For goodness sake, do it yourself!

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Did you know that one of the most stressful positions in industry is that of a production line worker. Simply because they don’t have the control over their day to day operations as they would like?

Similarly, those looking for employment suffer similar levels of stress – why? - simply because they have such little control. In Australia, only 2 or 3 jobs out of 10 are ever advertised., Similarly. less than 17% of jobs are ever advertised in the U.S.A.

So how are the other 80% of jobs filled? – Research shows that a multi-level referral system exists, aptly described as a large unofficial cloudy network where jobs are filled because a friend of a friend’s second cousin knows someone who works in the local deli who has a customer that knows someone. It appears the referral is usually made by a complete stranger.

Ever asked yourself why so few jobs are advertised? We can tell you. This large proportion of the landscape is the domain of the Small to Medium Enterprises (“SME business) & consumers. While they are cost conscious when it comes to spending on recruitment services, their greater problem is a skill-mix need, that is simply not addressed by the conventional market – resumes don’t do it for them. These are businesses where greater opportunities exist for advancement as they grow to reach their full potential.

So you are fishing in a very small pool, with everyone using the same bait – the ubiquitous resume.

For little light relief, let’s first run through the “life story” of a conventional market “Position Vacant” - point form presentation is best as it’s quite a cumbersome process:

Line Manager makes a decision he needs a person, whether a replacement or additional member to the department;

Line Manager completes a requisition which justifies the need and sets out the position description, what the future employee has to do, qualifications and experience required;

Line Manager’s manager approves requisition and sends to Human Resources Department;

HR interprets requirements, formalizes submission to an external recruitment agency and negotiates fees;

Recruitment organization then “jazzes” up the advertisement and goes to the market requesting resumes;

Resumes are typically funneled through the Recruitment organisation’s website. Economics plays a very important part here; you may find your resume is read by a software “robot”. Character recognition processors which are programmed to look for certain pre-selected keywords, frequencies and dates. If your resume doesn’t have enough of the keywords etc, you may not make the first cull;

Then again, if a robotic barrier is not used, either the recruiter or the HR person has a suitcase full of resumes to read;

Now, if you survive all of the above, you reach the first interview – this is where you get to market yourself, the employer/recruiter gets to understand you and whether your skills & personality match the requirements.

This is a very expensive process, having its foundations rooted in the very early days of the Industrial Revolution. Appears nothing much has changed over the last 100 years, perhaps a little lipstick, but that’s all.

And if we think back to the Line Manager, frighteningly this is the only person in this long chain who really understands the department’s detail requirements.

It’s a bit like that old information transfer example of “John told Sam, to tell George, and George told Harry, who told Jane to tell Evelyn ….etc etc”.- so instead of 42, the answer to the secret of life, as told by Evelyn, turns out to be 24 and purple in colour.

It’s time surely, to ask the question “What are we trying to achieve?”.

In this 200 year old process chain, what have we achieved

the resume gives us the applicant’s qualifications
the applicant’s experience can be gleaned from the employment history, but then again no two organisations operate the same, so there is no real evidence of the skill-mixes used.
the interview confirms the vocational skills via the experience, other attributes are determined, like communication, negotiation, interpretive functions, analytical abilities, personality traits, common interests.

So 1, 2 and 3 ultimately select someone, and fees are paid and the world continues to turn.

Let’s re-examine points 1, 2, and 3 – each point is designed to look at the applicant’s skills, and the interview focus is on attributes like communication, negotiation – and these are all skills!

Surprisingly each point determines skill!

SO THE PROCESS USES A SUMMATION OF THE APPLICANT’S SKILLS AS THE SELECTION CRITERIA.

And that’s exactly what the ReGeneration has found - the accumulation of skills and experience make the individual absolutely unique – no two people are the same. So this conventional process, cumbersome and expensive (the one with the lipstick) has singled out the applicant with the appropriate skill-mix, experience and background.

Couldn’t be simpler, anyway that’s what we at the ReGeneration think.

The unbundling of a person’s skills, and here we mean all skills from vocational to those inherited or acquired over time, result in a superb definition of the person – the equivalent of a fingerprint or DNA.

So it follows, if the individual registers their unbundled skills and unique technology facilitates relevancy in search analyses, most steps in the above process chain are eliminated.

More importantly the “deal direct” process becomes very compelling for all parties as the market is much larger, time scales are reduced to email/phone speed.

And for the individual, some of that stress-inducing lack of control is reduced – particularly if the individual is armed with statistics that show where the “fish” are biting and which bait appears to be the best. And they have the interactive tools to react as required – fun to be in control.

And if we go back to the future, the Skills Market will become the premier method of skills trading to acquire employment – access to every 10 out of 10 jobs is the future.

The market becomes direct, people empowered to trade their skills, people armed with market data like the businesses with whom they trade.

P2B : “People to Business”, now this is a correct use of the internet.

So we can keep on doing it the same old way – or have a go at something new!