Jonathan Reynolds   •   July 10, 2018

Quality has always trumped quantity when it comes to recruitment. Finding the right applicant has never been a numbers game — but if you examine the way most of today’s companies are hiring, you may think most companies have forgotten the basic goal of recruitment.

Sites like Monster and Careerbuilder.com have made it extremely simple for companies to post job listings online. It only takes a few minutes and a few hundred dollars to a post an ad. Most internal recruiters may see the ease of using these sites as an incredible tool to increase productivity, while reducing their workload. But in reality, this approach, known as “Post and Pray”, can be detrimental to the recruiting process.

What is Post and Pray?

“Post and Pray” begins when a recruiter posts a job online for a few hundred bucks, and then hopes that the perfect applicant is somewhere out there just waiting to apply. Of course, this almost never happens. Instead, the person’s in-box becomes stuffed with hundreds of messages from over- and under-qualified applicants which must be reviewed, then ultimately discarded. After a few weeks of unusable applications, there may be a few tweaks to the listing, and then the listing may be reposted, praying for better results.

One definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over, while expecting different results.

“Post and Pray” will almost never find the best candidates for one simple reason: the most ideal applicants a company is looking for will never even see the listing. These candidates are not actively looking for employment, because they are busy being leaders and working hard in their current role.

Simply changing is not evolution.

Tradition is one of the biggest obstacles of success, but this doesn’t mean that all changes are progress. Substituting one poor recruiting method for another is not the answer, and changes should never be made simply for the sake of trying something new.

Evolving the hiring practices of a company to the next level requires the company to:

-Fully understand the role and skill sets needed for the position

-Know where and how to locate ideal candidates which are the best fit for the job, and

-Learn better ways to approach passive candidates, and sell them on the benefits of working for your company.

-All of these changes are hands-on and time consuming, but the reward will be worth it, and will lead to better quality hires, faster.

About Titus Talent Strategies – Jonathan Reynolds is the CEO of Titus Talent Strategies (www.titustalent.com), a performance-driven recruiting firm. Their revolutionary process identifies, attracts, hires and accurately measures and guarantees the quality of your hire—all at significant savings over traditional contingent recruiters.