Job Requirements VS “The Great Resignation”

job posting requirements

CEOs across the globe recently agreed that attracting and retaining talent is their top internal challenge for 2022. [i] This answers the oft-asked question of whether “The Great Resignation” is a global worry versus a U.S.-only concern with the answer being “global”. A loud global, shouted through a megaphone.

The universal response has been turning to the usual suspects like posting jobs on even more online sites while also raising pay…which as reported here earlier ranks 16th as a reason employees are quitting based on MIT’s study. But there are detailed fixes that require deeper thinking, that might at first appear to be minor solution contributors yet come to mind at a time when all fixes big and small must be on our whiteboards.

HR has never been more important

And as a special call-out to our HR executives, this is your time to shine. Never in our history has HR had more opportunity to contribute to productivity. If your CEO is joining others saying attracting and retaining talent is a top challenge for 2022, every potential solution, conventional or not, must be on your list.

So here is one. Stop posting higher-level, impractical job requirements that screen out applicants who can do your job…and that also invite over-qualified applicants who will become bored with your job and quit. This one-sentence solution is a two-fer because it helps solve both recruiting and retention.

Opportunity@Work Study Summary

A deep-dive study by Opportunity@Work tells us there are 70+ million U.S. workers who are Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs), like community college, military service, training programs, partial degree completion, skills bootcamps, and learning on the job — rather than a bachelor’s degree. This includes 11 million Black STARs.[ii] The U.S. currently has nearly 11 million open jobs so it seems like re-considering the job readiness of 70 million applicants would certainly put a dent into that number.

I’m flashing back to my entry days in HR when as a recruiter I was instructed to inflate job requirements so I could more easily pick the best candidate. And not waste my time screening out applicants who weren’t up to snuff. Those days now seem like black & white TV, long over when considering the strains, we face with “the great resignation” that we must live with for years to come.

The study also found that almost two-thirds of African American workers are skilled but lack a college-level education, compared with 53% of White workers. Many of the aforementioned 11 million Black workers are concentrated into occupations such as home-health aides, truck drivers, customer services, and building cleaners. Nearly half have the potential to move to better-paid positions such as managers or registered nurses.

Remember, though, this solution is a two-fer because inflating job requirements leads to unnecessary turnover. I’m thinking about the HR executive of a current client company who has confided to me that one reason her company’s degree-required employees quit a year into their jobs is their jobs are redundant, that they literally follow the identical work processes each day. Non-degreed workers could replace them. Robots could replace them. But the best and the brightest coming out of our universities are unlikely to stick around.

Rethinking Applicant Credentials

The next argument, then, is to promote them. Or diversify their jobs. But companies can’t invent promotions when there are no promotion opportunities, and the jobs these employees are doing are full-time jobs that must get done. Their business requires that.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just hire workers who are equally or even more qualified but don’t have college degrees? Quietly over the past few years employers have loosened their drug screening requirements by either giving the OK to marijuana or shutting down drug screening completely…all to expand their applicant pools. Re-thinking credentials does the same but in a much smarter way.

So here is a smart exercise. List your three highest-turnover jobs along with your top-three most recruited-for jobs. There’s a good chance they’ll be the same. Rethink the credentials you post for each, both internally and externally. Scratch out the credentials that are not really required to do the job and replace them with more realistic ones. Forget about whether candidates who fit your new criteria will be likely to be promoted as a pipeline for higher jobs because that will sort itself out over time. Besides, the rules are different now and you are responsible for getting your jobs filled, soon.

Are your strategies for employee retention working?

It may be time to re-think your approach. Schedule a conversation with me at DFinnegan@C-SuiteAnalytics.com to discuss your plans, your roadblocks, how to move forward, and what is working for other companies to cut turnover by 20% and more, even during “The Great Resignation” that may benefit you.

[i] The Conference Board’s C-Suite Outlook 2022 report

[ii] https://opportunityatwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Spotlight-on-Black-STARs-2.23.22.pdf

Related Posts

4 ways to cut new hire turnover
Four Proven Ways to Stop New-Hire Turnover
It is possible that many companies think early turnover is just “the cost of doing business.” My recent work with the U.S. Census Bureau makes clear that there are fewer new workers coming our way, so I think it is time that we get a lot smarter about who we hire and how we retain them. Here are four ideas that I promise will work because if you don’t address it now, turnover may just cost you your business.
The Blatant Unfairness of Retaining Poor Supervisors
The Blatant Unfairness of Retaining Poor Supervisors
When I speak at HR conferences, I often ask the group to raise their hands if they know who their worst five managers for turnover and engagement are. The great majority immediately raise a hand. So your worst performing managers are well-identified and are known to those who rank both above and below them.
Referral program employees fist pump
Looking to Increase Employee Referrals? Try This Radical Approach
Employee referrals are 4Xs more likely to be hired, save companies over $7,500 per hire, perform their jobs better than their peer employees…and most importantly for our purposes, stay longer. The fact is that gaining employee referrals matters especially in industries where good candidates can be rare.
Back To Top