FAANGing Inhumane
Many of you will find you’re competing against Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix & Google, especially for tech pros, and sometimes it may seem impossible. But is it?
Maybe this will spark an idea of what you and your company can do differently to stand out and gain the upper hand. It starts by being human-centric.
1. Don’t have ridiculously long interview cycles
I’m with Stacy. Enough. Already.
Omg. Enough already. https://t.co/eyAq9G6ITz
— Stacy Donovan Zapar (@StacyZapar) February 15, 2022
Imagine hearing ‘if you make it this far, you have NOTHING to worry about’?
What would you do? Full of excitement, would you tell your nearest and dearest? After 15 exhausting interviews would you feel all the toil & stress was worth it?
Imagine the emotions…. to then be rejected.
FAANG that. 😡 😢
Enough, because even FAANG lose people this way!
Imagine what it feels like to know that ‘After a close to 3 month process, I still didn’t know if they would hire me’? Imagine how much self-doubt would start to creep in because after 11 interviews they still couldn’t confidently deliver an offer? Just imagine.
Jon wisely walked away. 👏 I’d walk away from hiring managers who clearly cannot identify talent after 11 interviews too.
Would you?
If I was a recruiter with hiring managers who clearly cannot identify talent, I’d walk away too (or call in help!)
Mostly don’t emulate FAANG, because you are playing with people’s lives!
Terrified: to feel extreme fear.
And on top of feeling this intense emotion he has been practising and working on it for a while now… just for this first interview. Giving his irreplaceable time so he doesn’t feel so panicked or hell scared to fail a coding task.
Ever asked your candidates how they feel at the beginning of the interview cycle? I do hope terrified isn’t the reply you receive.
2. Always Give Feedback
I’ve said this many times before but I’ll say it again.
It hacks me off that one of the FAANG has a ‘no feedback’ policy. They would rather have a blanket no-feedback policy – to avoid being sued by the few – instead of teaching all employees how to have a difficult conversation – to give feedback to the many (and probably improve collaboration).
FAANG that! 😡 😢
During the worst days of 2020, Recruiters Recruiting Recruiters was set up by a fabulous group of volunteers to help those of our peers who had lost their jobs. Employers using the service committed to giving feedback to everyone.
Yet, when 22 of your peers interviewed with this FAANG, they received no feedback. None.
They gave the company an NPS score of -97. I hope they also took their custom elsewhere.
Feedback is payment for someone’s time interviewing with your company (stolen, with permission, from James Ellis) and besides it being the right thing to do, your feedback could change someone’s life.
3. Don’t be ironically controlling
Should those in glasshouses throw stones? (👈🏻 linked to a search of the news)
Niklas resigned when asked to delete all his YouTube videos which are related to the tech industry.
He later added a video to his channel that says: he was a Software Engineer for Facebook UK for 3 years and was running his YouTube channel on the side. He was told that he did not have permission to publish his view about the tech industry by his employer. He explained that he had only been speaking nicely about Facebook and that new starters tell him that they had only applied because of the positive light he had put on FB on his channel. FB did not care as he did not have permission to talk about them in any way. He resigned and joined a startup but had not updated his LI profile. Then Facebook UK’s legal team sent the aforementioned letter in January.
People will always talk! It is better if you give your employees a few guidelines, like ‘Please don’t diss us publicly. If you have an issue talk to us first.’, than to try and control people’s freedom of speech.
Plus, positive and freely given employee advocacy, like this, is the absolute best way to win in 2022’s candidate-owned market. The stance that has been taken here is shortsighted.
In summary…
Be kind.
And never forget the proverb, there but for the grace of God go I.
Talent Acquisition, if your hiring leaders are stuck in the 2010s thinking people should be grateful to have a job, get in touch about a workshop. I can help you modernise them.
Recruiters, if you don’t feel you can confidently push back against hiring managers or your bosses, get on the Mastermind waiting list, which is opening next month.
Originally posted on LinkedIn as part of the Recruitment Isn’t Broken newsletter.
