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.

Recruiting Tips for the Entrepreneur and Small Business

A different hiring process is going to unfold each time you need to bring a new employee on board. One of the most crucial things to consider is the personality type you can manage best. As someone who is 30 years old and owns a fast-growing business, I have had only one other job out of college in which I was not a manager of some form. Therefore, I’ve learned by mistake and still do every day.

While many simply associate the job of a manager or leader with a bigger paycheck and a job that is more mentally engaging, those who do so are (just like I was at 25), very off base. I don’t think there is a certain personality type that fits everybody. Entrepreneurs and managers alike have to understand that an employee, regardless of what you’re paying him or her, is a foundation that with the manager’s help can either become a skyscraper or an undeveloped lot. The hiring manager has to determine what personality foundation best suits him or her for building on. What background and personality type can that manager leverage to build a “skyscraper”.

Ken Sundheim – What to Do to Have a Happier, More Successful Career

Don’t Hire Based On Paper

Over the years, my biggest internal hiring mistake was hiring people solely based on their background and educational credentials. As a kid from Fordham University with an okay GPA, I thought it was cool to have employees from Columbia, UVA and NYU who graduated with honors. For a small business, that policy turned out to be a bust. As a manager, you want people who are willing. I will take someone half as effortlessly talented and turn them into three times the producer if they care, are engaged and want to learn.

I just don’t have time for people who fight growth and fight learning, whether because they believe there is only one way to grow (such as academically), or because they feel they have already finished with their learning, or for any other reason. You want to find people who are going to respect your work and your authority as a boss. The secret to successful management is staying away from the Sirens when recruiting. These are the people too concerned with themselves to ever make a true impact by giving 110%. Unfortunately for many these are too hard to spot until you’re in mid-dive off of the boat. Time, patience and consistent learning will help any manager spot these individuals from a mile away. Despite the fact that you will have to figure out (probably through trial and error) the personality type and background that you manage best, and whom you can best help progress in a career, there are definitely a handful of tried-and-true rules to apply across the board when hiring.

Don’t Hire Someone Who Is Passive In Nature

Think A-type personalities. Anything less will drive you nuts when attempting to achieve goals, regardless of the person’s position in your company or your team.

That is not to say that every hire you make must be a metaphorical pitbull: not everyone comes across as relentless, and that’s a good thing. But thoughtful, introverted hard workers come across very differently in an interview process to people who will be content putting in an average-level effort and just going with the flow, rather than ever contributing above and beyond.

Hire Someone Who Is Interested In Your Company and Industry

I used to hire theatre graduates as interns years ago. They drove me up the wall. We were a recruiting firm and it sucked the air out of the room (we worked out of an apartment) when there was audition talk. Complainers are very difficult to deal with as well. I tell my clients to stay away. The best way to spot these individuals is that these are job seekers who will negotiate the smallest, most trivial aspects of their offer. Even if they are good, hard negotiation prior to coming on to a job (unless you are at the C-level) shows that they are your typical complainer and fail to have empathy for the plight of a leader or manager.

This article – is continued at Ken Sundheim’s Blog as well as other small business recruiting tips

Ken Sundheim runs KAS Placement a recruiting firm staffing sales, media and marketing job seekers Seattle headhunters, financial sales recruiters, financial marketing headhunters, NY Recruiters business development headhunters