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.

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.

I don’t know if “better late than never” applies here as I think the last thing humanity needs at this point in our evolution is another applicant tracking system but the nice people at Zoho have just  announced Zoho Recruit and, if nothing else, I want to acknowledge the quality of personal service Chandru gave me.

As to Zoho’s unremarkable launch, Mr. Ted could teach them a thing or two about clever marketing I think. I do believe they’ll need it…

1. 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.




2. 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]




3. 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?

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…

Until it ruptures with life-threatening and gut-wrenching pain a benign appendix goes quite unnoticed. As one of many useless parts of the human anatomy which have atrophied with evolution I realized that most of the plugins I had installed were, or had become, similarly vestigial.

With surgical precision I started whipping out the offending plugins to find that not only did my blog now work but that I rather liked the idea that stripping the blog down was “inline” with how I my want “online” experience to be…minimalist, intensely personal, um, useful even.

I never had much of a readership here. The one or two occasional visitors were more likely perverts looking for filipino hot babes or wannabe sperm donors than the industry blogebrities whose attention I once craved.

That said, I was alarmed — I don’t know why, what else did I expect? — to find that the faint signs of life that affirmed my blog’s existence for the last however-long had completely disappeared. Instead, Google Analytics showed a flat line. My blog is dead. I mean, like, no signs of life. Flat-line dead. Even three days after reactivating the analytics plugin, nothing. I mean, three days, for the love of God!

But hold on a sec…is that brain activity I detect or is this an out-of-blog experience?  There’s got to be more to this experiment than Recruitomatic’s gone bye-bye. Surely, there must be more.

Hello?

Well, I guess “today is a good day to die” after all.

Clear!

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.

While technology continues to envision a promising future I wonder how many employers can translate any of it beyond the reordered acronyms of a fancy, near historic sales pitch.

After all, who will the marketers and salespeople target for the progressive solutions like Recruiting.com’s new whiz-bang offering? Why, companies with lousy internal processes, weak management and a decimated recruiting function of course. At best, it’s Methadone for an industry long stupefied by vendors’ peddling the things dreams are made of.

On the bright side, Raghav had no idea that Recruiting.com was a reinvention of  “i-love-me-some-disruptor” Jason Goldberg’s Jobster. The disassociation is a  branding coup for CEO Jeff Seely and his team I think. For those of us who have been around long enough to remember Goldberg’s shenanigans and/or Recruiting.com’s humble beginnings as a trend-setting blog — that is remarkable indeed.

Perhaps Recruiting.com is, as my buddies-in-the-know suggest, deserving of a second look. You decide.

1. One would hope that tutoring in the Stanislavski method could improve the chances of every job seeker…fake it ’til you make it, buddy!
2. The firing will continue until morale improves…makes perfect sense to me.
3. “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?

1. Is it distracted driving, one too many potholes, or both? Putting it bluntly…your manager is a dope.
2. You take the high road, I’ll take the low road but remember…You Can’t Have it Both Ways
3. Tut-tut. Mr. Hunter throws poor Jim under the bus. Well, better than “threw the windscreen,” no?

1. 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
2. Erecting the new recruiting edifyce…Bob the Builder meets Smiling Bob
3. “When we win, we all win.” So, what happens when we’re counting the rations?…Man overboard!

1. 30-seconds in blogging is all it takes, to post that is. Like the author says: “It’s not what you say but how you present it.” So true.
2. What is the difference between an essay and a blog post? Well, it ain’t thirty seconds, ducky!
3. And I quote: “A recruiter is a consultant…To get in bed with your client put on your consultative head.” Whatever happened to nurses in suspenders?

1. John Sumser under the influence?…Shocking but true
   
2. Has Glen Cathey gone native? OMG, we’ve lost him…Dancing with wolves
   
3. This blogger gets the pink Caddie for raising the bar…Lisa Kaye, we salute you!
   
4. To SEO or not to SEO? That is the question.