The interview consisted of nothing more than walking through my work history and a couple of standard phone screen questions. It was probably the most insincere 15 minute phone screen that I have experienced in my professional career. The person that I spoke to had clearly made up their mind not to move forward with my candidacy before even speaking to me which was made evident by the fact that they hadn’t even looked over my resume before the phone call and by the generic rejection email I received less than 24 hours later.
A few words of advice for candidates thinking about applying for openings at Aldi, “Don’t waste your time.” You could be a perfect match for a role in every aspect yet it is highly unlikely that your resume will ever wind up in front of a hiring manager. I speak from the experience of having “Inside knowledge” as to how their recruiting process works as well as from having applied and interviewed for several positions at the company for which I am highly qualified. Aldi would find great benefit from considering the following advice. You are missing out on so many great candidates because you don’t know how to evaluate talent properly and you are developing a reputation as an employer that treats candidates poorly.
First, find some real recruiting talent. The corporate buying assistants that you have conducting phone screens are not qualified or properly trained for the work that they are doing. They have no idea what type of questions to ask candidates and have no clue what skills or experience they are looking for. The last one that I spoke to asked me if I had a skill that was listed in the job description and then proceeded to tell me that they didn’t even know what that skill was. Good recruiters know what they are looking for and know what questions to ask in order to find the best candidates; asking me to read my resume to someone over the phone is a waste of my time.
Second, write better job descriptions. Listing half a dozen tasks that you expect the role to perform and then citing a couple of hard skills that you desire probably opens the floodgates and dilutes your applicant pool which is why you are quick to dismiss good candidates. If you don’t make your job descriptions detailed and specific you are going to be overwhelmed with applicants and you are going to easily miss the good ones.
Third, get past the mentality that external hires are bad. Your company could experience tremendous growth if you could be humble enough to understand that you could benefit greatly from hiring outside talent. Although I respect the “Promote from within” mentality your business has a lot of needs that individuals with only operational experience cannot fill. Believe it or not there are good candidates that can help you even though they didn’t go through your district manager training program. Put more faith in referrals from your current employees; in my experience some of the best hires come from internal referrals.
Finally, don’t be so afraid to try something different. I know that Aldi is ultra conservative, slow to change, and likes to embrace the “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality, but you need to get past that. Don’t be so afraid of someone that has new ideas. In case you haven’t noticed new ideas are necessary for growth; if you don’t embrace that mindset you are libel to get left in the dust. The seven most dangerous words in the English language are, “We have always done it that way.”