The business behind the world’s largest job site claims to have a solution to the labour deficit plaguing the United States: eliminating the standard resume.
Despite the urgent need for workers, “the hiring process is still resumes, sending resumes, and checking resumes,” said Hisayuki “Deko” Idekoba, CEO of Recruit Holdings Co. in Japan, which operates Indeed.com and Glassdoor. “This is a fantastic opportunity for us to move away from the old-school, entrenched resume-profile culture and ask, “What can you do?” instead.”
According to one assessment, the United States is about to enter its tightest employment market since the 1950s, with employers battling to fill both white- and blue-collar roles as job searchers reevaluate their priorities in the aftermath of the pandemic. Recruit’s hiring technology sector saw revenue more than double in the quarter ending September, according to earnings numbers disclosed this week. In 2021, the company’s stock has increased by more than 80%, making it Japan’s fourth-largest company by market value.
Many small and medium-sized firms are still looking to fill jobs the way they did a decade ago, according to Idekoba, and modern hiring practises must adapt to the changes. He gives the example of a restaurant that hasn’t changed its job description in a decade. “Why do you require a college diploma?” he inquired. “Don’t even think about it!”
Idekoba, who splits his time between Tokyo and Austin, Texas, where Indeed is based, claimed he recently had to wait 40 minutes in a restaurant in the United States due to a staffing shortage.
Instead, Recruit recommends asking job candidates questions and administering assessments to check if they can navigate the specific duties that the position would entail. It also saves the answers so that job applicants who don’t get hired can use them elsewhere.
Recruit has started offering a chat-based hiring process for truck drivers, who are “desperately needed” in the United States, according to Idekoba, because truckers spend most of their days on the road and do not have laptops.
He also mentioned the issue of “a big number of people who can’t write resumes” or don’t have the skills to fill one out, as well as the tens of millions of Americans who have criminal records. Recruit is increasing its training offerings to help people write better resumes for professions that require them, with the goal of using technology to uncover abilities that an applicant may have that are transferrable to another field.
Indeed, then a startup, was purchased by Recruit for a reputed $1 billion about a decade ago. Before being promoted to CEO of Recruit in April of this year, Idekoba led the unit. In Japan, it provides sites to find homes, used cars, book hotels, and restaurants, in addition to hiring and staffing. It is trying to extend its software as a service services.
Indeed.com currently helps twice as many individuals find jobs as it did before the outbreak, according to Idekoba. “We could hire 20 people every minute,” he added, “but we couldn’t alleviate the labour shortfall.”
