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For Employer

Five HR Trends That Has Us Feeling Like It’s Always Halloween

Karina

October 24 • 11 min read

Ghost candidates, employees with split personalities, and other skeletons in the closet. Halloween is coming… or is it just another day for Human Resources? 

While a Western concept, Halloween has become something of a significant occasion in the Philippines. It’s proximity to All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day has allowed many to observe the ‘holiday’ and hold parties, have candies, wear costumes, and generally have a celebration of sorts before the aforementioned national holiday.

Like in other countries, and in line with the actual Philippine holidays that immediately follow, ghosts, ghouls, and even monsters are a common theme for Halloween in school and especially in the office. Unfortunately, the ‘horror’ sometimes lasts all year for one department, Human Resources, because of several hiring and recruitment trends that when left unaddressed can make HR mean ‘Hair-Raising’ instead.

This year, put a stop to the spooky business, on Halloween of all times, by becoming mindful of the following trends.

 

Ghosts Need Not Apply

You have a job candidate that did great in the interviews, and as far as their resume and assessments go, they also tick all the right boxes. Seems like you found your hire. But then *poof*, they suddenly stop responding to your calls, texts, or emails, even making you wonder if they might have been ghosts whose lives were cut short while they were applying for work.

That is highly unlikely. What is likely is that they may have been hired by someone else because you took too long to respond to them, or because another employer had an outright better offer. Candidates who ‘ghost’ are only really a problem if you really wanted to hire them.

If this is indeed the case, it’s best to give them a few days and move on if they really don’t respond. Besides, employers are actually more notorious for ‘ghosting’ rejected candidates, so you shouldn’t feel too bad when the silent rejection sometimes comes from the other side.

There are Zombies Among Us

According to American analytics and advisory company Gallup, only 15-percent of employees feel like they are engaged in their job. This means an estimated 85-percent that only come to work to go through the motions. Other think tanks have made similar findings, generally concluding that there are zombies working among us, and we can even be one of them.

Despite this, employee engagement continues to be woefully ignored by many companies. Some neglect cultivating the employee experience– where corporate culture, technology, workspace, and support systems factor in– while others, do not place enough emphasis on making their employees feel that their work is enjoyable and with a purpose.

Positive employee experience is highly dependent on company culture, recognition, interdepartmental relationships, and learning opportunities, to name a few, and using employee engagement polls can help track these and how they impact employees.

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde: Who’s Really Applying?

According to HireRight, a global family of background screening companies with headquarters in Irvine, California, as much as 85-percent of employers caught applicants fibbing on their résumés or applications. That is a lot of people pretending to be someone else, even if it is to understandably try to stand out from the crowd of applicants.

Candidates can lie about something as minuscule as a two-month employment gap, to something as important as having experience in User Integration when they actually don’t, with those doing so extensively coming across as an employee that is totally different from who they actually are.

Among the better ways to circumvent how some candidates omit or alter facts about themselves is behavioral interviewing, where the initial and follow up questions you ask are specific to the information they provide you on their resume/application and when they are speaking to you.

Mysterious Disappearances

For every handful or two of successful hires is always that one– or, *gasp*, more– employee that mysteriously disappears. In some instances, this can be just for a day or two via AWOL (absent without leave), while in others, it can be by way of outright abandonment of duty, or outright resignation without notice.

Unfortunately, it is often difficult to get to the bottom of the reason as to why some employees mysteriously disappear, as they surely came across as the ideal hire before being made an offer to. Then, when they do offer up explanations, chances are that it is not quite the truth and they are likely only telling it to get leaving the company over with.

In these instances, prevention is better than cure, and like with employee engagement, it is paramount to always/ask or poll employees about their needs and what the company can do better for them. When acted upon these will give them less reason to leave– or at least not do so without notice.

Child’s Play

It is well documented how the global workforce keeps getting younger. Millennials presently comprise the largest subset, and the oldest among the succeeding Generation Z have themselves already began entering the workforce.

In the Philippines alone, the Labor Force Participation Rate of those aged 15-24 years old was estimated at 38.3-percent, based on the total youth population of 20.0 million in July 2019. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, this is higher than the 36.8-percent estimated in July of the year before.

With that said, this is only truly horrific if you are not prepared to hire and work with young professionals. There is plenty of research and data that has been published and discusses the quirks and needs and preferences of the Millenial and Gen Z workers, such as their affinity for technology, social causes, and working remotely, and knowing these will allow you to adjust accordingly and not be ‘terrorized’ by ‘the kids’.

Need help with recruitment? Sign up for Kalibrr and start hiring better today! 


Kalibrr is a technology company that aims to transform how candidates find jobs and how companies hire talent. Placing the candidate experience at the center of everything it does, the company continues to attract the best talent from all over, with over 2.5 million professionals and counting. Kalibrr ultimately connects these talents to companies in search of their next generation of leaders.

The only end-to-end recruitment solutions provider in Southeast Asia, Kalibrr is headquartered in Makati, Philippines, with offices in San Francisco, California, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Established in 2012, it has served over 18,000 clients and is backed by some of the world’s most powerful start-up incubators and venture capitalists. These include Y Combinator, Omidyar Network, Patamar Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Kickstart Ventures.

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About The Writer

Hello, my name is Karina and I work as a freelance contributor at Kalibrr. I enjoy reading self-improvement books and working out. More about Karina

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