The worst recruiter EVER writes a memo

I have to give props where they are due. Katie Tierney’s open letter to an email she received inspired this post and before my morning coffee no less. So thanks Katie (by the way, for those of you familiar with Katie’s work or her Twitter ragings, she is NOT from Texas.)

Dear New Recruiters!

We here at ACME recruiting are so excited that you have come to work for the premiere recruiting agency on Main Street. We’re different because we CARE. We don’t rely on old fashioned processes or call sheets, at ACME we flit from opening to candidate with no real framework even in place! But I am getting ahead of myself.

Step 1: Go sit at your desk. Do you see a phone? A subscription to Monster and Dice? Great! You are now a recruiter!

Step 2: Now getting on the phone is really scary and ACME realizes that. Take heart, here the phone is only used when a candidate or client calls you. We expect that very soon, the phone will be ringing off the hook. To “hook clients” ACME recommends the following:

- a barrage of mass-mailed, poorly worded emails with confusing links so the client HAS to call
- Punchy, colorful postcards with as little information about your current openings or specialization at all
- If you MUST pick up the phone, do it during your customers’ lunch hour OR after work, so they are forced to call YOU.

Step 3: Hopefully, by now you have risen above the competition and people are calling you with job orders that you and only 11 other agencies are allowed to work on.

Step 4: Getting candidates is not hard. War for Talent? A myth! Especially now. All you need to do is find a profile that even remotely matches the Job Description you hold in your hand. Email them and call them relentlessly and then when you realize they are NOT a match, reverse market them to companies that didn’t ask for anyone even remotely like that. It’s wise at this point to forget all about your original JD to focus on the candidate.

Step 5: If you can’t find a candidate for the client, forget about it. The payoff (which you likely didn’t negotiate, ACME doesn’t have a “set rate”) isn’t worth it anyway. If you haven’t found anything for the candidate either, do not (under any circumstances) call them, email them or treat them like a person. It will only encourage them to think that you are an employment agency and ACME is staunchly against that.

Step 6: Sit back and reap what you have sown.

Brendan Shields from ERE made a video and I helped :)

Wow, I am stunned. Here is me sandwiched between the likes of Susan Burns, Craig Fischer, Scott Love, Gerry Crispin, Dennis Smith and Jerry Albright. Special thanks to Brendan Shields of ERE for not making me look like an idiot.

Getting a job can take forever

I’ve been thinking a bit about the “talent industry” (for lack of a better term, if you think of one DM me) lately and while I think that recruiting in particular has taken some significant strides, I also think that the compartmentalizing we do to make OUR jobs easier can sometimes make the initial picture (to the average job seeker) more complex. For example, say a sourcer or researcher finds your information online BUT to flesh out your profile, they have to get your number. Depending on their job, they may find it online or they may call (or have their phone-sourcing counterpart call) your place of employment or home and get the extension. THEN, they hand over the profile to a recruiter and that person, maybe a pre-recruiter, maybe still the sourcer, calls to see if you are interested, presenting the position details (but not ALL of them). Once you have agreed to look further into the job, be presented that is, your profile is sent to the internal HM or recruiter, who (yay!) decides they want to interview you. Before this happens you may have to talk to the account manager (in some shops sales and client management is a different person and this person presents the candidate to the client for interviewing), they vet you a little and you jump on the phone screen with the internal HM. Oftentimes, in a perm position, that person will be within the HR department and possibly not the manager you will report to. So, say you ace that interview, and you are called back for another with the reporting manager and their department head. At this point, you, the job seeker (yes, even passive ones) may have spoken to at least 8 people about this ONE position. It’s exhausting and takes time to go through all this. And this is before YOU the job seeker, have heard the final offer or been taken on site (if the position involves relo). Is this a sound practice? Does it make the process go smoother? Or does it make for a rocky road for anyone seeking gainful employment. This could be why so many vet recruiters insist on proteges who have run a full desk. Just sayin’. . .

RecruitFest (first annual) or I left a boot in Toronto

Every so often you meet people with such a sense about things, such innate instincts that it awes you. That is the sense I had about Jason, his team (amazing wife and coordinator Michelle) and the teachers that he’d chosen to the lead the tracks at RecruitFest 2008 in Toronto.

Jason Davis is someone I consider a friend, so the opportunity to go to a conference he envisioned and implemented, particularly in his hometown, seemed like a no-brainer. But as the event got closer, I wondered if I could truly be objective of this “unconference” for recruiters.

I shouldn’t have worried. In effect, RecruitFest addressed (in its differences) some of the issues I have with conferences at large. This is not to set it up as competition (although with a price close to a 4th of what other conferences charge, it could be) but to point out that there is value and some significant tactical advantages that can result from re-imagining what is.

RecruitFest’s differences started in the promotion: There were no glossy mass-mailed slicks, no weekly email blasts, nothing but personal invitations from Jason and others who thought RecruitFest was worth a trip across the border. Also not present? bags of goodies, massive screens, brightly colored booths, and not a single iphone giveaway! (Please do NOT misunderstand, I dig iPhones and goodies and am nearsighted so big screens are not offensive, I am drawing “perpendiculars” if you will).

10 am Friday- I arrived early, as I am used to conferences beginning at some ungodly hour. But there was little to do but eat a leisurely breakfast and watch the guests arrive. Old friends and new faces, all were welcomed but at first the differences were not terribly obvious. People were at first reserved, there was some tentative passing out of business cards, all standard fare at these things.

But everything standard went straight out the window when we walked into a room filled with drums. A drum circle often conjures up visions of sweaty lodges, Birkenstocks and “finding yourself”. However, with an energetic (and grounded) teacher who made it more about team-building and rhythym than anything “granola”, it was a surprisingly efficient way to advance intimacy between participants and get energy going for the day. (IMHO, waaay better than asking your neighbor three things about themselves, yawn-ish).

Once that was done, there was no oversight of which sessions we went to or in what order we went to them. All the participants were encouraged to attend only three of the four sessions led by John Sumser, Susan Burns, Craig Silverman and Scott Love. One thing I didn’t see? People standing in the halls. Ever. Another thing curiously absent? People tapping away at their laptops in the back of the room. In the sessions, every face was rapt with attention, every opinion was given floor time and even seasoned veterans were scribbling notes. People were (gasp) learning. . .

You have probably read write ups about the poker party and accompanying dance party/jam session that took place later at Jason and Michelle’s beautiful home. Read more here and here. See pictures here.

On Saturday, after some (ahem) intense yoga, we had a great social media session led by the incomparable Dennis Smith, not about the how but the why.

But you’ve likely read about the sessions and I don’t want to synopsize what the session leaders could likely do much better. What I want to discuss were the effects. From sourcing geniuses to multi-talented, in the trenches recruiters, to big billers recently featured in the WSJ, all the participants walked away:

- with their voice being heard
- greater pride and understanding of the industry
- practical ideas to help grow their business
- having just spoken with some of the greatest names in the industry
- inspired to take their honed talents back to the field
- pages and pages of notes
- a deeper sense of community (particularly important for isolated third party shops)

I could go on and on about RecruitFest, I really could (I think I actually have) but let me say this: When someone who loves the industry, has worked the industry from many different angles, and who effectively brought his entire family into the industry decides to hold a conference. . .you should go. You will not be left unchanged.

Two sweetheart Canadian ladies who should be mentioned: Alex and Maha, you ladies are great! Thanks for the shopping trip! And of course, Susan Kang Nam, my lovely (much neater) roomie.

Also I left my boot in Toronto while racing to catch the plane because I cannot apparently set an alarm properly. Hence the title.

first step/essentials in the recruiting process

Talking about the very first essential step or framework that one needs to launch a successful talent management plan. I wrote my answer (one of them) here.

Finally! I have something to write about!

Okay, when you write a blog, twitter constantly, make little videos that no one watches and have a constant stream of visitors into your office, picking your brain, etc. AND get offered three jobs in one week, you tend to. . . well, run out of things to say.

This can be murder on actual relationships. Since social media (while climbing in the ranks) is not generally accepted as a money making practice, most of us have to do it on our off time, or flit in and out during stolen lunch breaks. (In my defense, I think that social media “breaks” take less time than smoke breaks but whatever). Even RIGHT NOW, my wonderful husband is trying to say something to me and since I am FINALLY able to think of a blog topic, it’s difficult to figure out what, exactly he is saying.

BREAK>>>> Okay, it was about how I am leaving him to go on a trip tomorrow to Toronto for this and my whole family is coming over while I am gone. What a trooper.

Anywho, sometimes, you run out of things to say. You think of great post ideas and then realize that someone already wrote them and wrote them better. You get so involved doing your job that it scares you that a simple process can make everything so simple and if THAT’S true then whatever will you write about? I am convinced now, that this is why Van Gogh cut off his ear. He just ran out of stuff to paint.

So, loyal readers, sweet impressionable recruiters, techies and friends. I’m sorry. Even though the fires of politickin’ are roaring, Galveston is wrecked and the Dow fell over 500 points Monday, I am still at somewhat of a loss.

Oh well, I hear this this Brazen Careerist writer is having the same trouble, so I don’t feel so bad. . .

Dream On

This post is kind of personal FYI

The other day I realized that through all the high and low paying jobs I’ve had, my main “what do I do all day” has been writing. Writing, designing and talking. That’s what I get paid to do. By lots of people.

So the question that begs to be asked: Why would I do (essentially) the same job for different levels of income?

(The first answer is that as I worked my way up the ladder I had to take the lower paying jobs but there is more to it than that. To this day I write for sites where I make .30 per word and sites where I make $55 per 1/2 hour and jobs where I make $15 per story or write/design for free!)

Answer: Because it encompasses two really important components of any job/career search.

1) Your Dream- Your dream is what you always wanted to be. And if you are realistic or at all interesting, there will be more than one of these. In my life I have wanted to be an actress, a singer, a scientist, a real estate guru, a clothing designer, a rockstar, an interior designer, Miss America and Marie Curie. Oh yeah, and a writer. Most people are unaware that I wrote a statewide winning essay on ethanol in the fourth grade. It was literally meant to be. Writing jazzes me up as does speaking. I was told early on that I had serious speaking chops.

2) Your Strength(s)- I am a very big proponent of playing to your strengths rather than focusing on propping up your weak parts. There are numerous studies that support this. Obviously, if I were to focus in on say, the Miss America thing (I would not eat and also not be married) then I would not be drawing on my internal or external strengths. If I were to pursue the scientist thing, I would not have been able to (drop) test out of high school or skate through college. I would have had to take algebra 2 (yuk).

There you have it. You can be good at a lot of things and not have them jazz you like the dream+strength equation. That being said, there are so many ways to integrate your talents into everyday jobs (unlike the Miss America one, I guess I could have written out possible answers to questions). I have excelled at being a journalist, a graphic artist, a marketing director, a PR liasion, a CMO, a business development manager and much, much more! These have all in some capacity or another honed and sharpened my design and writing skills.

Hello world!

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6 random things- I got blogtagged!!

So I hope I am doing this right.

* I’m suppose to tell you six random things about myself and then assign this task to six more bloggers.

Laurie R from PunkRockHR told me to do this and I follow orders from anyone who can twitter Kalamazoo as much as Laurie does.

1. I wore an eyepatch as a kid to correct my lazy eye.
2. I have a heart for abused and orphan kids round the world.
3. I once played the cowbell in an SF blues band.
4. When I was 15, I hitched a ride down the coast in a red convertible.
5. I had three kids naturally.
6. I am in charge of (three years running now) of the St Paul Lutheran Bake Sale (for the Sauerkraut Supper!)

Here are the bloggers who are assigned to this task:

1. Happy Employee
2. HR Minion
3. Willy Franzen
4. MN Headhunter
5. Animal
6. Kris Dunn

The rules to play are …

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on the blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Resume Response System

Here a talk a little about the conundrum facing recruiters. Should we respond to every resume? If so, with what medium? Phone? Automated email? Does a resume submission demand courtesy and respect (do you already know my answer???