The Recruiting Inferno

For personal reasons, I stopped in at our town’s Armed Forces recruiting station: No, at 46 years old – despite the fact that the age limit has been raised to 40 – I do not have a future in the military. But I do have strong connection to the military despite my democratic party roots (hey, we’re all flawed, right?). But there was something about the Corporal’s “style” made me think that something special was about to take place.

After quickly dispensing with the real reason for my visit, we began to talk about recruiting – Strategic Planning, Organizational Impact, Processes, Metrics, and Systems. I showed the Cpl. the ERE site and it quickly crystallized in his mind that this was a good place to be. He wanted to know what recruiting was like on the outside – in his early 20’s, he was practically a veteran after four years of service, and had no direct connection to life as a “highly” compensated recruiter. I spoke to him about what we do and how we do it. I could see the wheels turning and leaned forward to catch every word.

What I found was that he works like any great end-to-end recruiter but the “product” he sells is far different than any you have EVER sold. He has targets to hit and metrics that define his success. He uses an ATS that rivals those by the companies we know. He embraces CRM and knows that sometimes 100 plus calls each day are needed to develop relationships ? as are 14 hour days, six days a week. He is out in the community with a smile on his face and unwavering belief that what he is offering is something that not everyone can appreciate. He attends career fairs where some days he leaves with nary a name. He has outside-the-box ideas that more often than not do not pass muster at the highest level.

If you truly believe that the jobs you’re recruiting for are unique and challenging, think about being in his shoes for a day. In fact, I urge you – regardless of your political proclivity – to take a walk down to your local Armed Forces recruiting and talk to the recruiters about recruiting on the outside. Let them know that when their tour is over to look you up (did you know that those honorably leaving the military receive relocation to anywhere in the country for up to one year after discharge?); talk to them about recruiting for a corporation or as a TPR. Ask then if they would mind if you stayed in touch and if so, let them know that they should feel free to bounce ideas off you.

Tell them about the ERE and show them how to sign-up. When they join, introduce them to your network. In the end, it shouldn’t really matter whether you’re for or against the military.

Remember, they’re recruiters just like us…

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!”

Things have been getting spicy on several ERE Groups.  For instance, there’s been a wonderfully intelligent discussion in Carl Braun’s Diversity Recruiting group – one of my favorites as a lurker – where one can read (followed by my thoughts):

I don’t know of any recruiter who seeks to discriminate; perhaps but I don’t know many recruiters who’ll volunteer to their customer that their requirements are discriminatory and/or downright stupid.

Bottom line – diversity will work itself out naturally for most companies.; hmmm, imagine how long the Civil Rights movement would have taken if progress were left to natural selection?

Without a concentrated diversity recruiting effort the market effectively “conspired” against them through sheer numbers. I suppose a market forces model can be used to describe discrimination but it misses the sociological element.

I doubt a white woman would discriminate against you because you were white. No, but it might occur because many men are jerks and believe that women have no business in the Board room and have no compunction against saying this aloud.

Just because an institution is headed up by people of color, don’t ever assume they have folks of there own color best interests in mind. Same color does not always equate to same mentality. Some, certainly not all have reached an acme of socio-economic status and may not wish to rock the boat, because the man may be watching. Some of my best friends are Black, but not all of them are…sometimes I have to watch my BLACK… Wow, did this ever take my breath away!

Solving discrimination will never be done at the corporate level or within the workplace for that matter.  It is a socio-economic and education issue that needs to be dealt with in elementary and high school, and in the community, and in the home.  It is a parental issue.  As with any problem, I think the focus should be on fixing the problem at the root, rather than the symptom.  Workplace discrimination is the by product, if you want corporate America to make an impact on discrimination, ask them to donate money or support community initiatives that promote multiculturalism.  Eureka! But we can still examine where barriers have been created within organizations because no diversity effort will be successful if barriers to personal and professional growth exist. No barrier is a good barrier.

Bravo to Carl and the group – this is great stuff that for many isn’t easy to discuss privately let alone in a public forum. This is just one of the strategic issues that is necessary to continue to mold recruiting and it’s especially challenging when so many others are concerned with the more tactical elements of our craft.

Which brings me to my point. I truly enjoyed reading Jeremy Eskenazi’s article on the marriage of HR and recruiting. In it he offered So that’s why I can’t decide if the relationship between recruiter and HR generalist is like husband and wife or brother and sister. Either way, it’s all in the same family, and as we know from Darwin and Tony Soprano, it’s all about “the survival of the family. I couldn’t help thinking the adage that incest is only relative – you know what this can bring. As far as the Mafia connection, I can?t help but think of bloody horses heads. I certainly don’t want to be a part of this! Personally, I believe we’re a different family.

Whereas HR is like a trip to the zoo – a place for everything, everything in its place – no entropy allowed, recruiting is more like a Galapagos expedition in search of Organizational Darwinism where recruiters are Organizational Anthropologists and Geneticists (I suppose this makes HR folks zookeepers). We go by the names Watson and Crick (perhaps Adler, Crispin, Sullivan, and Wheeler can fight over who plays Linus Pauling and Louis Leakey) and our plans, techniques, and tools are accountable for uncovering the triggering mechanisms that enable the organizational entropy that is required for ongoing growth and productivity. The HR programs are great but it is talent that drives everything. We need to intimately understand what the organization’s current DNA looks like in order to effectively search for new material that is to be combined into the new double helix.

Realistically, it isn’t easy being HR especially when they are rightly concerned about escalating benefit costs, SOX 404, violence in the workplace, executive compensation, and ongoing government intervention in – well, heck, everything. But with so many heads of HR still believing that cost-per-hire is the ultimate recruiting metric, it has become apparent that recruiters need to separate themselves from the family they were once comfortably part of and take a different approach.

I know HR wants to be a strategic business partner in business (every Conference Board survey for the past umpteen years says this); it’s time that recruiters show that they already are strategic business partners. Are you?

“If I had a bulldog with a face like yours, I’d shave it’s a– and teach it to walk backwards.”

Yes, the organization was ugly and many of the managers were ugly – especially this particular manager. But there are many times when ugliness doesn’t seep deep into the nooks and crannies of the Internet waiting to be found. So who knows the truth in these instances?

Yes, your friendly neighborhood TPR. How many corporate recruiters out there regularly huddle with TPRs to identify the location of organizational quicksand? Realistically, conversations like these should be part of your strategic planning process where you can simultaneously assess external and internal factors that may be hindering success.

You never know until you ask.