A Contrarian View of Life in the Recruitosphere
Here are the slides from my presentation for the Human Capital Institute and the first in their Talent Acquisition Learning Track which is sponsored by Trovix.
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…
I thought Lou Adler’s recent post Why You Must Eliminate Job Descriptions was interesting, didn’t you? You did read it, right?
I know I shouldn’t generalize but I can’t help myself in pointing out that readers of online recruiting stuff fall into one of three categories:
Read my take for the coming year just published by ZoomInfo…
Amitai offers a different take, predicting that early adopters of social media for recruiting will remain in the minority. Too few frontline recruiters will risk the perils of transparency in corporate environments that need to mitigate risk and innovation and apply bottom-line metrics instead. As the economics of recruiting come under closer scrutiny with a softening economy and an inability to quantify the ROI on social media, there will be a slowdown in the rate of adoption by recruiters.
Bill Vick gave an excellent — albeit abbreviated — presentation last week at John Sumser’s Dallas Recruiting Roadshow. It was interesting on many levels. Taking the elevator up, first floor…
Bill’s presentation introduced “bleeding edge” technology to recruiters who by and large — by their own show of hands — were hemorrhaging on old notions of how to use the Internet. It was that that was was most interesting to me. I wondered, “Is the so-called war for talent going to be won with what most recruiters are currently equipped with?” I don’t think so.
Mezzanine level, going up: On the topic of the importance of online profiles — why recruiters should have them, how they are used in recruiting, and how they will be used in the future — Bill made an interesting comment, something to the effect that the day is coming that everything that could be known about a person will be available for anyone to sniff out online. Hmmm…that may have some downside, don’t you think?
First floor: Listening to Bill, I was reminded of a couple of things taken off my morning reader earlier in the year. The first was a post by John Sumser on ERN called More About Search and the other was posted on Proverbs31 titled He Knows My Name. Somewhere there was a stream of conciousness that went from technology for recruiters to playing cards to house of cards to, well, frankly I don’t remember — I’ll have to read the posts again!
Second floor: Somehow in that flow of confused recollection I concluded that in what Bill was suggesting — our being sorted according to relative value [good deeds] and reputation [good name], and all that for some omnipresent recruiters’ advantage — it would be just as well to remember what happened the last time tried to create such a thing — a whole heap of confusion!
Roof top parking: Just a thought.
How out of synch are employers with the next-generation workforce when our schools are so out of synch with their students?
In the same way as brick-and-mortar schools can barely contain a wireless generation how well are they preparing them for future jobs the likes of which we haven’t imagined yet?
[Can't see the video? Click here to view on YouTube]
How many entry-level job descriptions read like they were scratched out on chalkboards, the required skills, competencies, attitudes and what-have-you reminiscent of workplaces that predate Google?
An interesting post on Social Media Explorer Deconstructing Second Life questions the value of Second Life based on a review of the virtual world’s demographics:
The demographics show 8.5 million users, but only 561,000 of those are “active.” While nearly 40 percent of the active ones are age 25-34, only 26 percent are from the United States (with Brazil a distant second a 8.5). The numbers show 57 percent of active users are male.
So, the population is 561,000, not exactly a number global brands raise an eyebrow toward. Only 149,000 of those are in the U.S., so you’re basically trying to market to the population of Eugene, Ore. If you’re trying to reach men, your audience becomes 84,900. Women? Less.
When I spoke with Jim Stroud about this a few weeks ago he mentioned the Q-factor as being important — a counterpoint in the post — but unless you are recruiting techies who also happen to be early adopters, is there any point?
Rob Robinson: this guy has got it licked.
On the scene for some years now, it has never been easy to recommend FuckedCompany.com as a resource for recruiters even though the daily catalogue of firings, layoffs, furloughs and assorted corporate shenanigans makes it a great resource for identifying potential hires before their resumes hit the streets. For others, FuckedCompany.com has the industry scoops, ahead of the mainstream media.
I know, I know, in the interests of authenticity we can get away with the occasional “f”-this and “f”-that – keeping it real – but really, is it any wonder that otherwise perfectly good sourcing tools never make recruiters’ lists or get cited when they break important news?
Well, you have to love Jason Goldberg. When we met briefly at the Jobster exhibit at the HR Technology bash in Chicago – actually it was more of a bomb than a bash – Jason Goldberg told me that he was going to make his mark as a disruptor in the online recruitment space, very soon he said. A disruptor, eh? I asked Jason Goldberg whether he favored the neural disruptor over the temporal disruptor at which point, conveniently distracted by the possibility of talking to somebody with money, he left me dangling there, disrupted. No matter.
The other day Jason Goldberg sent me an email from one of his handheld gadgets to update me on his disruptor plans, a “heads-up” he said. I am always amazed at how people will send me critically important communications and, just as I’m getting to the point of replying with the single question that will help me make sense of the universe, they have to board a plane, handheld gadgets turned off. Or, chase people with money. Whatever, no matter.
At Jason Goldberg’s suggestion I took a quick peak at Superstar Tags and immediately concluded that while the idea of tagging LinkedIn-look-a-likes-come-passive-candidates-and-wannabes might be considered kind of folksy by some of those who would automatically pooh-pooh this as nothing more than Web 2.0 [im]posturing, even so it is very clever idea. I like it, I don’t know why exactly, but no matter.
This morning Jason Goldberg published a simple post, recruiting bloggers. It reads: “know any recruiters who blog? here’s a good starting list.”
I followed the links thinking I was going to be redirected to the new group blog RecruitingBloggers.com but landed on a Superstar Tags page for recruiting bloggers. Disruptive thinking or cognitive dissonance? Bother! Naturally, I created my Jobster profile so that I could tag myself along with my contemporaries. Who wouldn’t? I even answered some of the questions that people who don’t know me personally would ask to get a measure of me as a potential hire. Questions like: “If your life could be made into a movie, which actress would play the part of your Mother?” To my horror – as happened with my carefully considered what does web 2.0 mean to you? submission – I played Jason Goldberg’s interactive blog-post game and nothing happened! Nothing at all! Zut!
I fear Jason Goldberg may have confused his “shaking things up” with our being “shaken not stirred.” No matter. There are more fundamental issues than my anticappointment that would need to be addressed long before this innovation in of itself could ever disrupt the online recruiting space. But, that is for another post on another day. In the meantime, go tag yourself. You may have better luck at it than me.
If I was a student today – like you are perhaps – I would be pretty ticked off with the quality of online services and resources being provided by my college’s career center. Of course, there are always exceptions and I’m sure that somewhere out there is an unbelievably terrific resource that provides everything that would give me a competitive edge in my job search, but I haven’t seen it yet. What I have seen ranges from what I can only describe as mediocre, a typical offering of generic and conventional blah. Admittedly, my sampling for this missive was random and limited to the relatively few colleges who at least understand that students google. But you know what – this is a rant about shortchanging students working stuff out online and not an article about best practices. If career counselors or recruiters want to argue the toss – and I wish you would – hey, leave a comment.
Here are my top three peeves and some practical suggestions for you to consider:
Continue reading ‘College Career Centers: Reality Online Checks Out’
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