Recruiters vs the Internet

Since the mid 1990’s it’s been recruiters vs. the web. The internet has tried to put the recruitment and staffing business out of work since the internet became a household must and software was advanced enough to build an efficient job board.

 

First came basic job boards like Craigslist. Word got out that there was potential and sites like Monster.com and Career Builder stepped the game up trying to provide a solution to companies that desperately wanted to not pay recruiter fees which run significantly more expensive than a job post.

 

Though, the recruiting process and subsequent industry took a hit from sites like the above, they failed to do what they had set out to do which was provide an effective recruitment solution for a fraction of the price.

 

After that, The Ladders tried to attack those companies paying for expensive talent, thus circumventing recruiting and staffing fees upwards of $30,000; the internet site catered to management and above attempted to rid recruiters via a few hundred dollar job posting geared towards those individuals. The latest incumbent was LinkedIn who thought they could do the trick with social media.

 

However, all have not been able to rid an industry that’s lineage can be traced back to ancient Greece and has consistently become more and more popular since the men of this country had to go to Europe and Japan to fight in WWII and there were a shortage of male workers whose numbers could not keep up with the high demand.

 

While the above market challengers have put the weaker recruiting firms out of business, they have not done delivered the death blow. Much of this is due to a few reasons, but the three main variables that prevented the clean sweep of the recruiting industry such as:

 

1. Companies, when posting jobs, can’t write compelling job descriptions that truly hit the main points of the organization and peak the interest of the job applicant. There is a difference between describing your organization as a software firm versus describing your company as an organization that breeds leaders and collaboration.

 

2. The best job seekers regardless of industry, title and function, don’t hang out on the job boards because many of the best companies stopped posting open jobs years ago. While job boards have tried to get these organizations back with price breaks, there seems to be some sort of disconnect between the job board approach and its ability to, again circumvent the executive search industry.

 

 
3. It takes work on the end of the employer; many don’t have the time to fully recruit properly. When recruiting on the internet, to be successful, it takes more than writing a few paragraphs. Outbound recruiting and networking is highly more effective and for the companies who care about getting the best employees, they are going to go the more expensive, yet more effective route of using either an internal or external headhunter.

 

Video may have killed the radio star and Charlie Chaplin’s career went under when talking pictures (+ rumors a communist sympathizer) arrived, but effective recruiters seem to continue to duck, dodge and overcome the internet. Long live the personalized effectiveness that is outsourced human resources.

 

About Alison

 

by Alison Ringo alison.e.ringo@gmail.com is the Managing Director of KAS Placement sales recruiters, a recruiting firm based out of Manhattan specializing in sales and marketing recruitment.

 

Open Jobs and Recruiter Information

 

KAS has a new platform on Google plus aimed to help job seekers in all capacities find better careers via recruiting and getting a job at the right company, you can find the recruiter Google plus network here.