recruiters do not hire

recruiters do not hire

Recruiters don't hire, they retain. A recruitment process is a retention mechanism.

Selection processes are annoying and tedious because they serve as a protection tool. Selection processes have evolved to become very hard and tedious not "to bring in the best talent possible" but with the objective of "retaining as many people as possible". Selection processes are tedious because they fight attrition.

Imagine that a selection process was fast and simple for the candidates. Send your resume, have a 10 minute phone call with an engineer and the next day you receive an offer. Imagine that all companies did it. Can you foresee the job rotation? What stability could be guaranteed for a company?

If you knew that changing jobs is only a 10 minutes investment you would do it all the time... An extreme example: one day you have an argument with your colleague about some architecture design, in the hypothetical scenario where is easier to change your job than to reach an agreement and convince three layers of engineers and middle manager what would you choose to do? Since you know that doing a selection process is a lot of hours and effort in your side, you choose to deal with your job problems instead of going somewhere else.

The reality is obviously not this extreme and it lays in a middle ground. Although it has a clear objective. A selection process has to be hard and above all tedious so people don't change company. Most importantly, the critical decision in a selection process is to decide if you want to work there, not if they accept you...

PS: If an engineer needs more than a 10 minute conversation to know if someone is a hire or no hire they are bad engineers.