Tiger Woods made a horrendous goof in the world of employment and it’s not what you think.
- Cheat on wife? Horrible! Not biggest goof.
- Engage with a harem of ladies? Horrible! Not biggest goof.
- Leave his actual voice on several of his ladies’ voicemails? Stupid! Not biggest goof.
- Hurt family who supported him? Whew, I want to say biggest goof….but NOT biggest goof.
He quit playing golf.
Think about it. He is a highly skilled worker, who chose to quit his career indefinitely. Anyone in a hiring gig knows (corporate recruiter, headhunter, manager) that filling jobs is still incredibly subjective. The one thing that eradicates subjectivity is proven performance and, in Tigers case, this means continuing to rock a golf course.
Recruiters and managers are still having trouble filling openings. Yes they are. Can you believe? The US is in the biggest recession since forever, but still some orgs are finding it difficult to fill skilled positions. Yes, even me. But it appears it could be because our economic climate has given hiring teams a false sense of superiority, leading to long fill times.
Katie Johnson Chase reported in a November 2009 article for the Boston Globe,
“Of course, plenty of high-quality workers have lost their jobs, but recruiters say still being employed suggests stability – and ability. And at a time when companies have precious few openings, they are being pickier than usual about whom they hire, holding out for the top 2 or 3 percent of candidates, said Ben Hux, director of legal recruiting at Boston Group, part of the executive search firm Management Recruiters International Inc.
“There is a stigma with people who have been laid off, with good reason or not,’’ Hux said.
It’s not that companies are not getting applications. Job openings are generating a flood of resumes, in many cases submitted with just the click of a mouse…
But often missing from the stack of resumes are those with the most experience – many of whom don’t want to leave their jobs during a recession.”
So, fill times are outrageously long because even in an employers’ market, we are back to a stigma issue. Not surprising since we are in the human capital business. Humans just love to stigmatize others. Exacerbated by a recession that is giving hiring pros a false impression. An impression of high unemployment means we can secure skilled candidates as easily as an extra helping of Generals Tso’s Chicken from Happy China. Throw in a lengthy tiered interview process (which I am a believer in given the subjectivity in interviewing), and now candidates have to evade being stigmatized by three separate decision makers…
So to get hired, you better be squeaky clean OR damn good at your job (or both, it appears).
So Hiring Teams—if your fill times are long, and in this recession you can’t find the perfect candidate—check yourself. You may be undermining your own process by expecting any candidate is perfect. And Tiger—you may want to consider getting back on the course quickly. Affairs may be forgotten, but if your swing is… you may be in more trouble than you think.
Golf is a game that requires a cool head above all else. I doubt Tiger would be very effective on the golf course right now, and that could hurt him. He’s smart to sit it out.
As for hiring teams and their superiority complexes, they are only hurting themselves. Sometimes the most talented people are the ones that get laid off because they make more money or represent a threat to their superiors.
i’ve no doubt there are still biases against big gaps in resumes. don’t you think we’re also seeing the longer-lasting impact of a mismatch between what companies need and what skills the labor force has? check out this editorial that points out the disparity in unemployment figures for our highest and lowest earners. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/opinion/09herbert.html?ref=todayspaper
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I definitely think that hiring managers can stigmatize people for all kinds of things…we all have our biases…but in this case, it really can hurt both themselves and the organization because they might be missing out on the gem that the other guy had to let go of. After all, we are all just one lost client away from the same possibility ourselves no matter how value adding we think we are.
By the way: Biggest goof….I vote for calling cheating a “sexual addiction”. I’ve seen people addicted to all kinds of things, and let me say if you pushed Maude (for those of you old enought to remember that show) at him, I doubt he would bite (even with his “addiciton”), pardon the pun. Blaming your actions on something or someone else is another thing that people (and workers specifically) seem to be taking to an art these days…but that is a DIFFERENT discussion.
I’ve been on the receiving end of this very condition, and it is almost immediately recognizable. Superiority manifests itself in a variety of ways; disrespect for candidates’ time, non-responsiveness following meetings/messages left, opacity in the recruiting process, etc. As a mid-career HR pro, I’ve also seen this type attitude in colleagues at all levels (though I have found a greater prevalence in lower-level workers with less actual, and more perceived, power). It is a terrible shame that HR departments condone, support or in some cases exhibit these behaviors. I have long maintained that a recruiter’s job is to be creative in finding new sources of talent (not justrelying upon obvious choices that are being pursued by all of their competitors, or holding out for the “perfect” candidate, since that is a myth), and to conduct their affairs in a manner that builds the company’s reputation and impresses applicants. The only good news is for companies that do a great job of this: they will continue to enjoy a huge competitive advantage over their lagging counterparts.