Is Recruiting Broken (and Can It Be Fixed)?

I have been in the information technology (IT) business for more than 30 years. And for the first time I've ever seen, my experience and that of many of my peers is working against us when seeking paying projects and employment. And this is something that affects and reaches far beyond the IT business.

I have friends and professional colleagues who are in their 50s and 60s -- people with decades of documented business success and lots of others willing to say good things about them. Some of these people have been unemployed and seeking employment actively for a decade or longer. Since before the dot-com bubble burst, let alone before the current recession began.

It's not just that we're not getting jobs. We aren't getting interviews. Often, we aren't even getting responses from the companies we contact, or we get initial responses that suddenly come to a stop for no obvious or stated reason. (If you can send a "thanks for considering us" e-mail, something a lot of companies have apparently still not figured out how to do, why can't you send a "we've filled that position" or even an "our needs have changed" e-mail?)

Now, I and many of my closest friends and associates have a fair amount of experience analyzing companies and the actions of their key decision makers. In addition, many of us have spoken to numerous others in our or similar positions, as well as with others with credible claims to relevant "inside knowledge." From that perspective, here are just some of the things I and many of those around me know and/or believe demonstrate that recruiting is in fact broken.

1. Despite public pronouncements of an imminent economic turnaround, a lot of companies are still not hiring, or taking longer than usual to fill posted positions.

2. The economy means that every hint of a job posting generates a deluge of expressions of interest, putting every HR professional under incredible pressure.

3. Applicant tracking system (ATS) software scans, analyzes and scores every résumé and cover letter, often before a single human being sees it, and can sometimes have unintended and/or intentional biases against deep experience and/or how it is expressed and/or formatted.

4. There are a lot of hiring managers out there uncomfortable with or downright hostile to the idea of hiring people older than themselves and/or most of the people around them at work, and a lot of business decision makers deathly afraid of being accused of and/or sued for age discrimination.

Items 3 and 4 are the ones that bother me most. The rules and processes that govern the behaviors of ATS software and hiring managers all come from decision-makers who may believe that they are doing the right/best things for their companies. However, those beliefs appear to be skewed against the current reality -- able, active people older than 50 making up a growing percentage of the population and the workforce.

This is especially troubling given the growing need companies of all kinds for experienced thought leadership in the marketplace and operational leadership within the organization itself. If the burst of the dot-com bubble had a single primary cause, it could arguably be summed up as a lack of adult supervision. (A trailing indicator: why would anyone even write a "business plan" on the back of a cocktail napkin, let alone fund such a plan?) In today's world of global competition and sustained economic pressures, why would any sane decision maker not hire someone for whom this was not a first time at the rodeo, as long as they were still able to saddle up and hold on? (It's a Western/cowboy metaphor, kids; Google/Bing/Wikipedia it.)

I have actually heard of candidates for jobs telling potential hirers that the candidates weren't looking for senior positions and would be very happy at low levels of compensation, only to have the hirer insist that the candidate would simply move on to greener pastures once the company had "invested" in them. I've seen a lot of younger people do exactly that, but if a 50- or 60-something with a  home and a family tells you they're not really interested in career-building, why would you not believe them? Unless you just didn't know any better…

Or maybe you think us "older folk" can't or won't keep up. But more experienced people have longer track records to provide evidence of our abilities to perform and produce. And any hiring manager worth their compensation package should be focused more on documenting and tracking performance and results than on making facile but likely erroneous assumptions about someone based on perceptions of what their age may mean.

(I'm on an independently managed list of the "Top 500" IT industry analysts using Twitter, a poster child for modern communications and networking technology. I believe I'm also one of the 10 or 15 oldest people on that list.)

Some argue that one way out of the current economic unpleasantness is to raise retirement ages to delay and/or decrease payments from entitlement programs such as Social Security. All well and good, as long as the older among us can actually get hired or find paying projects to live and support their families while they reach whatever the retirement age turns out to be. Otherwise, a lot of older people will end up consuming all of their savings, if any, selling all of their assets, if any, and moving in with their kids, if any. Or competing with other kids for minimum-wage jobs, or with others in need for aid, comfort and support services.

Seems to me it would make more sense all around just to put more of them -- us! -- to work.

In 1970, Robert Townsend, who took Avis from struggling and unprofitable to the number-two rental car company in the world, published ". Up the Organization; How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits." The book spent 28 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, Wikipedia says. One of the strongest recommendations Townsend made -- and I remember it because I actually read the book -- was that most if not all corporations should fire their HR departments, and let the people actually doing the work hire those who would work with them.

in today's economy, I would never advocate taking away employment from anyone delivering value to a  business. But I do strongly recommend that where HR and recruiting are concerned, it's time to take a close look at the processes by which that value is measured, and to consider adjusting those processes to reflect current reality more closely.