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Since years, it is easier to do the job than to get it. Many corporate and institutional functions and activities have degenerated over the past 20 years, but the process of recruiting new people, especially for medium and large employers became a nightmare.

Nowadays, the typical recruitment process is virtually purgatory. It seems that in the effort to hire the very best and most sophisticated people, companies have embraced the process of accepting so many other layers and steps that going through job interviews is more a test of perseverance and resilience than a real talent.

These deformed processes and generally the entire recruitment paradigm must change, and employers have to come to the conclusion that the only competitive advantage is the enthusiastic and competent team. Some have already begun to run slowly, and some companies always knew and now already found out that only talent and devotion of the team members will help them to stay ahead of competitors.

The main reason for this failure might be first the staff incompetence. Nowadays the recruitment process reminds me rather to selection of cattle than real professional work with the human approach and touch. Exactly the human approach is the factor which is missing.

The recruiters got used to compare the job description with the resume and if the candidate doesn’t fit all the points of the description he or she is out of the game. Thailand was not even able to adopt the anti-discrimination legislation to the labor law. The age, gender, height, weight, nationality and other requirements are those that the Western world has left at least 15 years ago.

Most of the Recruiters don’t even understand the activities or working process of their customers thus they are not able to judge the candidate from the personal side. For many Thai people this judgment might seem as inappropriate or rude, for many others might be very crucial. There is common knowledge that a candidate who seems to fulfill 100% of the requirements doesn’t have to be the right one.

What about if he or she will not fit to the team? What about if he or she has personal problems which might affect the efficiency of his or hers performance? Are the Thai recruiters really enough professional or qualified enough to make a good judgment and selection of candidates?

Nowadays all recruitment business moved to the internet. In Thailand most of this business is happening through social media such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Most of recruiters are hanging around waiting for their chance to fish the right candidate.

But what happens if the candidate sends his resume to the recruiter asking for a help with finding new job?

The answer is very simple – nothing! 98% of the Recruiters don’t even bother to answer. Reading or writing email is a big problem, because that means work! How many times we did all hear – sorry I am busy! The preference of communicating in chat applications such as LINE of Whatsapp seems to get very popular. I personally see this as a tragedy for the whole industry and for someone, who is really qualified and searching for a future career. Many recruiters claim that chatting with jobseekers is more efficient and save their time to read and write emails.

Let´s hope that even in Thailand the whole recruitment process will take few steps back to the original idea of it and the recruiters will start to understand their profession in Human resources better. Exactly the word “human” means that all this is about people and not about animals or robots. Thus this industry and processes should be based on human approach and human added value.

Not everyone is suitable to make this very challenging job which requires huge responsibility, knowledge, self discipline, continuous learning, social understanding and mainly – hard work! Sometimes it is very hard to accept that a 20 years old recruiter who still doesn’t know anything about life has our life and career in his or hers hands.

Written by Martin Stefanek, start.co.th