I had a recruiter contact me yesterday asking about a skill that I didn’t list on my LinkedIn profile.
Now I don’t mind people asking if I have skills. You can’t list everything on a resume/LinkedIn profile. What I thought was strange is that he demanded (Bold/Italic, caps, the works!) that I have 10 years experience in it.
I get it. Recruiters want to save themselves some time. But lets put that in another frame. Lets see you go up to someone at a job fair and say “I need you to know X and have 10 years experience in it.” How likely do you think the average person has that skill you are looking for?
This isn’t the first time a recruiter has asked me about skills that weren’t on my resume. Another recruiter contacted me a few months ago and very politely asked if I knew X. I didn’t, and shared that I had not only never heard of that obscure certification but it was very unlikely he would find someone with it. He shared with me that he could not find someone with it, and that why he had taken to just asking people who range of skills might have it. What a terrible way to recruit when you have to guess if someone has the skills.
Now I can hear recruiters saying, “But I have asked many times and people have said they have the skill and not listed on the resume, so your theory is wrong.” From a recruiters point of view that is true. If you message 1000 on LinkedIn, and talk to 3 and ask and one of them has the skill then great. However the other 999 you wasted the time of, will remember you and resent you for wasting their time.
So how do we solve this? LinkedIn only allows 100 skills, which doesn’t even scratch the surface of what most seasoned professionals know. I think we need to have unlimited skills to be listed. I understand this can be difficult for a database but the goal is to get a job, not make the database admins job easier.
Or as a recruiter in the first message you send them you can simply say “Looking for X has been hard to find. This is a required skill to apply. Do you have it?” Instead of having a 10 minute conversation and being polite, just tell people right away what you are looking for that you can’t find. If that is the critical skill, then get it out of the way the first thing and minimize wasting anyone time.
When people don’t have a job, their time is their most valuable commodity. Until you don’t have a job, you don’t realize how valuable time is. Bills still need to be paid, while companies wait and make their hiring processes and employee unfriendly as possible. When you are right to the point, people appreciate that and remember you in a positive light.
Have some empathy and put yourself in the job seekers shoes. Don’t make life more difficult for others.