In honor of Father’s Day this weekend, we’re reminding you of the impact of recruitment CRM and giving you a chance to call your father and tell him the one thing he’s always wanted to hear: “Dad, you were right. You had it harder than me.” Here are the top six relics of your father’s candidate experience.
Relic #1: The Classifieds
Oh, your father’s poor, newsprint-stained fingers. When your old man wanted to look for a job, he had to buy a two-and-a-half-pound edition of the Sunday paper, flip his way through the want ads, and circle the opportunities that caught his eye. Recruitment branding back then was established by the column inch, so if some company’s paid-for-by-the-character job description didn’t ring his bell, Dad would move along to the next one.
Relic #2: Stationery
Just because Dad didn’t have access to the internet doesn’t mean he wasn’t a sophisticated candidate. If a company he admired wasn’t advertising any open positions, he would write and ask to be considered for something in the future. Because the talent pipeline of your father’s era amounted to little more than a hanging file in some overworked hiring manager’s desk, he tried to make a good first impression by typing his resumes, cover letters and self-addressed stamped envelopes on crisp sheets of 100% cotton 32-pound bond paper.
Relic #3: Cocktail Napkins
For your father, being a passive candidate meant being lucky enough to hear about a promising position from a friendly stranger sitting next to him at a ball game or on an airplane. If the role sounded too good to pass up and no business cards were handy, he would have to jot down his new contact’s telephone number on a nearby piece of paper so he could follow up later.
Relic #4: Stamps
Unlike his kids and grandkids, who can apply for jobs by text message and use their mobile devices to schedule their own phone screens and interviews, your father had an utterly offline candidate experience. Although he may have had his share of telephone conversations, you better believe he kept a roll of first-class stamps for all his job applications and thank-you notes.
Your father had an utterly offline candidate experience.
Relic #5: The Yello Pages
The concept of an applicant tracking system would have sounded like pure science fiction to your young father. Dad never got a friendly automated email confirming the receipt of his resume and cover letter. Instead, he fretted over the possibility of his application getting lost in the mail, and when the waiting became too much for him to bear, he’d grab a telephone directory the size of a microwave oven and call random numbers at his target company.
Relic #6: Roadmaps
For a guy who seems so at ease doing things in his pajamas (make sure to ring the doorbell a few times when you arrive at his house on Sunday), it’s a shame that your father never had the chance to do any video interviews. Sadly, your comfort-loving father had to do all his interviews in person, and that meant putting on a suit and driving across town with an unwieldy 16-panel roadmap on his lap so he wouldn’t get lost along the way.
