Job seekers: You aren’t seeing all the available jobs. Not even close.
By Kyle Patrick Smith, CEO of HRKyle Services
And one reason has nothing to do with algorithms, your resume or the economy.
There are gatekeepers between you and legitimate job opportunities.
I’ve experienced this firsthand as someone whose company represents employers and, at any given time, 100+ open positions. Right now, our list is approaching 200.
Here are a few examples.
Job fairs and college recruiting
Want access to candidates? Pay to get in.
We’ve encountered job fair fees ranging from $250 to $1,000 per event.
Think about how quickly that adds up—particularly when you’re trying to recruit across multiple colleges, communities or geographic areas.
That means the employers you see at a job fair aren’t necessarily all the employers that want to hire people like you.
They’re the employers that got through the door.
Government and workforce programs
Here’s a very current example from Pennsylvania.
We’re working with an employer that has authorized HRKyle Services to recruit and hire approximately 20 people for entry-level positions paying more than $20 an hour.
These are real jobs.
The employer wants us to fill them.
We want to hold a hiring event and put people to work.
Seems pretty straightforward.
Except we’ve run into concerns about whether a Pennsylvania workforce organization can host the event because HRKyle Services isn’t the employer of record and the employer itself doesn’t want to be publicly identified during the recruiting process.
One of the issues?
It becomes more difficult for the workforce system to track the resulting hires and connect them back to the employer.
Think about that from the job seeker’s perspective.
There are roughly 20 entry-level jobs paying $20+ an hour.
The company has authorized us to hire for them.
We’re willing to organize the event, recruit the candidates and conduct interviews.
People need jobs.
The employer needs people.
And we’re discussing whether the hiring event can happen because of how the hires would be tracked.
That’s exactly what I mean by gatekeeping.
I understand why government programs have reporting requirements. Accountability matters.
But at some point we have to ask a very simple question:
Is the process serving the outcome, or has the outcome become secondary to the process?
JobsOhio
Earlier this year we had another experience while exploring participation in a JobsOhio event intended to connect displaced workers with employment opportunities.
Again, you’d think we’d be a pretty good fit.
HRKyle Services represents more than 100 open positions at any given time, and our current list is approaching 200.
After the third email questioning our business and our eligibility to participate, I opted us out.
At some point, I’m not going to keep trying to convince an organization to let us bring nearly 200 legitimate employment opportunities to people who need jobs.
Local job groups
We’ve also tried posting legitimate openings in local job groups only to encounter administrator screening and approval processes.
Meanwhile, I’ve watched people working for staffing and placement firms who appear to have relationships with those running the groups regularly get their jobs in front of the same audiences.
Maybe there are reasonable explanations.
I eventually gave up trying.
And again, who potentially loses?
The person looking for work who never knew the opportunity existed.
We’re Building Our Own Doors
That’s part of the reason HRKyle Services has started building our own doors instead of continually asking gatekeepers to open theirs.
We’re holding more of our own hiring events.
We’ve created our own local jobs groups.
We’re building our own communities where employers, recruiters and job seekers can connect.
And here’s something important:
Our job groups aren’t just for HRKyle Services.
We allow companies we don’t do business with to post their openings.
We even allow our competitors—other staffing and placement firms—to post their jobs.
Why?
Because if someone is unemployed and looking for work, I don’t particularly care whether the job that changes their life comes through HRKyle Services or somebody else.
The point is helping people find work.
Competition shouldn’t require hiding opportunities from job seekers.
Some gatekeeping is necessary.
There are scams. Fake jobs. Bad actors. Misleading recruiters.
Nobody wants those things reaching people who are already in a vulnerable position.
But there’s a difference between protecting job seekers and protecting a process, a relationship, a revenue stream or a piece of turf.
That’s the caution I want job seekers to understand:
The job market you’re being shown is not the entire job market.
A job fair isn’t the entire market.
Your college career center isn’t the entire market.
A government workforce program isn’t the entire market.
Indeed isn’t the entire market.
A local Facebook or LinkedIn jobs group isn’t the entire market.
And HRKyle Services isn’t the entire market either.
That’s exactly the point.
No single organization should be.
So diversify your job search.
Follow employers directly. Connect with recruiters. Join multiple communities. Check company career pages. Use multiple job boards. Network. Attend different events. Follow staffing and recruiting firms.
Because sometimes the biggest problem isn’t that there aren’t jobs available.
It’s that somebody standing at the gate decided which ones you were allowed to see.
That’s why we’re trying to build fewer gates—and more doors.
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