Madeline Mann (HR leader and job-search strategist) explains the cultural phenomenon she calls “helpless hiring,” where companies narrowly prefer hires who have done the exact same role before to avoid investing in onboarding and training. She gives client and recruiting anecdotes that illustrate how managers pushed for hires who can "hit the ground running," how job descriptions demand years of experience for entry-level roles, and how overloaded managers avoid training. Mann offers hope and practical reframing advice for career pivots — rebrand as a solver of problems, write resumes as sales documents, and use job-shopping strategies — and points viewers to workshops and resources.
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I had one client who had worked as an intellectual property attorney and wanted to be general counsel at a new company. Companies consistently wanted him, but only for his intellectual property expertise and could not picture him in a general counsel role. I see this situation duplicated across hundreds of my clients. They could land a job in the exact role they just did, but they don't want that. They want to do something even marginally different than what they were doing before because they're ambitious, multi, passionate, curious individuals. Individuals or folks who simply want a bit of change. And yet making a career pivot or career change is torturous. And the reason making these career pivots is akin to thumb wrestling with a cactus is beyond ideas like it's a competitive job market or the ATS system is filtering your resume. No, this actually gets to something that is a deep cultural phenomenon. This is the phenomenon of helpless hiring. Companies are so focused on hiring people but then not helping them once they're in the role. So they bring in talent who have done the exact same job before because the company expects these new hires to be able to be productive immediately and don't want to invest in onboarding and training just like a child expects his toy to have batteries included. Companies expect every candidate to come with training included. We are going to deeply observe this pendulum of judgment that has swung way too far for people who are going for different jobs than the exact same job they've had in the past in this video and explore why you are rightfully bitter about this. I'm here to say you're not crazy. And also, there's hope. I am your fairy job mother. And of course I have a dollop of magic for you. But first, so good to see you. If we haven't met yet, I'm Madeline Mann. I'm a human resources leader and job search strategist who turns job seekers into job shoppers. You may have seen me on abc, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, and more. Be sure to subscribe you haven't yet. And stay to the end because I call out big name employers who are helpless hiring right now. You can spot helpless hiring just by how many thousands of job descriptions include phrases like hit the ground running. This is code for we don't want to train you. These companies will be specifically screening for candidates who have done nearly all of the same work before, ideally at a competitor so that they don't have to spend so much time getting the new hire up to speed. This is also also why job descriptions ask for one to two years of experience for entry level roles. Why would you need years of experience for an entry level job? Well, because again, bringing on someone who is entry level takes a lot of effort for a company because they have to dedicate training and mentorship towards them. When companies put one to two years of experience on a job description, they're saying we want to pay the low rate of having entry level talent, but we don't want to take on the burden of ramping up that talent all on our lonesome. When I was last on the job market, I was getting lots of inbound requests from recruiters asking me to interview for head of Human resources roles at growth stage companies. Of course I was flattered and even took many of those interviews, but since I had done that job before, I knew I was looking for something different. Because in all honesty, being the head of HR in a growth stage company is exhausting. It's an amazing job, but sometimes dealing with all the behind the scenes is like having to go to Thanksgiving dinner with your extended family five days a week. You love them, but someone always ends up offending someone else. So when I interviewed with a company who saw my skills in building training programs and learning experiences, they created a role for me which led to my mild career pivot into learning and development. I was fortunate I met a hiring manager who could see the potential in me in a different role with a different context, but that is not the norm at all. The way most hiring managers hire is like selecting paint samples. They will throw you out if they want eggshell white and you are ivory. Does this mean that the only way to pivot is to get lucky and find one of these rare hiring managers? Absolutely not. My clients are able to pivot careers smoothly by using job shopping strategies to change the hiring team's perspective. I'll link a free class below on some of the strategies you can start implementing today. But companies lose out big time on top talent when they are stubborn like this. First, they are making the pool so narrow for talent. Second, just because someone has done this exact job before doesn't mean they're any good at it. With a bit of upfront investment, you can find people who have transferable skills but also incredible attributes that make them a top shelf hire. Especially because top performers like to switch it up in their careers. It's a sign of having a growth mindset. Adding to this, why are we pretending like people who have done the job before also won't need lots of training and onboarding as well? Just because they have done this type of work before doesn't mean that they are fully ready to jump in at this point particular company I come from the recruiting field and so much of my job was convincing hiring managers to not have such unrealistic expectations for candidates and not reject so many people because they didn't work at one of these exact companies or went to one of these exact schools. Ask any recruiter. This is a huge struggle. At the core of why hiring managers often prefer to hire someone who has done the exact job before. All starts with these managers feeling overworked. They hire because they have more work than people to do that work. But hiring adds additional workload and then by the time they hire someone, they don't want to spend more time training that person. They just want that person to finally take some of the load off. This leads to a new hire with poor onboarding and not enough training. Coming from hr, I would assist hiring managers all the time in helping them prepare to train their new hires. And many of these managers were were so proficient at their jobs and had been at the company for a while that they didn't know how to properly train someone. They forgot how long it took them to learn the business and had unrealistic expectations of how long it would take another person. Because being good at your job and being good at training someone to do your job are two different skill sets. So what the hiring manager does is they insist on whomever is hired. They have to have done the job before. This is super frustrating for recruiters because they see these transferable skills and the trainability of new hires. But the hiring manager feels too overwhelmed or under equipped to do so. I remember at one of my past jobs the engineering team asked me if they could hire a software engineering intern. I met with the engineering team and we discussed why they felt we should have an intern and we discuss what that person would need to be qualified, what we would expect them to do in that role. And then I ask them a question. An intern isn't just someone who can take work off your plate. An intern is actually someone who takes a lot of training and mentorship to be proficient. Who in this group will volunteer to dedicate 10 hours of your week mentoring and managing this intern? The room fell silent. No one volunteered. They liked the idea of an intern but didn't want to spend the time to make an intern successful. We did not end up starting an internship program. There are so many companies who have an unspoken contract of self training such as the culture at Amazon has been publicly revealed to discourage question asking on some of their teams. Navdeep Singh is a former Amazon software engineer who said that in his first week on the job, was told to not ask questions, and despite being assigned a mentor to help him out, the mentor responded to Navdeep's questions with Figure it out yourself. Going forward, it will be important for companies to prioritize documentation, onboarding and training. Managers need to learn the skill of being a good trainer and should follow onboarding processes that set up their new hire for success and for job seekers. A big part of my job shopper coaching is to stop seeing yourself as your past jobs. Too many of us hold onto the past when really you must rebrand yourself as a solver of a company's problems. We think that they will see our transferable skills, but you actually need to spell them out in the right way that will catch their attention. This shift, while seemingly trivial, is everything. I'll link a job shop or training that dives deeper into this. This comes through in the interview, but it all starts with writing your resume as a sales document instead of a distracting list of what you've done in the past. If you're unfamiliar with this approach, I'll link a free resume workshop that will walk you through how to do this. It has been such a pleasure. Be sure to like this video and subscribe if you haven't yet. I mean, surely you've subscribed, right? You've got this wifi high five.
