A (3:04)

So folks, I guess what we're saying is that the tightening by itself isn't the problem. The problem is the lack of loosening on the other end. Right? Because. Because that other part, the. The lowering of the bar, that doesn't happen. And it's because your assumption that job Requirements are dynamic is wrong. Job requirements are not dynamic. And that gives rise to the dangerous job requirements ratchet, thus making it harder to hire just when you need it most.

B (3:39)

Yeah. Okay, so here's our outline. We're going to describe what the job requirement ratchet is. We're going to talk about what to do about it, but at the same time, we're going to remind you we're not saying lower your standards. By all means, do not lower your standards. This is manager tools, after all. We want high standards in hiring all the time. The single most important tactical thing that a manager does, which has strategic implications for the organization and is good hiring or bad hiring.

A (4:10)

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so let's start with what the job requirements ratchet is. And I'm going to. I'm going to give you guys a little bit of an intro to it. And then, Mark, I'm going to have you explain the ratchet analogy, if you would. Right, so, folks, the job requirement ratchet is when a company raises or tightens its hiring standards in a down market when there are less jobs than candidates, but then never resets them lower in an up market when there are more jobs than candidates.

B (4:43)

Yes. And we call it a ratchet because the difference between a wrench and a ratchet is a wrench just turns one way when it's attached to the nut you're working on whether you're trying to tighten it or loosen it. Right. Once you turn it a bit, you have to disengage from the nut, reset the wrench, turn it again. A ratchet is a really nice improvement. You turn the ratchet to loosen or tighten the nut, and then without disgaging from the nut, you turn the ratchet the opposite way to reset it, enabling you to tighten or loosen the nut more quickly or easily. The reason the job requirements ratchet exists is that most companies, largely due to HR pressures, and I'm sorry about that hr, we understand your role and we're not blaming you, is that because of the HR pressures, companies only modify job requirements in one direction to make them more difficult over time. So when there's a down market, again, more candidates than jobs, like now, in early 2026, companies tighten their standards again because they can have their pick. This is to avoid hiring someone who isn't the best we could possibly find in a market where there should be plenty of people who meet the criteria. And so we're going to be more picky, right?

A (6:05)

Exactly. I mean, theoretically. But folks, when the job market loosens again, as it inevitably does and it becomes an up market, meaning there are more jobs than candidates. The vast majority of companies never reset their job requirements and therefore take those higher job requirements into and and up market, unnecessarily and unwisely limiting their candidate pool and just overall making it harder for the company itself to grow.

B (6:40)

Yeah. So we call it a ratchet because it only turns one way. Right. To make hiring harder over time, requirements get piled on top of requirements and pretty soon every job requires a college degree and three to five years of experience, which in fact 10 years ago that job didn't require that. More requirements for college degrees, more years of experience. Are the two I mentioned those, they're the two most likely culprits.

A (7:10)

Absolutely. And folks, I'm sure that all of you are both very, very aware of or familiar with this problem dichotomy issue when it comes to hiring and having all these jobs that have really high requirements are not having candidates. And I also think there are some people who've been listening to manager tools for a long time who are happy. We finally just started talking about tools because salespeople have been reaching out to me because we have a tool company about parts for years. So now that we actually brought ratchets and wrenches into it, I'm like, yes, bring it on. Finally the tools are here. It's good.

B (7:48)

Yes, it's good.

A (7:49)

Okay, so we're familiar with it. Now, what do we do about it? First, folks, Very, very important, don't go to HR and complain. HR is an organizational system and they work for someone higher than you in the organization. Going with a complaint doesn't help anybody, least of all you in this case.

B (8:11)

Now when we say first, don't go to HR to complain, we're talking about if you're a manager.

A (8:16)

Yes.

B (8:16)

But if you're the other hand, an executive with an HR manager reporting to you because you've got a 600 person or a thousand person organization, when the market shifts, tell them to start loosening up their requirements. Okay. You have that authority now that you're. You've reached a level where an HR person is supporting you. And usually now the modern vernacular is my HR business partner. We've said before, HR is not really a business partner. I like the concept. Right. If you're the executive, by the way, it's okay for you to call them a business partner. They should not call you a business partner because their job is to support you. So it might sound like this when you're talking to HR as an executive. Again with An HR support function reporting to you. Look, folks, we're going to need to loosen our hiring standards. Hiring standards are always going up when there are a lot of candidates because again, we can take our pick, but when the market goes south, we leave our standards high and then raise them again once we can have our pick again. Okay, so I want you to take a Look at the 10 most hired positions in my organization and review those hiring requirements. Focus especially on years of service that we require and also on degree requirements or certification requirements as well, I think would be another one. And frankly, anything else that we ought to know better than to make a strict rule so that our hiring filters are adjusting based on the market we're facing. In the employment market, we don't have to worry about someone slipping through. And this is important going back to the manager tools, our guidance about hiring. We don't have to worry in our department again. Now we're still talking to our HR person. We don't have to worry about somebody slipping through because we've lowered the standards of resumes. That would make the first cut, if you will, because we here in my department have such a strong and detailed interviewing process. Get that review of the jobs you're going to change to me within a week with a recommendation for how we're going to educate everyone that some of our hiring requirements have changed and actually been softened so that we can see a higher number of resumes and perhaps find a gem in a pile of coal.

A (10:44)

And folks, if you are a licensee or moreover you are not a licensee, know that that that script, if you will, that Mark just read out is in our show notes. So if you want to copy that out of there, you're more than welcome to use it with your team if you're having to have that conversation.

B (11:02)

We should also make a point here, Sarah, that I suspect there's a good percentage of our community, we've communicated a lot that don't know that they can go to the website if they're a licensee and they can click on their account and then go to communications preferences and they can get these show notes emailed to them.

A (11:19)

Yeah, absolutely.

B (11:20)

Right. When it comes out the very day. Right. Your email inbox will have that script written out for you. Now, you don't have to say the script, you can modify it.

A (11:29)

Yes, absolutely. We'd recommend you modify it, Frankly. Right.

B (11:33)

For 20 years now, people have been saying to us, people write to us all the time and say, I really appreciate that you've thought through what I should say, so I don't have to gin it up on my own. And people say, hey, I used your script. That's actually, I hear that the most is you're not going to believe it. I used your script and it worked. And I write back. Why wouldn't I believe it? We've tested this stuff.

A (11:55)

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, yes, folks, if you're a licensee, by all means, that thing that Mark just said, you don't have to type down feverishly and rewind and play and rewind and play and get it all. You've got these show notes.

B (12:06)

Please don't do that.

A (12:08)

Okay, so to go back to it, folks, if you don't have an HR business associate and you shouldn't go complain to hr, as we've already mentioned, about these overly tight job requirements, what can you do next? Well, first, don't apply the requirements to any of the individuals that you've got and you're looking at for this, this particular role who are on your bench. Now, folks, if you are unfamiliar with a bench, we have got a podcast. It's called how to build your network. Is that right, Mark? Yes, yes, yes. And essentially the bench of which we've got a ton of guidance is that list of people who, you know, who you are acquainted with, maybe you worked with them in the past, what have you, that if you had a job coming up, you've got a job that you're interviewing for, you ought to call or send a note to or, or, or message somehow and encourage them to apply the best place. I mean, the most successful managers hire almost exclusively from their bench.

B (13:13)

Yeah, and by the way, you said you mentioned a podcast, building your network. Actually, the podcast is called building your bench.

A (13:19)

Oh, building your bench. Sorry.

B (13:21)

And if you want to learn about that and you don't know about a bench and you want to learn more, we describe it in detail and we tell you how to build it. And on the website for this podcast is a link to building your pinch. It'll be on the right of the page. Also, if you're a licensee, there'll be a link to that podcast at the bottom of the show notes that if you've chosen to have them emailed to you, you can just click on the link and it'll take you right to that podcast page.

A (13:44)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And folks, this is a way of, of increasing that funnel of individuals that are coming into or applying for really your role. Because remember, the process of hiring in most companies starts with HR having the responsibilities to source candidates Thus really taking the first step of the process out of the manager's hand, especially a manager without a bench.

B (14:08)

Right. And particularly if you're a relatively new manager. That's how you've kind of heard it happens. You don't know what. What agency you have in this process. And so you assume what happens is you request an open requisition. You get it. And HR does this thing where they go out and look for candidates, they have sources and so on, and they look at resumes and they come back to you and say, okay, I looked at 100. Here's the 10 I recommend you look at. And by the way, we have guidance about working with their HR business partner on that. And in the beginning, what you want to do is align with them, validate with them by. No, no, no, you looked at 100, I want to look at the 102. And I want to compare the 10 that you recommend to the 10 or 12 or 5 that I recommend so we can learn how we're working together and so on. And here's the thing about it that you don't really realize if you just take for granted that that's the system that you don't have any say in. Sourcing. Sourcing is where HR puts its thumb, okay? And by the way, appropriately, the vast majority of times, they know where the sources are, they know where to get resumes and so on. But there's still some times where they do it inappropriately and not in pure and totally effective alignment with what you want. They put their thumb on the scales of the hiring process and what you end up getting those 10 resumes. If you don't see the other 90 or if there are other people out there that don't fit the requirements, remember, their sourcing starts with the requirements, which, if you're not careful, is too tight because of the ratchet, you end up thinking, well, I'm not sure this is everybody. There's gotta be more or there's gotta be different. And what you want to do, as I said, is swim back upstream and look at the other 90. And you might say, mark, I really don't have time. Mark. Sarah, I really don't have time to do that. Sorry. If you're going to spend time on something, if you have an opening, again, the single most important tactical action you take that has the biggest strategic implication for the company is hiring. So you need to be totally aligned with when it comes to sourcing. Sourcing is where HR enforces the job requirements before you ever see the stack of resumes you get. And frankly, there are many HR reps. And no insult hr. We totally get it. Who will be surprised that you even mention job requirements? That's because checking for requirements being met is such an ingrained part, and necessarily so, of their sourcing process of HR's sourcing of resumes and so on, and, and the two are so intertwined, they don't even really think about them being separate. But of course, you do have a separate process, which is the bench.

A (16:53)

And folks, the thing about your bench is you already have a history with these people, and that's, that's the real value of it. All right, maybe they don't have a degree, but say they spent three years starting owning, running, and then selling a startup in college and never went back to college to finish that degree. Now, in your mind, who cares?

B (17:14)

Well, who cares?

A (17:15)

Yeah, who cares? Who, who cares if they have their degree? Who cares if they have the, the necessary credentials and certification? Well, someone cares. Hr. HR or whoever does your screening or your sourcing. Oh, friend, they care. They use those, those criteria, those requirements as nothing more than essentially a checklist. It's, it's binary. It's black, white. They don't have it. Get them out of my pile. And when someone doesn't have a degree, the sourcing engines and screeners don't look for extenuating circumstances. They just eliminate the candidate. And that is the logic at the root of this job requirements ratchet problem is not looking more deeply into what the job truly needs and what experience a person has. And rather seeing these criteria as a, as a standard pass fail when that's not the best way of evaluating right now.

B (18:14)

You're smart. You've thought one step ahead. Okay, Mark and Sarah. Okay, manager tools. You say that I might have somebody on my bench that might not met the, meet the requirements, right? Because of the ratchet. They've been ratcheted out of being considered for the job, even though you believe from knowing them that they can absolutely do their job, do the job. So you're wondering, well, okay, what if I source from my bench and after I've interviewed him and he's really good and I think I want to offer him, HR says no, no, no, no, can do. Doesn't meet the requirement. Okay, that's easy. Okay. It's surprisingly easy. HR is trying to enforce a standard while you're trying to hire talented people. Okay? And you get to decide who you want to hire. Now, HR would say, yeah, you can hire from anybody would tell you, you can hire from. But this is where, this is where we start using some political savvy, some relationship effects savvy to make a difference. HR is trying to enforce that standard. You're trying to get talented people. You're going to win this argument not by arguing with hr, although if you have a great relationship, potentially you could. But you win the argument by talking to your chain of leadership. Okay, you go to your boss and I'll let you take this script, sir.

A (19:31)

All right, say, say to your boss, hey, I want to hire this guy and HR says he doesn't meet the job requirements. And they're right he doesn't. But in my opinion, that doesn't matter. What's more, HR is always raising the job requirements when the market gets tight, but never adjust them when the market loosens. It's a one way ratchet. So what this guy doesn't have is a degree. Neither do two of my best engineers.

B (20:00)

Exactly. Great example.

A (20:02)

However, this guy in particular ran a startup and sold it while in college and that activity caused him to decide not to graduate. And the startup was better experience than college anyway. And my team's already taken him through 10 hours of interviews and me and my team are in unanimous hiring decision. So if you want to interview him, you'll see he's great.

B (20:30)

Yeah. By the way, we will tell you that last bit of about offering to let your boss interview your bench hire is a nice little clincher. Your boss likely won't, but because he's not willing to invest the time, that will also make him less likely to stand with HR against you. We'd bet better than even money that he'll choose to send an email or make a phone call to HR saying hey, I've decided we're going to make an exception here rather than having to interview your candidate. On the other hand, look, if your boss sides with hr, you're probably toast. But we'd suggest two things. Ask HR to interview your bench candidate and or dark mark talking here, Start looking for a different boss. If there's no flexibility, if every single support organization has the ability to tell you how to do your job, they really don't need somebody like you in your job. There needs to be some degrees of freedom around it and you know what work your team does. And if you have somebody on your bench who you've known for years and you know what they're capable of, that's a much more powerful hiring decision than somebody not necessarily an HR or an engine, an AI engine or something saying these are the people who are good and these are not.

A (21:45)

Yeah. And folks, listen, this is a manager Tools podcast. This is not an executive Tools podcast, but there are many people in that executive community, senior directors, directors who are also listening to this podcast.

B (21:59)

Yes.

A (22:00)

This isn't just for the individual manager who's trying to be, trying to influence the process. It's also for you. This piece. Don't be a stick in the mud. Don't be staff supporting and not leading, being a policy and procedure enforcer. If one of your managers wants to hire somebody under these circumstances, let them fight for them with HR and win the line versus staff battle. Side with your manager, as you should.

B (22:33)

Yeah. Also, you're going to find out whether they were right or not. You might want to say to them, okay, I'll tell HR we're going to go ahead and hire that guy. Now, if you fight the organization, recognize there's greater risk in that hire, Right?

A (22:47)

Absolutely.

B (22:48)

You better be good. Otherwise, the next time you ask HR to hire somebody from bench, they're going to say no. And they're going to remind you of this failure that you had, even though it's not a fair reminder because we didn't hire somebody out of their pile and compare the two of them. Right. That's okay. They have an anecdote, but they don't have data. Further. Okay, put a reminder in your calendar if you're a senior manager, whatever. To check on the new hire's performance in 90 to 120 days. Why going back to politics? Because the political implications of this situation have to be considered. If the new person works out well, you didn't do your direct, the hiring manager, a favor. Think about that. Now, your hiring manager probably thinks you did him a favor by saying to hr, no, we're going to make an exception here. Okay? But in this case, if the new person works out well, you didn't do your direct a favor. Even though most people would think that way so much as you won a political battle with HR and your direct was the one that gave you that opportunity.

A (23:53)

Yeah, exactly.

B (23:55)

Yeah. And if you really want to be a great senior manager boss who doesn't just do, but teaches as she does, explain your logic to your direct again, the hiring manager, as you have the conversation.

A (24:08)

And we obviously need to cover the other side of this, this equation. What happens if that new hire doesn't work out well? First, we would describe above average performance as working out well because of the political risks involved here. You oughtn't spend political capital on an average performer. If you spent political capital to support a bad decision, we encourage you to explain the economics, fragility and fungibility of political capital to the direct report manager whom you supported, and add this guidance as you're having your conversations with them. If you're going to ask me to spend my political capital as opposed to you spending yours, you introduce some moral hazard. Depending upon how things work out, I take the risk and you get the benefit. So take care that you apply an extra level of humility when you do.

B (25:08)

Yeah, good. One more political thought, and I suspect many people did not realize there was going to be this much political discussion in this when you're doing the line versus Staff battle, which we just had a podcast about as I recall. So one more thing about politics. If you, the hiring manager, lose the battle and HR wins, and we would say they won't, but whatever, if it happens, because we're going to get a question about that, do not be so short sighted as to be cold and distant and unfriendly and even rude to your HR associate when they come asking for help or support or want you to meet a deadline or be involved, that would be unseemly. Rather, apologize, show respect, be polite, tell them you understand, and then don't comply with their request until it begins to hurt you. You can do both things. You can lose a political battle, still maintain the relationship, and then also still assert your responsibilities, doing your responsibilities and saying, I'm sorry, I know I owe you that, I apologize. And unfortunately, I've got this other thing that my boss is asking for as well. And no disrespect, but I have to support my boss first. Okay, so again, if you lose to hr, don't be pouty. With hr, you can enforce the lack of support they gave to you by essentially saying, yep, totally, I get it. I'm on board. Again, this is nothing related to hiring, but at the same time not necessarily prioritize their interest. Which goes back to our Guidance on Line versus Staff power and authority.

A (26:53)

Your job as a manager is to make your people better. A Manager Tools License helps you do exactly that. Licensees receive the full show notes for every new episode straight to their inbox, ready to read, reference, and share with the people on their team who need it most, complete with a link to the audio version as well. The right guidance to the right person at the right time and email. Show notes are just the beginning. Visit manager-tools.com memberships to find out everything a Manager Tools License has to offer. So folks, we're Going to wrap up this cast by talking a little bit about how all this said, we're not saying you should lower your standards. Please do not confuse this guidance about how to get around unnecessary bureaucratic red tape and misguided standards. The primary reason we can recommend this course of action to manager tools managers is because we assume that you've prioritized the creation of a robust and tough but fair behavioral interviewing process involving multiple interviews with an interest in quality of outcome versus brevity of timeline.

B (28:08)

Yeah, that's good. And that's the problem. Too many managers focus on timeline and not on quality. And they think it's only a tactical decision when in fact, as we've said now for the third time, this is a tactical decision with strategic implications. And so you have to significantly invest in a very, very robust hiring process. Put differently, if you don't have an interviewing process you would care to show to dark mark, that's me, folks, by the way. If you don't know me in a bad mood, then maybe this guidance isn't for you. You can only implement this if you know you're going to take that bench person or somebody else who comes to you from a recommendation outside of where HR gets those resumes, they forward to you that person. You have to take them through the exact same process that anyone else would get through. We're not suggesting you hire a friend and they go around the system. That is a very bad. That is a major tactical, strategic, political error. Okay. And the reason for that, I just want to take a minute to explain this. Most people don't understand that hiring, the hiring process, the primary thing is to validate that someone can do the job and bring them in. Great. We need to fill an opening. Okay. But there's a secondary value of an interviewing process and that is to send a message to the rest of the organization that they have been through a process that is full and robust. If your team knows that this person who doesn't, quote, unquote, meet the requirements that someone has failed to loosen because the market has changed, if your person doesn't go through that process, then they're going to be seen as coming in through a back door. What that means is if they come through a back door, if you don't put them through the whole thing, and by the way, you should put them through it in order to be more, have more defense with hr. If they go through the process and other people they've been know they've been through the process. Again, the external validation of your process when they come to work for you, they will have a higher level of starting trust. If you let him in through a back door, everyone will say, well, I've got to really validate this guy myself in day to day work to find out whether or not he or she is as good as the boss who hired him around the system says he is. So the process by which you hire has to be the same for everybody. So that not only does the process produce quality results, a candidate that's going to be successful, but also says to everybody else that this person went through what you went through, they're as good as you, trust starts out higher and then they start producing more quickly. Rather than the guy who goes in the back door, nobody trust him. Why should they, other than your word? And then they have to validate that. And it takes time and slows them down. And they're must they're much less likely to be a high performer as quickly as possible.

A (31:05)

Absolutely. Folks, the fact is that there's no amount of sourcing or screening that's going to take the place of a professionally administered behavioral interview process that's conducted by well trained managers and individual contributors who understand what interviews are designed to do and the strategic importance of the person you hire.

B (31:27)

Yeah. Okay, so summarizing folks, beware the ratchet, okay? Nobody at higher levels thinks this way, probably because only lower level managers have to deal with the ratchet. You can't easily change that upward ratcheting, that'll happen, but you can fight it by having a bench that is sourced separately from what HR uses. And when you find someone great on your bench that doesn't fit HR's profile, be willing to take them through your process. Be willing to go to your boss and say this person will in fact do it and likely your boss will support you. And then you have to make sure that they get to a level of above average performance to justify the political risk involved in pushing back against a staff. Responsive. A staff requirement.

A (32:14)

Absolutely. All right, well that was a great one. Thank you, Mark.

B (32:17)

Yeah, thank you.

A (32:19)

And thank you so much for joining us folks. We hope that this helped you. Now help us help others and tell your friends. And of course follow rate and review our podcast. And remember, five stars only please.

B (32:31)

Five stars only, please.