Sound Familiar? We’re Hiring! But Only Unicorns Need Apply
At Trifecta, we've been talking to many of our extended colleagues, quite a few recruiters, and hiring managers. The bottom line is that job hunting (and client prospecting) is a beast! It always has been, but very few things make sense right now. And that is a common opinion coming from many people. One thing is for sure, COVID moved everyone's cheese. Between the Great Resignation and the push to get workers back to the office, finding the right talent is like working a tricky jigsaw puzzle.
And the job hunting and prospecting process seems just as nonsensical and random. Many of us are now scratching our heads. What's happening in the job market, and how did we come out of the pandemic ignoring the lessons? Because as any good sociologist will tell us, lessons will repeat themselves until we learn from them. And yet, here we sit, still stuck but in a different way than in 2020.
Everything Old is New Again
Pre-pandemic, we had burnout, and the pervasive “cancel culture” had arrived. The Me-Too movement was in full throttle, and racial and political tensions were high. Many folks were walking on eggshells, not knowing what to say or how to say it for fear of offending someone. And there was more. The 20 years before the pandemic was a blurry line between work-life balance, feeling guilty for working too much or for taking a vacation.
Then came the pandemic in 2020.
The loss of life, shelter-in-place, lack of community, fear of socializing, and massive disruption of routines forced employees and employers to re-evaluate everything. People were scared and wary about gathering, hosting parties, and even attending church, and that cloud hung around until roughly January 2022, from my perspective anyway. I have seen more people enjoying spring and summer holidays overseas this summer than in all the years put together since March 2020. Everyone found their passport.
People have found that remote work is more productive, and they are more disciplined. And some people prefer the structure of being in the office. But no matter their niche, the taste of working anywhere, puts a lot of people in the driver's seat of their life. We made life-changing decisions. And perhaps learned what was most important to all of us.
The Lesson Will Repeat Itself
Yet we have a lot of misalignments among the candidates, employees, writers, fractional talent, and the hiring companies. The economy is ready to jump in the way-back machine to 2017! The good ‘ole days of employers making all the rules. They want the talent to return to the status quo ignoring what we witnessed during the pandemic.
But it gets better. There is a new ingredient companies have added to the mix. It goes something like this: we're hiring, but only unicorns need to apply. The trend we are collectively observing is that companies seek the "end all, be all" in a single person. One person is performing work that would typically be done by a two to three-person team but today one person is tasked with all the responsibilities. No temp or fractional support is available because it isn't in the budget. In fact, there’s very little help or support available internally at all. Still, others have entered bait-and-switch jobs with lowball pay for high talent. They thought they would work for less and well…do less.
But they are not. And that looks like this: we need an internal comms person. Great! The candidate gets hired. Then comes the switch:
● Answer your phone on weekends
● Manage crisis comms events 24/7
● Come up with external communications or marketing plans
● Travel
● Produce all-hands employee meetings
● Write the newsletter, web copy, and emails with stellar headlines
● Manage all digital marketing campaigns & results
● Be an SEO expert & graphic design guru
For $80K a year. What?!?!
Unicorns don't exist. And the stallions that do, well, they are difficult - if not impossible - to tame. They are good candidates and unwilling to accept less than what they are worth.
Dear Mr. Rubber, Please Meet Mr. Road
The bottom line is this - corporate America expects people to do business as usual. Erase what you hoped would carry on post-pandemic. The compassion, the trust, the collective effort that we're all in it together has waned.
A recent statistic cited that office space is at a 30-year low, with occupancy at an 18 percent vacancy rate in many cities. Real estate is costly, so they need butts in seats to justify the overhead. For some, perhaps it is as simple as that – companies have paid office space to fill. For other companies, the leadership believes people are more productive in the office.
Some people indeed need accountability. In all fairness, some jobs are legitimately in-office necessary. But how about treating people like adults? Yea, I know, a lot of people skate by on a salary doing very little. Still, one size does not fit all, and there is a point where the rubber meets the road. Organizations need talent. We are all searching for a mutually respectful arrangement and to be appropriately compensated for it. Somehow that is an excessively tall order, though.
Strictly from a marketing perspective, this problem translates to being tone-deaf to your audience. What happened to learning the lesson? Why are we not listening to our audience? Where is the EQ/IQ balance in leaders and organizations? There are a lot more stallions than unicorns out there!
I consistently hear that the corporate world is hiring but not listening. Jobs are going vacant, and candidates are increasingly feeling frustrated, perplexed, and starting to push back. You hear it and see it in the coffeehouse chit-chat. Memes, blogs, and posts are buzzing about it. I saw something on someone's feed the other day that went something like this:
Manager: Sally asked for more money.
CEO: Why?
HR: Give it to her.
CEO and Manager: WHY? What??
HR: By the time we write the job description, post the job, advertise, interview the candidates, onboard them, train them, and bring them up to speed, it's cheaper to keep Sally.
Thank you, NEXT
I didn't think I would need to say this in 2023, but here it is. People lost their spouses, parents, neighbors, co-workers, grandparents, lovers, and best friends. I fielded media inquiries for over 200 people who died alone in nursing homes. Three sets of married couples died together in three consecutive days. That will change you. And if it didn't, well, that's another discussion.
People are willing to live with less, and they are thriving. They're relishing their flexibility and seeking healthy habits. Time is for sale. And just like a beachfront property, there is only so much of it. That's what we learned in COVID, and that concept is going viral.
Let's not force a square peg into a round hole because "that's how we've always done it." If we are sincere about learning the lessons from all the pain and suffering over the last few years, then it benefits everyone to remain open and creative as we acquire new talent. To that end, many talented people want to return to something other than pre-pandemic models or philosophies. Many job seekers are willing to choose a simpler life and even work for less money to maintain a balance and a quality of life they now refuse to give up - as is whispered in the chat groups.
Suppose your organization is looking for an individual contributor, but the "perfect fit" is nowhere to be found. How do you open a dialog with your leadership to consider alternative staffing models? Are your leaders willing to look to a temporary or fractional solution? These days, job descriptions are a laundry list that requires you to be everything from a Salesforce expert to a marketing lead-gen guru to a ChatGPT wizard, copywriter, website developer, media relations expert, and social media manager.
Did I leave anything out? Where is that person who can do all of that at 100%? And not burnout?
As marketing and communications pros, we prefer the team. Many of us have been individual contributors and discovered that it is isolating, and we end up doing the work of three people. That model stagnates or stifles the creative process that attracted us to the marketing profession in the first place. Hiring and onboarding a full-time employee takes a lot of resources and revenue. We have yet to learn the lesson.
With a collaborative fractional team that brings diversity in skill sets and ideas, the model supports and elevates talent who want to come together. A team has a built-in support system; we are here because we choose to be here. A good team supports longevity and cultivates a support system that helps people endure stressful work situations. These days, it takes more than one person to answer the call. That pre-and post-pandemic "readiness" of being on 24/7 has not disappeared.
It's time to embrace the new normal and lean into a more thoughtful and strategic way of hiring talent. Trifecta Public Strategies is a communications and marketing firm that taps into our talent pool to deliver impactful and timely curated marketing and communications programs, so you can enjoy better, faster results that move the needle.
We've worked together as colleagues for 12 years and have a collective 80+ years of experience. We know our strengths and how to elevate our output in response to our client's needs. If you are ready to embrace what it means to seek and retain talent that will go the distance and deliver, Trifecta might be the team for you. In the meantime, the universe will keep presenting the lessons until we learn from them.
For more information or to schedule a consultation, contact us by phone at 214.616.1703 or by email at Kelli@trifectapublicstrategies.com.