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It’s almost impossible to set up an effective process of hiring if you are constantly overwhelmed with applicants, most of whom you’ll never even seriously consider for a job. Rather than trying to treat them all equally and losing time explaining that they do not qualify for the published job opening, the best approach is to proactively dissuade the under-qualified and under-motivated candidates from applying at all.

We all receive daily inquiries from applicants who do not match our criteria or job requirements. 60-80% of the applications are incomplete and have no predicative power about candidates’ work experience. Due to modern and booming online technology, the applicants are allowed to create their profiles in the simplest way by often providing just with their names, email address and telephone number. Most large job-related boards and pages allow such applicants to endlessly click and apply for any jobs available.

General Applicant dissuade Tips

Make a plan.

Have a plan to dissuade a high volume of applications. Which tool or approach you utilize is less important than simply trying something. If it works, repeat it again. If not, you must try something else.

Unwanted and redundant resumes.

Don’t accept applications for jobs that you didn’t publish or are not open yet.

The creation of Job offer

Many of the job offers are very broad, with no clear emphasis on meeting the most important requirement of the right candidate to be invited for a personal interview. The job offers are missing clear information, rules and reasons why candidates should or should not apply for the position offered, what is really special about our company and why the candidates should develop maximum effort having sufficient motivation to get such desired employment. It is exactly the job description what gives us room to describe all the facts that also dissuade unqualified or under-motivated candidates. Make every application target and specific job id. This prevents receiving of endless and repeated undesired applications, which clogs the system.

Control your link exposure.

 Be careful where you place your career site link. Don’t place them in general interest publications. Instead, start out by finding out what sites and pages your top performers use and read and then focus your message there. Also, study the demographics of the most qualified people and place ads or job openings exclusively where only the most experienced and qualified individuals are likely to read them.

Make it clear.

Make it clear in your job descriptions and ads that anyone without specified qualifications will be automatically disqualified.

Choose sources carefully

Reduce your usage of media outlets that reach broad audiences, like newspapers and large job boards, because they invariably attract a large number of under-qualified applicants. When you do utilize Facebook, for example, consider running the announcement in the specialized group of desired professionals rather than in the general job posting section or posting just everywhere. You can also reduce the time that the ad will appear.

Limit applications to email.

Some companies have learned not to put their “mail” addresses on advertisements or websites because that means you’ll get a lot of paper resumes. Find a job board or create your own form on your website where the application content meets your requirement and push the candidates to fill such form. Remember that if the candidate really wants to apply for the offered job, he/she will apply the way you need.

Limit number of applications.

Limit the number of jobs that applicants can apply for at one time, in order to decrease “job spamming.” Also limit re-applications. Do not allow rejected applicants to reapply for the same position again and again. This serves to discourage individuals who realistically have little chance in the short term.

Where to publish?

Due to the very sophisticated online modern technologies, very big demand and large competition on the whole labor market; we have the opportunity to publish our job offers almost anywhere. There are job boards appearing on the market, praising the astronomical numbers of registered candidates or already co-operating clients of very good names. We can also publish our job offers for free on almost all social media platforms.

Numbers versus quality

Ask yourself how important it is to publish your job offer on a portal that is offering data of nearly 2 million job seekers.

Think of your real goal. Is it the number what will bring the result or is it something else?

Ask yourself again: Is this number realistic? Are the data of so many applicants up to date? How about the quality of these applicants? How many of them are serious or enough motivated to come for an interview? How many of them even really want to work?

Today, the world is hungry for sensational numbers, scandalous news, power, a prestige, a quick way of getting rich, and for moving the human factor and touch of most professional skills into a digital form. In the process of hiring employees, the whole society forgot about the two basic rules:

–            This business and work is about people and it has to remain about people. No computer or technology without the help of human skills will choose the right candidates for us.

–             If a candidate wishes to apply for job, he/she still must do something for it and show the effort and motivation to achieve it. It should be not the employer or the recruiter begging the candidate to join the company; neither anyone else allowing the candidate to skip the traditional and well-proven way to apply for a job.

Less with more quality means mostly more than much with poor quality

Smaller employment boards offer a much more proactive approach and provide real customer service. Due to their size, they have enough room for advisory and to monitor the whole hiring process of their customers. Even during the process of placing a job advertisement, it is convenient and timesaving to have your own advisor or account manager responsible for your company – someone who regularly communicates with you. Sometimes they can provide very valuable advisory or help.

Smaller job boards often also focus on a particular market (niche) sector, which could exactly be beneficial in our hiring process and target on the right and high-quality candidates.

It’s a fact in every aspect of business: Nothing kills quality faster than volume. If you want to receive best candidates, you cannot be distracted by a high-volume of average applicants sent by huge social media platforms or large job boards.

Where exactly do we fail?

–            Our published job offers neither highlight enough core values of our company, nor clearly define the conditions and experience that candidates must show to be objectively judged. It is also not always the financial benefit that motivates candidates to take the right action.

–            We try to invent new and meaningless names of the job positions. Candidates very often apply to positions they don’t even know or understand. For example we cannot expect a Cleaning lady to understand the job title “Talented cosmetician of our office space”. In this case, the creativity of some managers is sometimes almost ridiculous and it has rather negative than positive effect.

–             Did you realize that it is us, (the employers) who support the whole society in its laziness? In Thailand, for example, there is an extremely low unemployment rate, which makes the actual recruitment of new employees more and more difficult. Many companies get lured into this inauspicious situation and have begun to support the aspirants in an unacceptable way in the whole hiring process. Candidates have become accustomed to the fact that leaving a note under a job post – “I am interested” should be simply enough. The Candidates began to believe that if the company needs new employees, then it is the employer who must plead and offer, almost impossible. Especially on the Thai labor market the employers themselves have raised a whole new generation of job seekers, who are extremely lazy to even read the whole job offer thoroughly, and apply for it the right way. These candidates are then applying to any jobs with not enough qualification. Their actions are mainly based on the attractive salary conditions offered by desperate Employers. The modern technology enables jobseekers to apply just by one click without any further check or screening. 

Unfortunately, most of those “endless clickers” will not remember tomorrow on what they have clicked today.

 –            We are not sufficiently open to cooperation with new service providers and to accept new difficult situations or changes on the market. To co-operate 15 years with the biggest service provider doesn’t mean to co-operate with the real professional we do really need. Many of the newly emerging providers are trying to find their space on the very competitive market by offering very superior services. It is exactly the favorable opportunity for us to use their enthusiasm and willingness to serve us with high quality services, for often, much less fee.

 The conclusion:

I think we should take a deep breath, take few steps back and return to the basics of our industry. If we will not change the current stream – we will become the slaves of the quantity and volume.