Looking for a Job? Who You Know Still Matters
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Here's your money briefing for Monday, June 3rd. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Remember networking, shaking hands and telling hiring managers about your work experience? It fell by the wayside during the pandemic, but it's making a comeback.
A lot of companies thought software would make their hiring lives a lot easier. And what they're discovering a few years into this experiment is that it's actually flooding them with more resumes than they can possibly look through.
And that means for a lot of job seekers, it's time to dust off their people skills.
Part of it is truly making an effort to get to know someone. Really focus on skills and not saying, this is the title I want or this is the salary I want. Here's what I can bring to the table here.
The WSJ's Callum Borshers and Lindsay Ellis will join us after the break.
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Who you know is making a comeback as a key to finding a job. The Wall Street Journal's Callum Borshers and Lindsay Ellis join me. Callum, why is networking becoming important again? And why did it fall behind as a job seeking tool?
Well, I think it fell behind for a couple of reasons. One was a lot of companies in recent years have been making a real push to diversify their workforces. And there's a pretty good body of research that shows people tend to refer candidates who are similar to themselves.
How is face-to-face networking making a comeback in the job market?
So that's not the best way to add a different population to your workforce. And then the second part of it, too, is I think a lot of companies thought software would make their hiring lives a lot easier. And what they're discovering a few years into this experiment is that it's actually flooding them with more resumes than they can possibly look through.
Lindsay, the use of software was seen as a way to remove human biases in the application process, and as Callum mentioned, to achieve some sort of diversity. What's happened to that goal?
Yeah, one thing to note here is that just the sheer reach of software can expand a company's applicant pool far beyond expectations. the geographical location of where a job might be posted outside of the digital realm. And this was particularly significant, of course, in the first couple of years after the COVID pandemic broke out, when so many jobs were remote and could have been done from anywhere. From a sheer kind of location diversity perspective, companies could and did pull in applicants from all over the place and so the flip side at this point is that we're in a moment where companies have a lot more leverage over the job application process they are less dependent on getting any talent any applicant in the door and can be choosier over
who they want to bring in for interviews to ultimately hire. And so you've seen in this environment, many hiring managers basically lean on their networks to take that first pass.
Does this reliance on referrals and networking put a brighter spotlight on achieving diversity in the workplace if companies are moving in this direction?
I think employers would tell you exactly that. In fact, several told us that as we were working on this story. They're aware that referral programs have DEI pitfalls. And so what they're trying to do is pursue two different channels.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:13
2
How is face-to-face networking making a comeback in the job market?
2:13–4:20
3
Why did networking decline during the pandemic and what replaced it?
4:20–5:46
4
How has hiring software flooded companies with resumes and created new problems?
5:46–9:53
Speakers
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