview the candidate simultaneously. We had a written assessment, which is like an IQ test to see how bright you were. And then there was a group exercise. So we would bring in, like, eight candidates at a time, hand them all mini case studies.

They would have to, you know, kind of analyze the case study, get up and present to the other candidates while the whole department sat around and watched them do this. Right? So you had to, like, prepare a presentation in probably less than five or ten minutes, stand up and deliver it, and then work as a team with a bunch of people you've never met before to come up with a recommendation of how to solve the problem based on all the presentations. And it was amazing because what happened was some people just froze. Like, couldn't do it.

Some people just freaked out, had panic attacks. Some people went through it and hated it. But the people who loved that experience thrived in that environment because that was an awful lot what, like, what working there was. Right? You had to work with people you didn't know.

You had to figure out how to make good decisions. Never had enough information. You had to be able to stand and deliver to anybody because we reported to the CFO. So at any point in time, you could have to stand up and report about some sort of major financial problem to a very senior audience. And if you're not comfortable getting up and speaking to a room full of people, you're not gonna survive here.

And so we'd architected this interview process so that it weeded out anybody who's not gonna like this job. And I think that that's the like, that's a great example of the kind of transparency in this hiring process. As you say, look. Here's the steps we're gonna go through. Working with the client right now, they're like, we have a seven step interview process.

You interview with this person for this thing, this person for this thing. You take a test on this. We do a case study with this. And it takes a long time, but you know what? They don't miss very much.

If you come through this process, we know who you are, you know who we are, and we're both pretty excited about moving forward. I love that level of intentionality because it enables both people to make an in both sides to make an informed decision as opposed to the, the dating advice of how about you both just hide the crazy as long as possible and then cross your fingers and hope that you got a good one. That rarely works.

Yeah. So here let's get a quick list of immediate things to approve recruiting. Right? Because a a recruiter listening to this is not gonna be able to to rebuild their business process, and they're gonna have to work with leadership. And and if you are a head of HR, then you can take some of this advice.

But, like, what's some Yep. Simple things you can do right now, just to improve recruiting? And I think here's the quick list. Publish salary ranges. Transparency attracts better talent.

Plain and simple.

Yep.

Right? Honest job descriptions. Clearly defined roles, retain employees. I would say success metrics. If you can define what success is in the role better than the 38 bullet point list with the thirty ninth one being and everything else not listed here, like, write what success metrics look for for this role.

Not just honest job descriptions, but achievable. Right? So you can you can write a job description that's honest, but it's like, how often is somebody super creative, super strong leaders, super introverted, and super good at numbers and accounting? Like, that's usually not one person that's all of those things. Write an honest job description that's actually achievable.

Well, that's

why I say use success metrics. What does success look like in the role, as opposed to we want a superstar and just does everything that's not listed in this bullet point list?

Right.

The third one here is follow-up quickly. Even bad news is better than silence. There's someone on the other side. You gotta think if you're the recruiter, then those people are are they've got a family to take care of or they've got, you know, responsibilities. They need to know if this is gonna work or not, and so communicate fast.

On the other side, if you're the, interviewee or the potential employee, that recruiter is responsible for recruiting talent. And if you're not interested, just let them know I'm not I'm not interested so that they can remove you from their pool, and they don't get yelled at for not following up with people. Train recruiters with empathy. Rooter recruiters represent your brand. Don't let them tarnish it.

Mhmm.

If if the first experience I mean, it's just like on the customer success side. The first onboarding experience is the most important interaction with the customer.

Yep.

Yep. The only the first most important. If the first interaction with your brand for the employee side is through the recruiter without a level of empathy or understanding, and it's just this is our process and it is what it is, then all you're doing is setting up yourself, you're setting the applicant up and yourself up for failure. I think it's respect the the last one here is respect applicants' time. Shortening hiring cycles avoids unnecessary rounds of interviews.

I think there's there's two components of that. There's one, making sure you get the adequate amount of information and systematize inside the business. And then secondarily is if if you have to have multiple interviews, you know, a lot of times an interview a second interview, third, fourth, fifth interview is because you're negotiating salary because you didn't you weren't transparent with it upfront, and you're playing that cat excuse me. You're playing that cat and mouse game.

Yep.

Just get your hiring cycles dialed in, you know, collect the information, share it with the respective people, and speed it up. It'll only it it'll only help your business, and it'll only help you find top talent.

I think those are great recommendations for the business. For the candidates, I would say be clear, concise, and honest. Right? Don't overinflate your experience. I've never seen it work out well.

And I think spend some time developing your personal brand. Like, understand who you are, what you offer, what people say about you, what you're good at, what you're not good at. The healthy, good company cultures are gonna want somebody who is honest and self aware. If you feel like you have to play games and lie and hide, it's probably not a good culture, and you're probably not gonna be successful. And I think that's probably true for the companies as well.

If your recruiting strategy is based on tricking candidates, I think your whole business deserves to struggle. You deserve the turnover you're gonna get. How do you help job seekers navigate recruiting hell? We gave advice to the to the companies. What's what's the advice to to the candidates?

I think it's simple. It's be upfront with your expectations, document it interactions, and don't settle settle for vague promises. Mhmm. You know? Let people know.

If if you if you have a salary expectation, this is my salary expectation for this role. If you've got, you know, I I need to start this job order before this date Mhmm. To be considered, I think, again, I don't think there's anything wrong with you being upfront. Now I don't think treat them do not treat them as a list of demands. Right.

But I think you can be clear with your intentions.

Mhmm.

And then, again, don't settle for vague promises. If you if you get an answer like, we'll follow-up with you soon, so you can reply back with, should I expect to follow should I expect expect a reply within a week? Mhmm. You know, don't be unrealistic. So so I should expect to reply within, you know, three hours.

K. No. Right. But

You know, the power between the the company and the candidate, I've seen it shift back and forth over the last several years. But I think it's important to remember that this is you know, hiring is always a two way street. Right? Just like dating is. Like, you don't have to date somebody you don't wanna date.

And I think candidates need to remember that as well. Oftentimes, when a candidate's looking for a job, it's because they don't have a job. Right? So they feel desperate. They you know, their family's depending on them.

They need a paycheck. They need income. I think that desperation oftentimes creates bad decision contexts where people make choices they shouldn't make and pay the consequences for a long period of time. So I think it's important even if you are in a bad spot and you do need income coming in, remember that this is a two way street. Call out the red flags.

Prioritize honesty. Even if you are desperate, be honest about how you feel about the role, what works for you, what doesn't work for you. It it would be better to be honest and, you know, wait a month or two to get that paycheck than just to settle into a role that's not a good fit for you.

I like this this quote here. Desperate job hunting is like grocery shopping hungry. You end up with junk. Don't do it.

Yeah. Never go to the grocery store hungry. Right? You're only gonna buy sugar. Yeah.

Which I I mean, I think it's it's probably another encouragement to job hunters to always keep your resume fresh and always keep your options open, because you don't wanna be in a situation where you have to take a job. You don't want the miserable, miserable situation. And putting yourself in a better situation to make better choices is, a much better strategy.

Let's hit some positive sides. Before we wrap up here, here's a couple of good examples that we have. The examples of recruiting done right. Patagonia, they're famously for publishing salaries and getting flooded with quality applicants. Yep.

They're transparent upfront about the process. Mhmm. They're doing it right.

They're also known for having a great culture. People want to work there. Google has done, some similar work streamlining their hiring process from months down to weeks, improve their offer acceptance rate, because you gotta think they're competing for tech talent. There's no shortage of options for engineers. So if you can't say yes quickly, somebody else will figure out how to optimize that process, and Google's apparently done a good job of it.

Going back to Patagonia, they had a 68% increase in applicant quality after salary transparency.

68% increase?

68% increase in application quality after salary transparency.

It it shows me that you're serious. Like, if you just throw a job out there and it doesn't have a dollar sign on it, I don't know if you know what you're talking about or if this I've even seen jobs that are posted that they have no intent of ever even interviewing somebody for it. They just have to post the job before they can hire the internal candidate.

Yeah.

It's like, okay. If there's some sort of a legal HR reason you gotta do that, fine. That's nonsense. But there it sucks to be one of the people who sees that job online, like, oh, I'll be perfect for that. And you submit it like nobody ever had a chance for that job.

It was never real.

There's easy ways to do that. You you don't have to put a public posting for an internal job. I've even seen people put it on their public postings. It's part of their HR system, and they just put internal only.

Yeah.

I mean, there again, there's there's ways behind it. I mean, the the real the real thing is companies that respect candidates' time and intelligence never have recruiting hell stories.

Right. Yeah.

Plain and simple. Agreed. Recruiting hell doesn't have to be eternal. Transparency, respect are key to making work not suck starting with the very first interview.

If you were listening to this, I would love to hear some of your recruiting horror stories either as a candidate or as a recruiter hiring manager interviewer. Share them in the comments. Let's keep the conversation going. Share your worst recruiting nightmare or even some of your greatest recruiting successes. Like and subscribe for more ways to make work not suck, and share this episode with anybody you know that might be going through recruiting hell right now.

Make work not suck. Our podcast that talks about exactly that, our process, vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real world business solutions that make the difference. Our goal is to make work not suck, hosted by Ryan Hodges, cohost Daniel Steer. Join us each episode in Make Work Not Suck.