WE’RE BACK! On burnout prevention & normalizing career breaks

We’d love to kick off our second season of The Tea On Recruiting: our bi-weekly video series for recruiters, with episode twenty six. Below you’ll find our video, as well as the transcript. We hope you’ll find it interesting!

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Transcript

Honeeeyyyy, we’re home! Are you hyped? Because we are so glad to be back with season 2! Since we’re just back from one, today we’ll talk about breaks – specifically, we’ll talk about normalizing career breaks and burnout prevention.

Welcome back to the Tea on Recruiting, where we share insightful and thought-provoking content that can help you shape your recruiting career! Here’s today’s first article!

Normalize Career Breaks

Breaks are fundamental – that’s why we just took one. Today’s first article is Harvard Business Review’s “Companies Should Do More to Normalize Career Breaks”.

Employers have a negative bias toward stay-at-home moms. They’re half as likely to be called back for a job or land an interview and, once they’re three or more years out of the workforce there’s a 37% decrease in earning power.

LinkedIn was criticized because ‘homemaker’, a term with a backward aftertaste, was the only relevant option on their dropdown menus for creating a profile if you’d taken a career break. In response, they recognized and validated career breaks by adding the option “Stay at Home Parent” in those same drop-down menus.

3M American women left the workforce in a coronavirus-induced exodus, last year, making LinkedIn’s move great, but there’s more to be done.

Certain organizations offer returnships, structured as paid internships including mentorship and programming.

There are also “direct hires” in which mentorship and programming elements remain but the participants are hired as employees from day 1.

These programs need to be widely adopted, properly promoted, and duly categorized. Name them internships and you’ll attract entry-level talent while sending away mid-career candidates.

You want your postings to be very clear and you should also ask the company running your online job listing platform to include “return-to-work program” as a prepopulated option in their drop-down menus to help reduce the stigma.

Are you ready for our second article?

Address burnout when recruiting

We read “HR will need to address burnout when recruiting”, and this is what we learned: ¼ of employees say they plan to quit their jobs post-pandemic because they’re burned out; ⅕ of employees have left their workplace because it was toxic.

Your talent will now be on the lookout for red flags. What can you do and communicate?

• Train your leaders to manage during uncertain times

• Bring attention to burnout and employee care

• Highlight your mental health resources and company culture in your job postings, or through other media

• Ensure a proper work-life balance

• Make sure there are regular updates and managers communicating with their employees

• Use pulse surveys to keep an eye on the situation.

Now onto the…

CandE Crash

The more barbaric your treatment of candidates, the more demonic their posts about you.

Mmmmh – what is this? Do I smell injustice?

One day before your candidate was scheduled to start their new job you sent them an email stating the hiring manager had decided to employ another candidate. They’d already handed in their resignation letter and were excited about what they considered their dream job at your company. Upon receiving your terrifying email, they called you in a panic and tried to change your mind, but “no one seemed to care”.

Once your victim called their old manager to try and get their previous job back they were told that their replacement had already started and was doing great. No other vacancies were there.

This person is unemployed. They applied for benefits but were rejected because they’d quit their previous job and never started the new one. Well, that’s just ugly.

Got something to say about this? Drop a comment below, we’d love to pick your brains. Help us get better at helping you get better: with your help!

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