Archive for the 'Recruiting' Category

I Think, Therefore I Spam

Published by Amitai Givertz on September 13, 2006 in Business Matters and Recruiting. 9 Comments

Most people I ask complain that unsolicited email is the most egregious form of advertising. There are many reasons for this, some of which I understand and some of which I don’t. To the extent that the cumulative affect of spam – clogging stuff up – is problematic, and porn and nasty words are offensive to most right-minded people, I get it. I can even see why some people might get annoyed with the same message touting mortgages or member-enhancing herbal concoctions arriving day in and day out can get tiresome. Even the deceptive subject lines. But, to the extent that spam is inherently bad because it is unsolicited, makes no sense to me at all.

With few exceptions advertising is, by its nature, obtrusive and mostly irrelevant to the luckless recipients’ needs, wants and desires. Most advertising is unsolicited, or a trade-off at best. I want televised entertainment and news, so I put up with the ads. Do I want to change my choice of tampon, refinance my house, or sleep with Fabio?  I don’t. Do you?  I listen to the radio, so I accept the ads. Am I suing someone, looking for hurricane shutters, needing a surgical procedure, fixing my credit scores and wishing I had to the fortitude to admit I’m an alcoholic and need help? Not this year. I drive up and down the turnpike but do I want to reconsider my unwanted pregnancy, go to college or tune in to another radio station and get a different demographically targeted set of ads? No more than I want to finish my on-the-road coffee without having to consider the fact that I should have saved a buck and bought a Styrofoam sandwich too.

Advertising – unsolicited, unwanted, and unnecessary – is everywhere! I use Instant Messenger and now have to consider whether I would do a number on Britney Spears or lie alone on a sleep-number bed. Even in the men’s room, as I stand there peeing, I am confronted with even more choices – but then again, what better place to catch my attention as I hold in my hand the very object of most advertisers subtle messaging? Yes, as an advertiser myself, I too find myself thinking on my feet.

The bottom-line? Advertising is the price we pay for free speech, freedom of choice and living in a free society. Whether unsolicited or not, it’s in your face (or in your hands) most of the time. And in the absence of these freedoms, advertising simply becomes repackaged and called propaganda.  Messaging in its multifarious forms is so prevalent because it’s fundamentally human.

Shally “Shallywag” Steckerl recently had a hot thread going on with his post Didn’t like SMS recruiting? Think again! Among the possible objections to text messaging recruitment/candidate communications to cell phones is the concern that this is “spamming”. But just as Yahoo! HotJobs and Monster have mass e-mail options for employers – is that considered spamming – the end may justify the means. Candidates are a de facto – not sacrosanct – audience. What many “Oh-golly-you-spammer-degenerate” critics seemingly forget is that when a candidate posts their resume online they are inviting the attention of recruiters. If those recruiters turn to bulk mail, text messaging or mass e-mail to get their message delivered, then that’s price a candidate must be prepared to pay for advertising themselves. While I concede that the delivery method can negatively impact employer branding and the candidate experience, that’s not the point here. The point is that some people should get over themselves thinking that spam is a) unstoppable and b) the work of Satan.

I don’t choose to hear “f-ing” this and “f-ing” that, but if I’m “out there” I accept there is a possibility I will.  I don’t want to cleanse my bowels or find a job but I’m grateful that there is someone out there who recognizes that one day I might. And, I know our inboxes and cell phones are so personal to us as to be near-holy, but He too moves in mysterious ways. I suggest that anyone who has the problem today we all faced a few years back with unsolicited “junk” should consider that – as with all two way communication – they too have a responsibility to manage their lives. With freedom comes responsibility, no?  I say, if you don’t like it, block it. If you don’t know how to block it, read the manual.  In the meantime, long live advertising - in all its myriad forms!

Bum, Bum, Bailey, O!

Published by Amitai Givertz on September 11, 2006 in Business Matters, Recruiting and Talent Management. 12 Comments

All this talk of “Talent Wars” has made me feel queasy. Colin Kingsbury posted a rebuttal to my post Rub-A-Dub-Dub with What if they threw a war and nobody came? in which he restates his assertion that talk of an inevitable talent shortage is nonsensical – a position which I questioned, not refuted. But I concede now, not for having been persuaded one way or another, but because Colin Kingsbury has left me with a sharp pain in the back of my head, reaching for an ice pack. I guess some questions are better left unasked, not answered.

Similarly, John Sumser with his posts War I, War II, War III and War IV has led me to wonder if he is in cahoots with Colin Kingsbury, illustrating beautifully that – as Colin Kingsbury commented – “if you torture statistics long enough they will eventually confess to anything.” Unfortunately – as it seems to me – John Sumser has concluded that in establishing “name, rank and serial number” he has uncovered the identity of an enemy within when in reality all it is is census data withstanding the electric cattle prod of John Sumser’s analysis.

Conclusions drawn in conclusion of this thing, for the time being at least:

1. Colin Kingsbury is a wonderfully gifted blogger and salesman too. As a blogger he writes and asserts with a persuasive, authoritative tone that comes with a journalistic temperament and Clintonesque youthfulness. As a salesman, how could you not buy a time-machine from this man, warranted for the next ten years? Colin Kingsbury is an ace.

2. After putting us through the wringer for a whole week with graphs and data and bullet points, John Sumser in now in two minds – two minds and undecided! – about the Talent Wars:

“So, the answer is that there is and isn’t a labor shortage. To the extent that you desire a ready trained and available workforce at your whim, there’s a problem. To the extent that you are willing to articulate your needs clearly and invest in the people you hire, there’s not much of one.”

…but unequivocal in his prognosis:

“If we are really going to continue to grow the economy at 20th century rates, we’ll have to make some changes.”

Brilliant.

3. You can look out ten years or project fifty years out, it hardly matters. Anyone who suggests that hiring talent today is not significantly affected by a shortage of qualified candidates – passive, active or not yet born – and that this situation will continue to be problematic for the predictable future, is living in cloud-cuckoo land. Reflect on your own experience and consider how different things looked in your world, ten, thirty, fifty years ago. Look at the global, economic, social, work/life projections that were made for us back then and look where we are today. Based on those reflections, how certain are you about what your world will look like even tomorrow? Perhaps Colin Kingsbury is right – and he could be – but a good many of us who graduated from the School of Hard Knocks will be dead long before we can wheel John Sumser out in 2050 to pat him on the back for an astute reading of Pakistan’s projected population growth and changing demographics.

4. Did someone miss the fact that in the places where we have economic growth today we are fighting a global war for talent? Thankfully, John Sumser suggests that in his upcoming series of posts he will give us tools to navigate the upcoming labor requirements, reconcile his ambivalence. Let’s hope those tools are more like a pickax than a ice pick. Lord knows, we are going to need more than conjecture and a sharp pain in the back of the head if we are to crack this one.

Are You A Damned Liar Too?

Published by Amitai Givertz on September 7, 2006 in Recruiting. 24 Comments

Last Wednesday afternoon, a recruiter I know was suggesting that it is terribly wrong to be deceitful as part of the process of sourcing names and poaching talent. She wagged her finger at me and said, “You scallywag! Suggesting that recruiting and names sourcing is like sales and prospecting is true, but only up to the point that a recruiter would never lie.” Being a salesman before lying my way into the recruiting profession I thought to myself, “You moron”, but in the interests of polite conversation I said, “Well, I guess you’re right, Mavis.”

This recruiter then proceeded to inform me that the whole business of recruiting has become corrupt. Resumes aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on – full of lies, half-truths and misrepresentations. Hiring managers? They are brazen liars too, especially sales managers and particularly those in advertising and media. To illustrate the point about hiring managers, she cited several instances where she was told that a strong candidate didn’t cut the mustard when clearly, if the manager had taken a moment to read the (heavily censored) resume, an interview – a hire even – would most certainly have been the result. No doubt about it.

Continue reading ‘Are You A Damned Liar Too?’

Rub-A-Dub-Dub: Sumser, Kingsbury & Recruitomatic

Published by Amitai Givertz on September 4, 2006 in Business Matters, Recruiting and Talent Management. 6 Comments

John Sumser forces the dim-witted among us to google the crypto-heading of his article ZPG to find it means “Zero Population Growth.” In his Electronic Recruiting News article, John Sumser bullet points some changes to note as the global talent shortage becomes even more acute. In a rare departure from protocol, he publishes a reply – not to save himself the bother of writing something before taking off a long Labor Day Weekend – but because Colin Kingsbury is one of the very few in the recruiting bubble who John Sumser endorses, and for heaven’s sake, why not?

In ZPG II Colin Kingsbury makes some valid points relative to population growth and reasons that under favorable conditions – George Bush leaving office,  migration to the U.S. of much needed talent, not patronizing younger employees, squeezing round pegs into square holes and so on –  the projected shortfall in talent may be averted. 

I cannot argue that Colin Kingsbury’s point of view is not compelling. It is. I cannot argue that he is wrong. I don’t know. What I can say is this: his hypothesis cannot be tested against alternate points of view or current trends because he offers no data or research to support it. Maybe there isn’t data out there. Who knows?

And, how will Colin Kingsbury’s speculation be put to the test without a debate of the issues? Again, John Sumser leaves the dim-wits hyperventilating for the ability to post a comment and develop the thread to engage his elevated readership – beyond the reach of the recruiting blogosphere – in a more involved process of thought-leadership? Don’t ERN’s readers deserve an answer to the types of question that could be posed to help develop Colin Kingsbury’s optimism and our own understanding of the issues? For example:

1. How are we going to reconcile the increased levels of U.S. xenophobia and racism arising form the threats of “Islamofascism” with the possible migration of teaching, healthcare, technical, scientific and engineering talent from countries like India, Pakistan and the Philippines? Is it as simple as waiting for President Bush to leave office in 2008? Will everyone stop hating Americans then? Will all veiled and bearded olive complexions suddenly morph from potential terrorists to potential hires? Or will their negative image persist, impede progress?

2. As over half of the U.S. government’s civilian workforce and C-level baby boomers are projected to retire in the next five years on their lucrative pensions – perhaps the last generation to have the option of a lifetimes investment in work to draw on – who is going to lead us? If it is the round pegs in the square holes, at what point are we going to address failed succession and workforce planning and social systems – like education – that have in large part contributed to the types of problems we face today? And who is to say employers are ready for a “misfit” workforce that anyway? Not me.

3. The job-hopping trend continues. 74% of workers are not “happy” at work, open to new and “better” opportunities. The trends continue to disadvantage the majority of employers. So, at what point does retention becomes a key issue for an organization’s continued prosperity in the face of ongoing talent shortages? Are we ready as a society to deal with the underlying issues that continue to threaten the U.S. economic engine like our insatiable appetite for everything on-demand including fulfillment at work and for career? How are Colin Kingsbury’s views of the talent shortage positively or negatively impacted by these types of workforce dynamics?

Addressing the issues of talent shortages and zero population growth and potential fixes obviously transcends a couple of posts on a couple of blogs. But I don’t hear the conversation being advanced anywhere else online. Points of view are easy to come by. A debate of the issues is a tougher thing to find, like a good conversation I guess. Another reason, Mr. Sumser, as to why we blog.  And why – long weekends aside – Recruitomatic applauds your posting of Colin Kingsbury’s post.

Rupert Murdoch: Privacy, Screening, Smoke & Mirrors

Published by Amitai Givertz on August 31, 2006 in Recruiting. 2 Comments

Peter Gold makes an interesting point in his Myspace - Mydetails - Ornot! post on the Hire Strategies blog, adding another layer of conversation to the debate about MySpace, privacy and the role of the Gladys Kravitz wannabes.  As Peter’s posts often do, this one really got me thinking. As my train of thought went from no privacy online to Rupert Murdoch’s recent acquisition of MySpace to CEOs blogging, I made a startling discovery – Rupert Murdoch has a MySpace profile.  Looking at it, I wonder if you would give this man a job. 

As online persona, personal brand and digital fascism have entered the employers’ screening and assessment debate, true to form, “The Dirty Digger” reminds us – you can’t believe everything you read in the papers, hear in the news or see online. It’s too two dimensional, don’t you think?

How to Hire Better Salespeople

Published by Amitai Givertz on August 29, 2006 in Recruiting. 1 Comment

Lou Adler publishes an interesting article on ERE, How to Hire Better Salespeople. Curiously subtitled: “It only takes two questions, if you know what you’re looking for” Lou Adler proceeds to describe a methodology to formulate those two questions that requires a lifetime of experience and a staff of twelve. 

Lou Adler closes his article with this remark:

“There are probably other ways to reduce new sales rep turnover by 50% and get newly hired sales reps achieving quota in half the time, but it’s unlikely they are any easier than this three-step process.”

Wow! That’s some assertion. Lou Adler sounds like a salesman, doesn’t he? To the extent that there are probably other ways to hire better salespeople is beyond question. And, we’ll give Lou Adler the benefit of the doubt regarding his easy-peasy three-step how-to by simply saying: nothing about recruiting top-flight sales talent is easy. But that closing remark reminds me that ERE has a ways to go in finding “unbiased” cover stories from writers capable of transcending their own vendor-agenda and who – I might add – may leave their readers drawing erroneous conclusions.

Please don’t misunderstand me or over react. I applaud with standing ovation Lou Adler for managing to promote himself as a subject matter expert – provided he picks the right subject – and for managing to get no fewer than three links in back to his own website and one instance of his email in the article. And I still assert that being an expert capable of writing good copy and running a business are not mutually exdusive. Proving this point, Lou Adler is a master marketer and should be cited as one of the best in our industry. But three month’s into ERE’s new look and editorial direction, are we to believe new writers are so few and far between? We don’t want to replace Lou Adler on ERE, we just want more of what was anticipated when the revamped ERE was heralded in.

Bearing in mind that experts come in various guises and that the universe extends beyond our own comfortable circle of favorites, Recruitomatic gives you two for the price of one: Lou Adler in fine fettle on ERE and Dave Kurlan who is exceptionally well qualified to comment on this particular subject. If you have an interest in recruiting better salespeople, visit and bookmark Dave Kurlan’s blog: Understanding the Sales Force. Visit his website. Perhaps Dave Kurlan will enlarge the recruitment bubble with a more active participation than in the past. And one day – we can only hope – we will be reading Dave Kurlan and other guest authors on ERE too.

Sperm

Published by Amitai Givertz on August 14, 2006 in Blogging, Outlandish, Recruiting and Talent Management. 5 Comments

Coming to terms with my place in the blogosphere and the sorry realization that my esoteric writing cannot compete for readers in the bubble of recruitment blogging, I have decided to revert to a more traditional use for my weblog.

I shall write as if my posts were entries to a personal diary. The advantage of this is that I can now say what I like without having to pander to the sensibilities of those I once sought out for approval or acceptance. And no more replies to fallacious arguments, I’m done. I have ripped out the ability to count page views and the number of feeds from my WordPress dashboard. I will not be monetizing my site. Metrics? Phooey.

From now on I shall try to work out the details of a thing through the creative process of blogging, “musing” in blog-speak and posting a la Recruitomatique

Realizing there may be one or two who might want to read my entries – to fill their own void or loneliness perhaps – I will keep my sentences short. Uncomplicated. Not too intense. I will lighten up. Let the real me shine through.

If you are a recruitment blogger, one of the self-absorbed or self-serving or self-important – take your pick – or just a gentle reader, before you abandon me, disgusted that there is nothing of value here, a thought or two so that our brief time together may not be entirely wasted…

Continue reading ‘Sperm’

David Perry Speaks…

Published by Amitai Givertz on August 10, 2006 in Blog Swap, Business Matters and Recruiting. 1 Comment

I am privileged to be hosting David Perry as my guest for this week’s Blog Swap. Many will know David for co-authoring Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters and his companion work Guerilla Job Hunting – The Blog. David is also a partner in Perry-Martel International which is a posh executive search firm based out of…well, they’re international.

David Perry Speaks… 

By the year 2010, the cumulative codified knowledge of the world will double every 11 hours, which means that what you go to bed knowing at night will be outdated by daybreak. Shelf life for knowledge will be the same as that for a banana. Already, product lifecycles are measured in weeks not months or years. In this environment a company’s survival hinges on its employee’s ability to share knowledge - a concept that is foreign to most organizations, where people hoard knowledge to safeguard their jobs.

In the forthcoming book, Building Organizations That Leap Tall Buildings in a Single Bound, authors Ron Wiens, Ken Sudday and I focus on how to build a corporate culture that produces a winning bottom line by focusing on the organization’s Relationship Intelligence. We demonstrate that the ability of employees to trust is a measure of the organization’s Relationship Intelligence.

Companies with high Relationship Intelligence will succeed because they can build new knowledge and therefore new products and wealth on a continuing basis. In contrast, companies that have low Relationship Intelligence and hoard their knowledge and will fail.

Make no mistake, responding to change is not new, but the speed at which companies must make high-impact additions to their leadership teams is new. A company’s leadership equity has a direct bearing on its ability to drive through new strategies, make tough decisions, and turn crisis into opportunity.  

This is an environment for lean companies, driven by a relative handful of highest-quality employees.   Your requirement for people with tenacity, real talent and dogged determination can only be satisfied by using a recruiter who can match those qualities for your recruitment drive.   Recruiting is becoming a “craft” the perfect blend of art and science.

Today, your recruiter needs to be your “success partner” - someone willing to search the world, call the right prospects, get their attention, raise your proposition above the background noise, keep at it tenaciously for however long it takes – be it weeks or months – and be intelligent enough to present the same opportunity in creative new lights until the persuasion works.

In short, your success partner has to know your organizational structure creates your business opportunities, and then work with you until you attain your desired future.  How does your recruiter measure up?

© Copyright 2006 David Perry

Which Side of the Fishbowl?

Published by Amitai Givertz on August 7, 2006 in Blog Swap and Recruiting. 1 Comment

Thanks to Tod Hilton for his guest post this week as part of the Blog Swap, and for being a Recruitomatic stalwart. As you can see, Tod needs no introduction from me…

Which Side of the Fishbowl?

A quick little intro for those of you tuning in to the Big Bad Recruiting Blog Swap … My name is Tod Hilton and I will be your host for this post. What I am: a software developer at Microsoft and a bunch of other things [father, husband, gamer, snowboarder, etc.]. What I’m not: a recruiter or hiring manager, although I do interview candidates and give the infamous ‘hire’ or ‘no-hire’ recommendation.

If there’s one thing I quickly noticed about Amitai’s personality it’s that he calls it like he sees it…no matter what. :-) Behold the evidence here, there, around-the-bend, over-that-hill, on-top-of-that-fence-post and oh-yeah-here-too. He’s been blogging for less than 2 months and his bluntness has made me laugh out loud [mostly in agreement] more times than several of the people I voraciously consume as often as they can post. That’s a tough act to follow [and I sincerely hope that he continues], but here goes nothing…

Imagine if you will, a goldfish [let’s call him Percy] swimming around a nice round little fishbowl. Percy knows that fishbowl like the back of his fin [yes, I’m assuming fish can see the back of their fins]. He knows exactly how deep the water is. He knows exactly where the tiny fake plant is placed. He knows exactly how many strokes it takes him to swim completely around the bowl. He knows everything there is to know about that bowl. Well, at least the inside of it…

That’s where I come in. You see, I’m not in that fishbowl with Percy. Sure, I see how big it is and that the water is X inches deep and that the tiny fake plant is placed a little off-center to the right side [of course, unless you turn it]. But I also see that the bowl itself is sitting on top of a counter. And next to it on the counter is a picture frame with a lovely family smiling back at me. Hanging on the wall above the fishbowl and picture is an Ansel Adams print [Oak Tree, Snowstorm taken in Yosemite]. In fact, the bowl is surrounded by all sorts of items that the fish doesn’t even really notice. Sure, Percy can see outside of the bowl, but it’s all a bit distorted to him. Obviously it would be distorted because of the convex shape of the glass bowl. But perhaps not so obvious, what is outside of the bowl is distorted to him because it doesn’t really affect his daily life. Percy can swim all day long, but that picture sitting next to his bowl doesn’t do anything for him. Or does it?

You can read about fish all day long [I’m not sure why you’d want too, but I suppose you could do it nonetheless] so let me get to a point…and yes, there actually is one. :-) As a non-recruiter participant in the recruiting blog swap I see myself as sitting outside of the fishbowl while all of you recruiters are inside. Now, now, now…before you go and get all upset with hurt feelings let me continue. I have read many, many great posts over the past 5 weeks solely as a result of participating in the blog swap. Stuff I never would have been exposed to if I hadn’t made the rash decision [yes, it was definitely an impulse thing for me] to participate. You are all opening my eyes to issues you face [as recruiters] that I was only vaguely aware of. I’ve learned about how the recruiting industry is leveraging technology beyond just a simple listing of a company’s job opportunities. I have read several pieces about how recruiting should deal with individual transparency becoming the norm because of people revealing so much personal information online (i.e.: MySpace). I’ve gotten some insight in to how you view resumes [or the death of them]. All of it is great information and it has been a valuable learning experience for me.

But consider my perspective. I’m a software developer. I only spend time recruiting in an official capacity if I absolutely have to [like the recent SDET position we filled on my team]. And trust me, I didn’t particularly enjoy it so I’m not looking to make any career changes in that direction. To me, on any normal day, the conversations y’all are having are like that picture outside of Percy’s fishbowl. I can see them and hear them, but they’re distorted because they don’t directly affect me. For me, it’s like I have jumped in the fishbowl and am now swimming around with you recruiter-type-goldfish for the first time. :-) But where does that leave you recruiter-type-goldfish?

Now think about that for a minute.

OK, minute’s up. I’ll tell you where it leaves you…you’re still swimming around in the same fishbowl with the same goldfish and the same tiny fake plant. Sure, you might be talking more than you were before, but what are you talking about? Survey says…recruiting [ding, ding, ding].

In all fairness, not all of the posts have been focused solely on recruiting issues. I would be doing a disservice to everyone if I inferred that the subjects were so narrowly scoped. There have been several discussions that moved outside the normal boundaries of recruiting [although I don’t know whether to count Gretchen’s haikus :-)]. I think it’s great that you’re all cooperating like this and getting the conversations started, but I challenge you to break out of your comfort zones and move the discussions into unexplored territories. I have learned just how much recruiters can affect my life by simply jumping in to the bowl with you. That’s something I never would have known if I hadn’t noticed that family picture sitting next to my own little fishbowl.

A fish, a bowl and a picture. Which side of the fishbowl are you on, or rather, should you be on?

© Copyright 2006 Tod Hilton

Just-In-Time Posting, Jack

Published by Amitai Givertz on August 1, 2006 in Recruiting and Talent Management. 0 Comments

Today, John Sumser claims on interbiznet that he has been waiting nearly fifteen years for someone to come along with a method for bringing recruiting into the same shape as the rest of the modern organization adding there’s been no one who fully understands the implications of Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma and/or Lean Thinking. For tomorrow’s installment, John Sumser promises to develop the thread with a conversation on “waste,” prepping for next week’s Kennedy Information’s Recruiting 2006 soiree in New York no doubt.

The other day Jeff Hunter – another highly respected and revered thought leader - who also manages a rather sizeable recruitment organization, a practitioner if you will – suggested that John Sumser has “jacked” his content before, and may feel that way reading John Sumser’s lean postings. But, I cannot imagine why. Has Jeff Hunter come up a method for bringing recruiting into the same shape as the rest of the modern organization? What could he possibly know about “waste?” Where the dickens was Jeff Hunter fifteen years ago anyway?

So many questions, sensing a disturbance in the force I am. Really, come on, with the Kennedy conference just around the corner - and with everyone getting to meet at last - shouldn’t we know who is jacking who? I don’t know, it must be tough at the top.

In the meantime, today’s other picks come from Kevin Wheeler – another young pretender on the recruiting scene – Recruiting: Applying the Principles of Lean Manufacturing to Recruiting.