Recruiting Slow? The Problem's Not Your Tools...

It's amazing what is available for recruiters these days. I imagine it's similar with internal HR pros as well. Go to a conference and you give off some pheromone that says "I need a new and improved ATS" or "I just bet if I had a kickin avatar I would increase my placements by 30%!" and vendors swarm and attack you with Zoominfo Kooshes or Monster plush toys.

Since I'm a really nice and good person (and love not having to buy toys for my kids), I always troll the  booths and listen to the spiel of each individual vendor. There's always some rad drawing as well (at ERE I counted twenty some odd iPhone giveaways). My thought is: "If the recruiter isn't doing well enough to afford their own iPhone, they probably can't afford your system" but whatev.

Since I'm a marketing person, I'll feel the weight of the cardstock, evaluate the color dilution on the banners, check the binding on the books (BTW, online marketing kits are the way to go, you're killing trees and making my bag heavy, I'd rather have a tee-shirt!) and grab some free stuff. I always ask intelligent questions like:

"What makes your product different than other ATS?"

"How will using your name generating service increase my ROI?"

"How will having a video game recruiting tool increase my reach into my candidate target market?"

Sometimes they can answer, sometimes they can't. Not important right now. What dismays me is this massive array of tools available for those of us in the talent acquisition and management spaces. Holy shitake! You'd think that with enough vendors to fill a football stadium, our issues as recruiters would be solved by now.

But, they're not. You're still reading and I'm still writing. Know why? Because (I know I say this over and over and I will keep saying it til I get fired from this blog and you can read it on my blog or on the outside of my cardboard box) recruiting and HUMAN resources is inherently relational. That's right. High touch. Touchy-feely.

So silver bullet tools or not, you either have it . . .

Or you don't.

Editor's Note - Maren Hogan is a millennial living the dream in Omaha, Nebraska.  When she's not plotting the downfall of Gen Xer's like me, she's doing marketing and development for an IT recruiting and outsourcing firm called HCI.  Here's hoping we'll have video of Maren grilling a vendor rep at the next industry summit (hint, hint, Maren...).  That would be sweet.....

Comments

[Jessica Lee]

one thing i've noticed with the plethora of tools now out there is that many are being developed by non-recruiters or non-HR folks... and then there's also a lack of testing with recruiting and HR pros for the stuff that's out there. do the creators of these tools know what we do and how we do it? i'm not so sure!

case in point -- i'm talking to a vendor about the search functionality of his website and i ask if the search box allows for boolean terms. he says to me, "well, if you were looking for a developer, you would just put in the box 'developer' and it's going to look for people who have that on their resume."

"thanks," i say, "but what if i want to find a developer who has coldfusion OR PHP and ruby on rails? will it take boolean?"

"good question. let me get back to you," he said. and he never did get back to me.

nice...

[Tina Facca]

Okay recruiters, I'm a marketer and statistician looking for recruiters to help in the design of innovative mathematical technology that will help with exactly Jessica Lee's issue (effective mining of huge databases of potential candiates).

For my Ph.D. dissertation in statistics I'm designing methods to mine your mega-databases for the person that has the highest probability of success in the job for which you are recruiting. In math and stats we call it "Defining and Maximizing the Utility Functions of Job Candidates." Problem is, I can't find recruiting leadership (firm owners and managers) that "get it." Maybe they're hesitant because you'll be able to run off with their portion of the fees. Okay, now for sure I'm in trouble with them!

If I can even remotely interest you in driving the data collection that will enable the technology, please respond and I'll show you how simply it works and what I need from the recruiters. No fees or costs, or stealing of your customers or candidates, just the right thing to do to move your industry (and independence) forward. Right now I'm strongly considering having to shift gears because the largest firms and job boards aren't responding. What's there hesitation?

I've never even posted on a blog before, but I'm desperate for data. I hope this gets posted and sparks interest.

tinafacca@sbcglobal.net

[marenhogan]

Wow, whoever wrote this post is so freaking amazing. What brilliant opinion! What incredible similies!

[KD]

JLee - Kelly Dingee hasn't read your comment yet, because she would be FREAKING OUT that someone couldn't tell you how to run a string...

Tina - Welcome to the world's most accomodating multi-contributor blog. Give me more data about what you are looking for... Got a draft of your dissertation proposal we can post?

Maren - you misspelled "similie".... Made you look....

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