The Recruiting Inferno

Just couldn’t help myself – I was so giddy after watching our tax dollars hard at work “interviewing” baseball players (imagine if candidates answered questions the way they were answered – or if we asked questions the way they were asked) that I tried to imagine the Peter Finch soliloquy as a recruiter…

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a talent-laden depression. There are heads of HR scared of losing their job because they can?t get a handle on recruiting costs. 25% buys five percent?s work nowadays, recruiting is being outsourced, hiring managers are doing their own thing and keep passwords to job boards in their desk drawers. Salesmen who couldn?t sell snow to Eskimos are running wild up and down Wall Street waving resumes at open windows and there’s no end to what they?ll do to sell a candidate. Some corporate recruiters say that only they know about their company?s business environment and that resumes from TPRs are inferior, and candidates sit back and check their inboxes while some Midwest-based outplacement guru tells us that today that the national unemployment rate has dropped one-tenth of a percent, as if that’s supposed to make everyone feel better. We know things are bad – worse than bad, they’re crazy. Every manager wants the needle in a haystack but don?t want to do what it takes to do it. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so much so that it seems that no one cares about directly sourcing anymore. So many just sit by their computer, add boring posts to national job boards, check their ATS? several times each day, wait for candidates to click down eighteen levels to find the career page, and slowly, little by little, recruiting is becoming insignificant, being replaced in the HR chain of importance by 5500 reports, mutual fund education programs, and facilities planning initiatives, while all recruiters who truly care are left to say, “Please, at least let us directly source from our competitors without the need to hire a torts expert. Let me have my company directory and my list of supercharged Google hacks and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.” Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to just protest or leave another wah-wah post on ERE. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write the President of your SHRM chapter because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about steroids in baseball and drilling in Alaska and the loss of Andy Sipowicz on Tuesday nights and Social Security solvency and oil prices and the crimes committed in Neverland. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. [shouting] You’ve got to say, ?I’m a RECRUITER, Goddamnit! My work has VALUE! I?m a CIB!? So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs, go into your wallets, take out the SHRM card, tear it up, and throw it into the trash. I want you to go to the window. Open it, stick your head out, and yell, [shouting] “I’M AS STRATEGIC AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO JUST USE JOB BOARDS ANYMORE!” I want all of you to get up out of your chairs, go into your wallets, take out the SHRM card, tear it up, and throw it into the trash. I want you get out of you cubicle, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as strategic as hell and I’m not going to just use job boards anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get strategic! You’ve got to say, ?I’m as strategic as hell, and I’m not going to just use job boards anymore!? Then we’ll figure out what to do about baseball and drilling and the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: [screaming at the top your lungs] “OK HR – I’M AS STRATEGIC AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO JUST USE JOB BOARDS ANYMORE!”