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.

In those instances where the need calls for high-volume hiring the issue is not the caliber of the recruiting personnel per se but the process and underlying technologies that are deployed in the name of cost and time efficiencies. If the economies of scale aren’t there then maybe the path of least resistance is to outsource the problem. Even then, the consumer-manager needs to be intimately involved in every aspect of the process, not just selection. The manager should be held accountable for results post-RPO too, why not?

I was told once by a VP of Legacy Thinking that that it makes no sense to ask a $150-an-hour manager to do $75-an-hour “grunt work.” Therein lies part of the problem, viewing recruiting as piecemeal work instead of quantifying its  intrinsic value to the organization, assigning responsibility for its proper execution to a capable manager.  As a result, despite lauding quality-of-hire metrics — however fuzzy — stakeholders continue to demand time-to-fill, cost-per-hire and money-in-the-bank metrics not knowing how else to measure recruiting value.

That said, “grunt work” like sourcing should be passed off to a $75-an-hour bod, and perhaps other elements of the process could be unbundled too. But, when all is said and done, these things need to be delivered in support of the manager, not a recruiting cohort or talent management overlord.

Faced with the possibility of being held accountable for recruiting outcomes, management surrogates like John Sullivan go on the attack.  For the purposes of throwing recruiting under the bus, “failure metrics” will do. Googling those “facts and numbers” keep us from considering the possibility that, instead of getting the bus from point A to point B, when it comes to taking the talent management lead, most  hiring managers are asleep at the wheel.

In defense of the recruiting professionals who are among the most gifted, and in reply to those whiny people John Sullivan’s quotes as saying, “Selection decisions are often about as accurate as a coin flip,” I say, “Then render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Newsflash! Recruiters don’t make selection decisions, “hiring managers” do.

So, what could a trainer do but compound the problem?

It’s trendy to talk about talent management in the context of strategy and  “best practice.” Invariably we default to transactional recruiting because we are forever driven by short-term imperatives. Maybe a decade of “talent shortages” combined with an institutionalization of JIT and “the arrogance of supply” has deepened the inherent flaws that have doomed modern-day corporate recruiting to the sorry state reported on ERE, not just in John Sullivan’s piece, but repeatedly over the years.

I’m not aware of any new training methods that enable recruiting-centric management thinking over process-driven behaviors, are you? That’s not to suggest training couldn’t enable managers more capable of strategic recruiting. But how do you justify the expense of that when the ROI may be harder to quantify than the number of candidates that over the years never even got an automated reply, let alone a recruiters’ call.

Last, how badly do we want to train our manager-gazumping competition? After all, if we could increase the value of our managers’ contribution by having them grow and develop their people from beginning to end, would we be prepared to pay them what they would then be worth? Probably not.

Consider: If we paid managers a percentage of the their new hires’ first years compensation, and an annual bonus for each one still engaged, managers might spend too much time on end-to-end “talent management.”  Granted, while recruiting may now be at the level John Sullivan imagines is good enough, who will then sign-off on department expenses or decide who gets the cubby-with-a-view when our longest serving team member finally kicks the bucket?

We don’t need better recruiters. Actually, I don’t think we need recruiters at all. We need better support for managers, managers who can grow and develop their teams free from the money- and time-wasting recruiters represent. Those managers who are good at getting the job done, in its entirety, should be rewarded accordingly.

To John Sullivan’s attention-grabbing intent, and  John Sumser’s suggestion that we should “line new employees up with the right people,” I hope my contribution here adds some weight to the scales of wishful thinking.

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.

Mr. Perry rather liked the idea of giving comparable Google-powers to job seekers as the ones I have been imagining recruiters might like to have.  If nothing else, something to read while putting their feet up after a long day slogging it out with buxom recruiter-infidels. Gunpowder for the natives, if you will.

Unfortunately, my piece was savagely cut, “For brevity’s sake,” I was told, “nothing to get your knickers in a twist over.” Hmmm, really? I’ll be the judge of that!

For those who want to read the unabridged version of  my chapter I have posted it here: Guerrilla Googling and the Job Hunters’ Dashboard.

For those who prefer a few “choice cuts:”

On “The War for Talent…”

“The things that we do that involve the justifiable and systematic destruction of life and property, the wholesale creation of widows and orphans, and which showcase the ghastly aspects of human ingenuity, make great metaphors for recruiting.”

On recruiter types…

“Whether the mercenary top-guns who have a silver bullet for every tough assignment or the enlisted rank-and-file who are best when shooting at point-blank range, the job seeker is likely to encounter a recruiter who has left many more dead and wounded in their wake than decorated heroes to their credit.”

On sourcing…

“A well-practiced hacker can find a handful of good resumes for Utah-based, bi-lingual, left-handed brain surgeons who specialize in anesthesia-free, pediatric trepanation as easily as a ho-hum hack can  find an endless supply of photocopier salesmen with profiles on LinkedIn, and who have long since been forgotten about.”

On being prepared…

“Remember, the corridors of power are littered with the bodies of well-intentioned job seekers who blew themselves up even before greeting the gatekeeper.  Asymmetrical warfare is not for the fainthearted or weak-willed. And it’s certainly not for the ill-prepared either.”

On calling recruiters at home…

“While you might think it’s reasonable to telephone a recruiter at home…imagine a mother of three trying to separate one of the twins from a choke hold while extricating the third from the jaws of an over playful Chihuahua and it is easy to understand why your unsolicited call may result in your permanent excommunication.”

Mr. Perry has invited me to contribute again for his next book. I can hardly wait. In the meantime, he has a blog, don’t you know: Guerrilla Job Hunting.

John suggests that “Former sourcing luminaries will be familiarizing themselves with the alarm on the French fry machine and the relative difference between Rare, Medium and Well done.”

Oh, dear.

I imagine in years to come when the names of those “sourcing luminaries” have been long forgotten there will still be those recruiters who would like to know how to find leads and resumes online. Poor souls, who will teach them?

It pains me to think of the years of hard graft that these forgotten fry cooks have put into researching search syntax and Boolean strings to advance the profession, all for naught. So sad that they are gone now, forgotten.

In the hours of my darkest depression, lamenting the impending death of so many beautiful minds, my own demise too perhaps, I decided I would erect a monument to the “Unkown Cybersleuth.”

In so doing I hope that for generations to come, recruiters every would add job titles like “Accountant” or skill sets like “Java” to the etched names memorialized there and click “Keywords” to miraculously find code left by the masters to cut and paste directly into their browsers.

Long after punditry has gone the way of sourcing, I imagine recruiters everywhere thumbing their noses at Mr. Sumser saying:

Sourcing is Dead! Long Live Google!

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

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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 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:

• The first are those who scan the content, hardly pay attention to it and leave feeling that they have just made an earnest attempt to improve their effectiveness as recruiters. In so doing, they believe they actually have;
• The second are those who read the content and decide as a result to act on it — invariably doing nothing;
• Third are those who mean to read their favorite gurus, get distracted and never come back, missing something that might help them become more successful — like understanding why we get distracted in the first place.

Interesting thing number one: Thought leaders cannot only get away with reposting stuff they published months ago but I see now that we should encourage them to do it:

• The readers in category one can reflect — just for a minute now — on what they have achieved in real terms since their first reading and go on with their accelerated development toward top-performerdom, unphased;
• The readers in category two either a) congratulate themselves for having had the exact same idea ages ago, deciding to finally take some action now it is being popularized, or b) acknowledge that they didn’t do what they were supposed to do and reaffirm to take action on this second reading. Again, invariably, nothing happens.
• The readers in category three see the article published for the first time, scan it and leave feeling they have made an earnest attempt to improve their effectiveness as recruiters. In so doing, they believe they actually have — or — they read the content and decide as a result to act on it, well, you know the rest…it’s the insanity defense.

I can’t think of a better reason to start writing stuff that I can repost at a later date. I will start doing it tomorrow.

Interesting thing number two: As one who reads a lot of what gets published in our space — and straddling all three categories of reader, I admit it — I get confused about what I read, when I read it and even who the blazes wrote it, had the idea before me.

Bothered by my befuddlement with Lou Adler’s repost I started digging around. I resurfaced Jeff Hunter’s gem Job Descriptions are Part of What is Killing Recruiting. Comparing Jeff Hunter’s point of view with Lou Adler’s I realize that I could synthesize the two and come up with something “original,” something that would make me look like a veritable genius!

Interesting thing number three: We should not overlook the huge number of places where sample job descriptions are available for plug-and-play recruiters the world over. There is obviously a huge appetite out there for job descriptions that come ready-made, requiring little or no thought, work or accountability.

This lazy approach to working with job descriptions suggests to me that while the thought leadership provided by Lou Adler [tactical] and Jeff Hunter [strategic] is compelling it could be one of the underlying reasons why so many readers end up falling into categories one and two to start with, left behind from one post to the next.

I think if we are to serve the causes of recruiting talent, managing a lean process, and for the abandonment of job descriptions too, the industry would be better served by arguing that job descriptions should be properly understood and managed from the get-go. You know, from the unglamorous task analysis to the one-dimensional candidate profile.

With the same passion Lou Adler and Jeff Hunter express in their posts insisting that everything is done by the book, as opposed to not doing it all — and reposting about it every six months — that should work like a charm if you want to get rid of job descriptions and those pesky one-size-fits-all job description sites, don’t you think?

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.

As the competition in the Web 2.0 market intensifies Ami foresees a proliferation of new applications, platforms, widgets and whiz-bang technology along with increasing usability issues in existing social networks. What was once fun will turn into drudgery with multiple logins and communities of “friends” to manage — detracting from core recruiting activities.

Against this backdrop, Ami predicts a general backlash among the industry’s early adopters. They will increasingly default to using proven resources like online sourcing, direct recruiting and building their personal networks.

For the rest, the gap between those who “get it” and those who “don’t even know” will widen. The real opportunity that Ami sees for established vendors and service providers lies in helping close the gap as the front runners start to slow down and the early majority catches up.

And to be included with such luminaries as Gerry Crispin, Lou Adler, Jason Davis and Shally Steckerl! Mother would be pleased.

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.

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?

I wonder.

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?