I spent a good amount of time trying to post what follows to the original post in reply to a rebuff from John.  To no avail. Apparently a plug-in on John’s site may have become unplugged. Feel free to post your comments here or there, at this point it may not matter.

Anyway, reluctant to break the thread, or retire for the night with this undone, here is my closing argument…

John,

I think we can agree that postulating, while helping us work through our thinking on the subject, is unlikely to result in our synthesizing a new paradigm for the industry, let alone rock the world for any employer who might be reading this. So, if you’ll indulge my replying to your comments it is only because I have been reflecting on these things of late and your post provides a safe place for me to fall, not because I want to engage you in a sisyphean debate which will have us both pooped-out before Sunday brunch.

You say, “Sometimes we fall into the trap of confusing sourcing (candidate flow) with recruiting (the right candidates).” That is, indeed, true. I would not split hairs except to say that sourcing is a function of identifying talent while candidate flow is as a result of attraction and engagement. Perhaps it is in the hairline difference between those kinds of thing that has us perplexed.

If research drives sourcing then branding drives attraction and engagement. Clearly, both activities contribute to the volume and quality of candidate flow but attraction and engagement alone carries things to, and beyond, the assessment phase. If qualifying candidates is a function of Sourcing [even up to the point of transitioning a person from candidate to applicant] then it is Recruiting’s responsibility to validate Sourcing’s product through candidate assessment. In other words, Recruiting regulates candidate flow and, ultimately, owns quality control too.

I guess these are the types of distinction some people make describing sourcing [as in talent pool and supply] versus candidate flow [as in talent pipeline/recruiting demand]. No doubt, for others it is yet another source of process-driven befuddlement.  Dare we completely alienate them by distinguishing the difference between recruiting, employer branding, sales and marketing so that at some point those things might be effectively integrated? God, no! What am I thinking!

Perhaps some of our confusion comes about because we don’t have an universal process-speak that describes where and when things like sourcing stop and recruiting kicks in, or how candidate sourcing might be different from sales prospecting, and so on.  Do we argue the toss about what those things mean in effect because we are still undecided on what they mean in practice?

We could split hairs ad infinitum but I sense some may be given to pulling their hair out if I did — or worse kick me in the follicles — and before we resolve other areas of persistent puzzlement. Questions like, “Whose brand is it anyway?” and “How does this brand thing scale/translate?” comes to mind when we talk about RPO and TPR outsourcing for example, if we ever ask those essential questions at all.

I’d like to propose an alternative reading for “the more candidates you have, the more qualification and screening you have to do.” If we can agree that, like it or not, recruiting is hard work can we also agree that, like farmers, it is our process and practice that ultimately decides whether we break our backs whacking weeds or do it reaping a bumper crop. Either way, it’s back breaking work, no less exhausting than changing an employer’s orientation from a reactive to a proactive one.

When I read, “The trouble with your argument is that it ignores the cost of discovering the gems in your database,” I am comforted that you don’t point out the other half-dozen flaws in my argument. In my defense, when it comes to the cost of mining gems, it is not something I ignore. As it happens, I’ll be the first to admit I have wasted a hundred-fold and more on “banner ads, reciprocal links, targeted content, search engine placement, keyword development, job board advertising and outright traffic purchases.” Hell, I’ve spent literally millions of other people’s dollars running full-page ads in USA TODAY and still daydream about what I could do with that money now.

Like you, I haven’t found “a tool that effectively does the right level of screening at effectively zero cost,” and I have long since given up looking for one. Experience tells me that “zero cost” in recruiting is a misnomer. Having failed spectacularly on more than one occasion to build databases and tracking systems for next-to-nothing I am persuaded that, like in any other business, in recruiting you get what you pay for.

Moving on, [and just between you and me, John] the only thing “Boolean hay” is good for is finding an occasional needle and elevating straw men to logical beings. What can I tell you about my progress in that department? Suffice it to say, I’m still rollicking, follicles firmly in hand.

As far as databases go, it is true the efficacy of search remains unproven. However, I don’t think failures to deploy enterprise-wide search in recruiting necessarily indicates a shortcoming in the search tools or techniques themselves. Rather it highlights one of the problems of a misaligned sourcing strategy and branding effort. That misalignment leads to enough “garbage in” to guarantee a good measure of “garbage out.” But don’t blame the messenger.

You are also right to point out that dedicated data mining is not something any Tom, Dick or Harriett can do. You say, “That a focused player can sift some crap in or out of the database is not the question,” and again we are agreed. But sifting crap in or out of the database is not the answer to anything either.

Suppose our distraction with perennial problems keeps us from focusing on sustainable solutions, and the resulting systems we implement continue to fall short of what the lowest common denominator needs. How hard would it be then for us to cost justify acquiring the more evolved recruiting skills we obviously need to get the job done? Surely, if we can increase the volumes of crap being sifted in an 8-hour shift, based on the premise of your argument, that would result in our surfacing a gem or two more than before. We might even find success in this department will afford us the development dollars to eventually come up with a dumbed-down search tool for the masses.

Conceding my personal opinion and amnesia-ridden experience is no substitute for hard facts, the issue is not so much how our resume databases are structured, populated and/or what operators we use to run queries, generate reports or surface talent.  And it certainly isn’t about clinging to arcane methods of deductive reasoning either.

While all of the above may help define our present reality, compounding the problems you infer are intractable, I believe we can expect to see changes soon. I imagine things like data visualization and analytics, intuitive data exploration, semantic search, conceptual linking, and AI will start to better facilitate the information needs of our increasingly complex recruiting, and justify, at last, our continued obsession for employing the lowest common denominators to mechanize and staff our mission-critical operations.

I cannot fault your thinking about “limiting your outreach to people who might actually give a crap about a job,” any more than I could defend “employer of choice” aggrandizement in place of that being something that is objectively measured and independently validated.

Demonstrating a workplace environment that is valued by its employees — be that a chicken factory in Arkansas or a Silicon Valley powerhouse — is an altogether different form of branding than the chicanery promulgated by magazine publishers and assorted plaque pushers.  Traditionally aided and abetted by recruitment advertising agencies and boiler-room sales operations, they feed a brand’s vested stakeholders’ addiction to chintzy blog-bling, vacuous press coverage, and hanging adornments.  Like everyone else who profits from selling impressions and delivering eyeballs, they further cloud the real issues ensuring we remain…confused.

Again, John, thanks for providing a safe place for me to fall and indulging my thinking out loud.

I am answering some of the questions from attendees here, in the comments. Feel free to chip in.

Don’t miss Jim Durbin and his webcast Talent Scouting and Social Networking: The New Employee Referral Program on Tuesday, February 19th, also for HCI. Register here…