In reply to John Sullivan’s recent come-to-Jesus diatribe, Five Ugly Numbers That You Can’t Ignore – It’s Time to Calculate Hiring Failures on ERE.net, John Sumser now asks on HR Examiner: “Why not give the whole problem over to the training folks?”
For starters, I’m not sure changing scapegoats addresses the underlying problem. There really is very little difference between abdicating responsibility to trainers for recruiting excellence — or whatever standard we used to aspire to — to expecting “recruiters” to stop buckling under the weight of a hiring manager’s passed buck.
In the final analysis, managers and their direct reports need to pick up the mantle of developing their “human resource.” That’s what I say. Recruiting is no less a management task than planning, budgeting, organizing stuff, and troubleshooting.
If the decision to hire and fire is a managers’ prerogative shouldn’t a manager be capable of taking care of the attraction and screening bits too? One might expect to see improved results across the board if they did.
Imagine, no need for template intake calls or getting chewed-out for presenting literal and proverbial misfits; no more waiting for overdue feedback on interest, availability and offers; no more having to explain that a credit score of less than 590 doesn’t automatically mean salespeople can’t sell, nurses can’t nurse, programmers can’t code, and engineers can’t build missile-defense systems.
Needless to say, there are exceptions to the “looks like managing” model.
Continue reading ‘Looks Like Training…Not!’
Recruitopian Footnotes [May 11, 2010]
- Token blacks, Hispanic women and cross-dressing vicars hardly make the case for diversity in the workplace, not in the Supreme Court of the United States anyway. I think the appointment of a an every-man or two would suffice, provided they are Calvinists of course.
- I always wondered who the real Kris Dunn was. Will the real Kris Dunn please stand up? Thank you!
- Laurie Ruettimann thinks about power and influence on a “regular basis” seemingly unaware of the nasty side affects of over-exposure to testosterone. [For the uninitiated, power is to the right, influence is to the left. Yeah, I'm an elitist jerk too]
Rogue recruiter and sausage salesman David Perry was nice enough to include me as one of the co-authors in his recently published, run-away best-seller, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Seekers 2.0. Yowzer!
If you’re lucky enough you might still pick up a copy on Amazon.com. If you’re really, really lucky you won’t need to.
The chapter I wrote is entitled Guerrilla Googling and the Job Hunters’ Dashboard.
Continue reading ‘Material Damage, Collateral That Is’
Before realizing that Google’s products and services can be configured to meet the needs of recruiters like me [see G-Recruiter.com] I spent a good bit of time tinkering with a few “free” applicant tracking systems.
Not that there are that many to choose from, Zoho People impressed me the most, not because it was any good — actually, I thought is was a piece of crap — but because their customer service was absolutely amazing.
During our hours [and hours] trying to fix bugs and get things working one of the support-wallahs told me a new module for recruiters was being released in a “few weeks.” That was almost a year ago.
Continue reading ‘Ho, Ho, Ho for Zoho Recruit’
Recruitopian Footnotes [October 26, 2009]
- U.K. blogger Katharine Robinson [aka The Sourceress] posts Performing Sourcery at The Recruiting Unconference. Hmmm…Nothwithstanding timezones, recruiting unconferences are so yesterday, don’t you know: Jeff Hunter’s Talent Unconference [2007]; John Sumser’s Recruiting Roadshow [2008]; Jason Davis’s RecruitFest [2008/09]; Susan Burns’ Talent Camp [2009] and some I’ve missed, I’m sure. Now, Bill Boorman’s The Recruitment Unconference taking place in London on 19th November…a sign of the times, no doubt.
- In Feel Sorry for the Recruiter… Lisa Kaye laments that recruiters “worry if they will wind up on the other side of the desk, interviewing for jobs that well frankly are no longer in high demand.” Look on the bright side: if they ever make it back into recruiting they’ll have a better grasp of what “candidate experience” really means. That should make them better recruiters, don’t you think? [Counterpoint: My Future in Recruiting]
- In his post It’s all about the message Michael Specht rightly notes: “…that clearly communicating the employment deal up front is a critical first step in having an engaged employee,” going on to say, “Employees who blog openly and honestly will allow prospective employees to see what it is really like in your workplace.”I guess shooting the messenger is out of the question then, eh, Michael?
I recently upgraded my WordPress blogs. Thinking it was time to pick up the loose threads of a fraying online experience I was conscious that not only had my writing suffered for not writing but my blog had suffered for not blogging too.
To save you from my miserable experience farting around with incompatible plugins, suffice it to say that I disabled every one of them in order to get this site back up. In so doing I came to a remarkable realization…
Continue reading ‘Today is a Good Day to Die’
I was speaking the other day with Raghav Singh. Raghav knows about recruiting technology. We were catching up on his visit to HRTech in Chicago. He said one of the most impressive companies on show this year was Recruiting.com. My first reaction was, “Wha-wha?”
I see John Sumser strikes a similar tone to Raghav’s in his post 091018 Recruiting.com. John’s analysis leads me to affirm that while Recruiting.com might make a great case study for a start-up starting over, cool recruiting tools alone rarely, if ever, compensate for lousy internal processes, weak management and a decimated recruiting function.
Continue reading ‘Recruiting.com: From the ashes of disaster…’
Recruitopian Footnotes [September 22, 2009]
- One would hope that tutoring in the Stanislavski method could improve the chances of every job seeker…fake it ’til you make it, buddy!
- The firing will continue until morale improves…makes perfect sense to me.
- “Some are born to be waiters on Broadway and others have waiting in the wings thrust upon them…” Chad Sowash waxes lyrical, seeks drama award…what can I tell you?
Recruitopian Footnotes [September 21, 2009]
- Is it distracted driving, one too many potholes, or both? Putting it bluntly…your manager is a dope.
- You take the high road, I’ll take the low road but remember…You Can’t Have it Both Ways
- Tut-tut. Mr. Hunter throws poor Jim under the bus. Well, better than “threw the windscreen,” no?
Recruitopian Footnotes [July 10, 2009]
- Who said: “A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart” - John Sullivan, John Sumser or Jonathan Swift? Such studious fellows all…Rub-a-Dub-Dub
- Erecting the new recruiting edifyce…Bob the Builder meets Smiling Bob
- “When we win, we all win.” So, what happens when we’re counting the rations?…Man overboard!
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