What happened to everyone’s “passion for powder”?
Last winter, nearly every job hunter had a “passion for powder”, and this year that passion has evaporated.
But at least a lot of seasonal workers want to “get stuck in” next winter and are “open to any type of job opportunity in the mountains”
Next winter’s crop of ski town rookies are a super social bunch too. A very large number of them “can’t wait to see you on the slopes”.
And on another positive note, there’s a lot of “fast learners” and “team players”, who “Can adapt easily to fast-paced, changing environments”.
Aah AI, creating so many mind-numbing cliches for job hunters while rarely including details employers actually need.
You can’t really blame the young kids for embracing AI. It massively cuts down the time it takes to put together a reasonable application, allowing job hunters to blast out so many more resumes.
Copy and paste a job description, press a button, and AI creates a cover letter, customised resumes, and follow up email in 30 seconds. Kids can become a candidate in under one minute.
If the application goes nowhere, so what? It’s not like the job hunter has spent an hour or two carefully considering the job description, researching the company, and putting together a human application.
As the AI marketing campaigns say, “You spend so little time on my application, I’m doing the same with your’s”.
What could possibly go wrong with this situation?
The understaffing problems in the Australian ski resorts is a very good example of what happens when employers don’t understand the job hunting strategies and AI use of young job hunters.
So many employers declined an offer of a free ad on SEE YOU NEXT SEASON in March telling us “We’ve had a great response to our Facebook ads and have plenty of great candidates to choose from”.
I was on ABC radio a couple of times in Autumn arguing that hiring strategies, which heavily rely on social media, were not fit for purpose, and would cause problems when the tourists arrived. Skilled positions were going to be very hard to fill especially BOH roles.
I don’t want to say “I told you so” but … you know the rest.
It’s no secret that the snow has been great this winter down under. Every employee bed should be filled. That of course didn’t pan out.
About a week before the lifts opened, a large number of those “staff wanted” ads on Facebook got re-launched, because so many “successful” candidates didn’t show up.
It was painfully obvious so many job hunters were playing the numbers game, blasting out resumes, doing plenty of interviews, accepting multiple offers, and only showing up for one position.
Opening weekend was solid, and then the snow kicked in just before the school holidays. Then the panic really kicked in.
Job ads went up everywhere, and many of the roles included employee housing. Jobs with employee beds going unfilled during a great snow season is unprecedented.
Businesses weren’t just looking for one or two people, they needed FOH staff, BOH workers, housekeepers, baristas, and maintenance crew. Hell, some even needed bar tenders which are the easiest roles to fill.
The worst effected resort has an on-mountain restaurants that is closed more than they are open because they just don’t have staff. The brand damage is significant.
Our current survey about AI use by seasonal job hunters has allowed us to create a very accurate profile of candidates who use AI in their search for work.
These people send out very large numbers of resumes, averaging 43, which is six times more than job hunters who don’t use AI.
AI users accept nearly 3 times as many jobs as non-AI users, they love social media, and really like an application process that requires very little time and effort.
Recruiting via social media, and making it very easy for people to apply, is no longer a fit-for-purpose strategy. It simply won’t cope in a world where AI is guaranteed to exponentially grow the number of resumes getting sent.
Oh and job hunters, if you’re going to blast out slop applications everywhere, don’t complain when nobody gets back to you.
If you’d like to take a more strategic approach to job and staff hunting, join our platform and avoid the resumes lottery.
If you’d like to take our surveys, they can be found at these links.