Hiring the right person is hard. Learning to be an end user on most commercially available software is not hard.
Bryan Creely, a former recruiter and currently co-founder and CEO of Soor, shared a time when he applied for a job he was highly qualified for. The recruiter explained that he was an excellent fit and had everything the company was looking for. The recruiter said,
You’ve got great recruiting experience, led and mentored teams, and worked directly with executives. We need someone who can develop our inexperienced recruiters.
But he didn’t end up getting the job. Normally, that’s not surprising—there are often multiple candidates who could do a great job. But Creely asked for and received feedback. Here’s what happened:
[The recruiter] explained, “I was surprised too, but she said you didn’t have recent experience with our applicant tracking system software.”
I clarified my experience and reminded him that learning the user interface would only take a few weeks at best.
But he insisted, “I know, but unfortunately, she’s made up her mind.”
And it wasn’t that there was another candidate who had the skills Creely had and the relevant ATS experience. There wasn’t, and the job stayed unfilled for weeks and possibly longer.
Don’t mistake skills for experience
We all want to hire the person with the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to jump right into the job. But that doesn’t mean we rate every skill the same way.
Creely had the difficult experience under his belt already; he simply didn’t know how to use a particular applicant tracking system.
While some are harder than others, any of these systems is designed for end users to learn rather rapidly, and despite what their sales teams may say, there is a lot of overlap in applicant tracking systems.
Creely summed it up:
Some hiring managers would rather spend eight months recruiting a role than one month training someone.
Some things are only learned by experience. You can’t simply read a book or go through a training class and know how to manage large teams, work with difficult clients, or develop five-year marketing plans. That takes time and learning by doing. If you need someone who can do those things, you’re right to screen for experience.
But many things can be learned through books and training classes. Most end-user software falls into this category.
Training is cheap
Many companies don’t want to spend money on training. I provide training for HR professionals, and many of my clients pay out of their own pockets because their companies don’t value training. But, all things considered, training is cheap.
In Creely’s case, it probably would have cost the company at most a couple thousand dollars to get him intense training. More than likely, as an experienced recruiter who had used other applicant tracking systems, he wouldn’t have needed more than a couple of hours of someone sitting beside him to show him the ropes.
But even for training that is more expensive, it can still be a great return on your investment. How long does it take to find a candidate who has used every bit of software that your company uses? For every day your position remains unfilled, that’s productivity lost and an increase in burnout for your current employees who are filling in the gaps.
Every candidate you interview takes time out of your day, where you could be using that time to do revenue-generating tasks.
Yes, it’s possible that you will train someone and then they will quit and go to your competitor. It’s also possible that the fabulous candidate you pass up will get hired by your competitor as well. Always ask yourself, “How would I feel if my competitor hired this person instead of me?” If you don’t like that idea, you know that training will be worth it.
I’ve trained thousands of people over my career. Almost everyone can master the material. Don’t push someone aside when a few thousand dollars of training could make them your best employee.
—Suzanne Lucas
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com.
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