Fistful of Talent

Recruiter Goat's Gruff: Recessions Bring Out Our True Recruiting-Self...

Recessions tell us a good deal about ourselves as Recruiting Animals, don't they?  If you want me to be honest, I really wish we didn't have any, but the fact is that we do . . . and the cycle is fairly predictable.  One thing I've come to learn is that down economic periods shape our view of what is truly important in life.  For example, my grandparents often told me stories I will never forget about living through the Great Depression as young children. And as the number of unemployed grow, I find myself having more and more conversations in which the downsized candidate needs, above all things, a flicker of positivity; many simply pick up on the hope in your voice and it can change their outlook, giving them some momentum to continue pushing forward.  "These are tough times, but we will come out of this."

Yet, as I say this, I am dismayed at the number of candidate-bludgeoning articles (and today, blog posts) that come out during recessionary times such as those we find ourselves in today.  It's as if many Recruiters (internal and external) are now sporting "a gun and a badge."  At a time when we can do the most good (see David Pritchard's efforts to assist the candidate market), there are entire series coming out that do nothing but perpetuate this majority-versus-minority mentality.  The latest installment in the Egregiously Bad Candidate series, "7 Great Ways to Ensure No Recruiter Ever Reads Your Resume" was the breaking point for me.  Seriously, with 50% of the entire Recruiting population gone over the last 12 months, those of us still standing are better than this.  Let me ask: At what point did we transition from a highly skilled and passionate group of people continuously seeking to find and secure the best talent, to behaving as if we're trolls guarding the bridge?  "Thou Shall Not Pass!"

Watching more and more of these negativity-focused articles come out, I can't help but believe they're exactly what we don't need . . . and as far as the unemployed population goes, it's no wonder many are scared of (and turned off by) Recruiters.  And in that sense, I've come to some conclusions I'd like to share today.  As always, I welcome your thoughts and ask you to add to the list:

1. We, as a Recruiting Industry, have taught the candidate market many of their bad habits.  That's a fact, Jack.  For example, is it ok for us to blind mass email out job descriptions . . . but then flex on the candidate population when they blind mass email their resume?  Until we elevate our own behavior, we're nothing more than sitting in glass houses.

2. For all you External Recruiters out there, let me shoot straight with you: If you can afford to screen out on the basis of petty issues (i.e. "I didn't like their signature line"), you're in the wrong niche.  For Internal Recruiters, I'll say this: Just because the average tenure in your position is 8 - 12 months, you still hold responsibility for your organization's employment brand.

3. Just because we temporarily hold a position of power (i.e. Recruiters can screen in or screen out on the basis of personal discretion), doesn't mean that we should abuse our power.  Acton was right when he stated that, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Look, if you want to be a gun-and-badge toting monster, I understand there isn't a whole lot I can do to change your mind.  But, If I can leave you with one thing today, it's this: Don't forget what happened to the Troll in Billy Goat's Gruff.  He's no longer recruiting.  Nope, he now works at a used-car dealership and moonlights as an real estate consultant.

Editor's Note - Josh Letourneau is the owner of LG and Associates, a Strategic Sourcing, Executive Search, and Human Capital Intelligence firm based in Atlanta.  Prior to founding LG & Associates, Josh worked as a Sales & Marketing professional in the software biz and was a hard-charging Sergeant in the Marines.  In his spare time, Josh enjoys shooting at other sourcing and search professionals as available in random paintball games.

If Google and Apple Agree Not To Poach Each Other's Employees, Is That an Anti-Trust Violation?

Think about it.  You're Google, Apple and Yahoo.  You've all got great brands at various stages in the brand life cycle, but the thing that drives you nuts is when you poach each other's employees.  Sure you feel great at Google when you lift a design person from Apple, but then you look up and Apple's lifted a premium web developer from the Google team.

So, at some point, your CEO says "enough", and directs the COO to put a call in to the other megabrands.  The message?  "Why are we stealing each other's employees?  Let's make a deal not to lift talent from each other, because at the end of the day, we can agree not to poach and fill our needs elsewhere in Silicon Valley from all the smaller companies - and the bigger ones that don't have our employment brand attractiveness.  We're all supermodels - so let's agree to pick talent from the ugly kids, not each other..."

Quick - is that an anti-trust violation?  The Justice Department thinks it might be.  More from the Washington Post:

"The Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether some of the nation's largest technology companies violated antitrust laws by negotiating the recruiting and hiring of one another's employees, according to two sources with knowledge of the review.

The review, which is said to be in its preliminary stages, is focused on the search engine giant Google; its competitor Yahoo; Apple, maker of the popular iPhone; and the biotech firm Genentech, among others, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

"This could be collusive restraint on trade, which could have a serious impact on competition," said Albert Foer, president of the American Antitrust Institute. Such an agreement would underscore the fierce competition over top engineering and business talent.

Google has long been known for its exhaustive recruiting process to find people who fit into its culture and create innovative Web technologies. In 2005, Microsoft sued Google for hiring away Kai-Fu Lee, Microsoft's vice president for Web Interactive services, to head Google's operations in China."

What say you?  Is that an anti-trust violation.  Interesting that the one dominant tech name you don't hear included is Microsoft.  It's OK to agree not to poach each other's talent, but let's pillage Redmond as much as we can?... 

For my money, the common board relationships at Apple and Google make for an interesting backdrop, but it's hard for me to believe that companies couldn't resist picking off a great engineer from one of the listed companies if they had a chance.

The truth?  It's lying on a Microsoft Exchange server somewhere, right?

Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...

What Won't You Do To Get A Job?

A recent Wall Street Journal article, by Joann S. Lublin, raised the question: "What won't you do for a Job?"  Which got me thinking about what are those things I wouldn't do for a job.  First, I had to set some parameters around the question:

1. Not just any job (I can get any job) but a really good job.  You know the one: your career Camelot - great pay, benefits, work, boss, co-workers - plus you're out by 4pm everyday! 

2. Also, I can't go to prison for what I would do - I'm short and soft - meaning, I'm fairly certain I would end up someone's wife in prison.

With the parameters set the question really set me free to think about what I wouldn't do for the "perfect" career opportunity.  So, I'll give you the short list:

1. I won't kill anyone in my immediate family (wife and 3 sons) - everyone else is open season.

2. (probably goes back to the prison thing - I'm soft, plus my grandma would hate it).

3. I won't eat bugs or cauliflower (yes, I consider them the same food group).

4. I won't work for free - everyone has a price and mine is above "Free"

5. I won't stay past 5pm (or any other arbitrary time) just because my boss stays past 5pm because he doesn't have a life and thinks everyone should stay past 5 or their not dedicated or hard working.

6. I won't allow my opinions to be squelched by the man! (oh wait, yes I will, but it will cost them!)

     7.  I won't allow myself to be chased around my desk and sexually harassed by my attractive, much  younger, opposite sex, boss (ok, I might, but only if my benefits pay for divorce).

So, what won't you do for a job? Send me a comment and let me know...

Editor's Note - Tim Sackett is the Executive Vice President for HRU Technical Resources, which really means they just ran out of titles between Director and CEO.  Tim's job is to make sure everyone is happy and productive – for those who have worked in staffing firms, you know exactly what that means. HRU is primarily an engineering and technical contingency firm that specializes in the manufacturing sector in defense, consumer products, automotive, higher ed, etc.  HRU is based in Lansing, MI – but has close to 500 employees all over the country. 

Where are all the good candidates? Scared, Non-Mobile or Strapped With the Wrong Skills...

Everybody assumes that every job you post will result in an onslaught of candidates during a down economy. Additionally, you should be able to do talent upgrades in a bad economy, right?.  After all, you have people being laid-off in droves, why wouldn't recruiting be easier?  That's the case made at Workforce Recruiting . 

A reporter from a local newspaper also recently forwarded me a study from SHRM called the "hiring difficulty index."  The running index was an ongoing survey designed to chart how hard it is to hire people at different points in time.  The index also suggested that it's getting easier to hire people in a down economy. 

Both are good thoughts, but both are wrong on many levels.  Here's why - stay with me on this one.

Voluntary turnover goes down during recessions. It’s a fact that during recessions, fewer jobs are available. It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to determine that means fewer companies will be actively stalking your talent, which means reduced voluntary churn across your employee base. 

The good news is that with unemployment levels in the low single digits for the past couple of years, lower turnover is going to feel like a vacation to a lot of talent pros.

The bad news is that when the economy turns bad, a lot of the talent you need for open positions (the high performers with skills who are a direct match) becomes risk-adverse, meaning they won't be interested in your opening.  After all, if the world around you is conducting layoffs and you feel like you are relatively secure where you are, why on earth would you look to change jobs in a recession?  All that will do, in the minds of the best candidates, is expose them to a situation where they don't have all the information and might get laid off three months into the new job.

The additional bad news is that a lot of the talent needs some retraining.  Since they need some skill tweaks, many are facing a step backwards from a pay perspective, often times with the lower-paying job requiring them to do a physical move.  Lower pay + retraining + a physical move = candidates without jobs opting to ride it out rather than accept your offer.  More details on this trend here...

Translation - It's not as easy as it looks.  I'm safe where I'm at, so I'm not going to put myself on the market right now.

Result - While there are many candidates in the marketplace, the ones you really need - the high performers with skills and experience that are a direct fit for what you need - are hunkered down inside their companies and won't consider a move until the economy improves and the layoffs stop.  The ones who are close won't move and won't consider a job at this point with lower pay and a move.

Recruiting's not easier in a down economy, because the candidates you really need for your openings aren't interested in moving.  They're hunkered down inside their current company, and they're not coming out of hibernation until the recession is over.  Retraining of employees is great, but that won't appease the hiring manager you have to deal with who expects a direct match to their needs.

For that hiring manager, retraining or accepting a candidate who's a 60% match, but available immediately, isn't something they're often interested in.  Unfortunately, that means your time to fill is going to be higher than you would expect in a time of high unemployment, and it also means the average time required to find a job for some very credible candidates is going to be higher than it needs to be.

Recessions stink.  Who would have thought it's harder to recruit now than in the boom times?

Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...

Everybody assumes that every job you post will result in an onslaught of candidates during a down economy. Additionally, you should be able to do talent upgrades in a bad economy, right?.  After all, you have people being laid-off in droves, why wouldn't recruiting be easier?  That's the case made at Workforce Recruiting . 

A reporter from a local newspaper also recently forwarded me a study from SHRM called the "hiring difficulty index."  The running index was an ongoing survey designed to chart how hard it is to hire people at different points in time.  The index also suggested that it's getting easier to hire people in a down economy. 

Both are good thoughts, but both are wrong on many levels.  Here's why - stay with me on this one.

Voluntary turnover goes down during recessions. It’s a fact that during recessions, fewer jobs are available. It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to determine that means fewer companies will be actively stalking your talent, which means reduced voluntary churn across your employee base. 

The good news is that with unemployment levels in the low single digits for the past couple of years, lower turnover is going to feel like a vacation to a lot of talent pros.

The bad news is that when the economy turns bad, a lot of the talent you need for open positions (the high performers with skills who are a direct match) becomes risk-adverse, meaning they won't be interested in your opening.  After all, if the world around you is conducting layoffs and you feel like you are relatively secure where you are, why on earth would you look to change jobs in a recession?  All that will do, in the minds of the best candidates, is expose them to a situation where they don't have all the information and might get laid off three months into the new job.

The additional bad news is that a lot of the talent needs some retraining.  Since they need some skill tweaks, many are facing a step backwards from a pay perspective, often times with the lower-paying job requiring them to do a physical move.  Lower pay + retraining + a physical move = candidates without jobs opting to ride it out rather than accept your offer.  More details on this trend here...

Translation - It's not as easy as it looks.  I'm safe where I'm at, so I'm not going to put myself on the market right now.

Result - While there are many candidates in the marketplace, the ones you really need - the high performers with skills and experience that are a direct fit for what you need - are hunkered down inside their companies and won't consider a move until the economy improves and the layoffs stop.  The ones who are close won't move and won't consider a job at this point with lower pay and a move.

Recruiting's not easier in a down economy, because the candidates you really need for your openings aren't interested in moving.  They're hunkered down inside their current company, and they're not coming out of hibernation until the recession is over.  Retraining of employees is great, but that won't appease the hiring manager you have to deal with who expects a direct match to their needs.

For that hiring manager, retraining or accepting a candidate who's a 60% match, but available immediately, isn't something they're often interested in.  Unfortunately, that means your time to fill is going to be higher than you would expect in a time of high unemployment, and it also means the average time required to find a job for some very credible candidates is going to be higher than it needs to be.

Recessions stink.  Who would have thought it's harder to recruit now than in the boom times?

Editor's Note: By day, Kris Dunn is the VP of People at DAXKO, a cool software firm dedicated to providing solutions to the best membership-driven organizations in America. At night, he morphs into a blogger at The HR Capitalist and the Founder and Executive Editor of Fistful of Talent. That makes him a career VP of HR, a blogger, a dad and a hoops junkie, the order of which changes based on his mood. Tweet him @kris_dunn...

Please...No More "Dear Recruiter" Emails...OK?

Want to stand out in a sea (tons) of resumes that flows every day across the desk of search consultants all over the country? Sending an impersonal e-mail, letter or worse - a blast of your resume to thousands of employers and search consultants is not the best plan or ideal strategy. Nope. It usually will not work. If that's your strategy, it's not very targeted and falls into the me-too category. More often than not, the person on the other end (of your less-than-well-thought-out-plan) will find the delete button faster than (you fill in the blank - but it will be fast). 

The information flow at my desk is overwhelming. Resume review, daily updates to search dashboards, uploading data to our ever expanding database, industry RSS feeds and on and on and on. I am sure I am not alone here. To get thru each day, you must make every second count. If the content does not stand out - I will not waste many cycles on it. OK - actually none.   

There is another extreme which is very targeted. How about the lady in CT who posted her photo on a billboard in an effort to rise above the noise in her search to find a job. It's estimated that she paid between $2,500 - $3,500 to place the ad for 30 days on a billboard located on busy I-95 near Bridgeport, CT. She was looking for a local company to hire her and that strategy, while interesting, is very expensive was actually highly focused in her geographical market. So far it seems to be paying off. She has several offers in play and I wish her the best. 

If you are trying to capture someone's attention (especially in this market), you have to make sure your message is directed to the right audience, ideal vertical market based on your skills, and your message needs to be much more personal than "Dear Recruiter". You don't need a billboard sign - but try to avoid having the reader automatically hit the delete button when they read your message.

My delete button is located on the top right portion of my keyboard. 

I seem to be using it a lot more these days:-(     

Editor's Note - Tim Tolan is a partner at Sanford Rose Associates and specializes in Executive Search in Healthcare IT.  He's a closer, and you really don't want to call him unless you're ready to bring out the bazooka to bag some big game...          

I See Purple Squirrels Everywhere...

pur·ple squir·rel  (pûrpl skwûrl)

1. Any of various arboreal rodents of the genus Sciurus and related genera of the family Sciuridae, having a long flexible bushy tail and including the fox squirrel, gray squirrel, and red squirrel. Except some kids have painted it purple.

2. The elusive perfect candidate in the hiring manager's mind, who has every one of 27 components of the job description in their background, has worked for a direct competitor, and provides pro bono professional services in their field four nights a week.  They're a little hard to find, some would say because they may not exist.

They're B-a-a-a-a-ck. Or maybe that depends on who is calling the shots on your search assignment in these crazy times. Search assignments are clearly on the downside (but not for long) and hiring managers are suddenly becoming increasingly "picky" - shall we say. I get the fact that there are lots of great people in search of their next career move. There are millions of people out there job hunting every day. Industries like finance, auto, manufacturing and others clearly have talent on the street looking and hoping to find a new gig to transfer their skills to. Got it! 

What I don't get are hiring managers who seem to be taking advantage of the current environment by creating an illusion that since the unemployment numbers are off the charts and growing that all of a sudden, there has been a huge increase in the number of purple squirrels that are suddenly available. If we search consultants can just find them... C'mon! Narrowly defining a search assignment to find, locate and place a candidate who has the necessary skills to meet the job description and fit into the culture of the company is a fair request. We do that all the time. Taking a pass on multiple candidates (for months) who meet all the requirements (and are a great cultural fit) just to find Mr. or Ms. Perfect is not always the right decision to make. The company has a void in their lineup, with product launches, customer support, lost sales opportunities or a whole host of other things that have to wait until Mr. or Ms. Hiring Manager gets a wake up call and realizes that the perfect, flawless, ideal, over-qualified happy go lucky candidate does not exist. Hello - is anybody home? 

Having a set of hiring guidelines and a realistic job description makes a ton of sense to me. Wasting everyone's time and negatively impacting the company, while searching for someone who does not exist is another. It's a waste of time and money. Sorry..

OK - I feel much better now:-)                

Editor's Note - Tim Tolan is a partner at Sanford Rose Associates and specializes in Executive Search in Healthcare IT.  He's a closer, and you really don't want to call him unless you're ready to bring out the bazooka to bag some big game...          

Swami Says - I See Better Days Ahead for Hiring - Don't You?

This candidate rich environment we are in today, while challenging for many hit hard by this economy, will not be this rich for long. While I don't profess to have a crystal ball, I do believe many sectors in this market will recover much sooner than those making dire predictions akin to the Great Depression. Some sectors will have a very long recovery while others will see signs of hiring in the near term. Unemployment is still too high - but we may have reached a Tipping Pont in this job market.  

The fear that has gripped us all (and many companies that still need good people) is starting to dissipate and I sense good things around the corner. We are much smarter. We have all learned valuable lessons as a result of what we have all been through. That's a good thing. Have these been tough times - yes - I get that (hey - I'm in the search business right?). For some of us, we have already seen positive changes and new habits from the people we work with and in ourselves. Personal savings and accountability will take the place of consumption. More goodness. Yes, the American worker and the employers we work for will all be better off as a result of what has transpired over the past 6-12 months - longer depending on where you live and work and what you have experienced in this crazy non-ending nightmare. 

And guess what? News Flash: This job market will look and feel much better - much sooner than the pundits predict. While 401K's have taken a huge hit - they are starting to recover. So will this job market. Boomers will still be leaving the workforce soon, and even if the Boomer exit numbers are half of what we thought it would be - it will still be huge. Companies will be in a mad dash to hire for positions that have been on hold for months. The feeding frenzy will start - and the wheels on the bus go round and round.  

It's time to look at things in a much brighter light. Spring has sprung, the stock market is showing signs of improvement  - and yes, the flowers will be blooming in a matter of weeks. Hope will replace fear and all of a sudden our attitudes will improve. I know mine will. We will all experience our own personal NOVO (Latin meaning to make anew, refresh, revive, change, alter).

Yes - I feel it. And it feels pretty good. Hang in there - brighter days are just around the corner.                         

Editor's Note - Tim Tolan is a partner at Sanford Rose Associates and specializes in Executive Search in Healthcare IT.  He's a closer, and you really don't want to call him unless you're ready to bring out the bazooka to bag some big game...          

Resumes w/Pictures - Where Are All the Beautiful People?....

In my HR shop, I like to work towards tracking the recruiting metrics that matter - time to fill, cost per fill, misses (churn after 6 months of hire), hiring manager scorecards, etc.

Oops!  Forgot one - let's add "Percentage of Resumes Including a Photo that Destroys Candidate Prospects"...

Seriously. You would think that with 100,000 career advice sites out there, no candidate would send a resume with a picture on it.  You would be wrong.  Recruiters in the same shop as the HR Capitalist have detected a noticeable up-tick in the number of resumes received with a photo.

Candidly, it's never the beautiful people who use a photo on the resume.  Not that it matters.  You could be in People Magazine's annual "The World's 50 Most Beautiful People" and it would still be a negative for you to attach your photo to your resume.  My mind automatically jumps the jugdment I can expect from the candidate in question.  Will you crash the rental car?  Perhaps fail to back up the server?  The possibilities are endless once you have determined it "a good idea" to send your photo on the resume.  The only thing that could make it more surreal is if you used a photo from "Glamour Shots" (my favorite - the black and white with you hanging your jacket over your shoulder with one thumb - sweeeeeet....)

Below is one we received this week.  The name, photo, and some of the non-critical info has been changed, but this "personal info" section was the candidate's lead.  Take a pass through and let me know how many Title 7 identifiers you can find on this one. 

In my HR shop, I like to work towards tracking the recruiting metrics that matter - time to fill, cost per fill, misses (churn after 6 months of hire), hiring manager scorecards, etc.

Oops!  Forgot one - let's add "Percentage of Resumes Including a Photo that Destroys Candidate Prospects"...

Seriously. You would think that with 100,000 career advice sites out there, no candidate would send a resume with a picture on it.  You would be wrong.  Recruiters in the same shop as the HR Capitalist have detected a noticeable up-tick in the number of resumes received with a photo.

Candidly, it's never the beautiful people who use a photo on the resume.  Not that it matters.  You could be in People Magazine's annual "The World's 50 Most Beautiful People" and it would still be a negative for you to attach your photo to your resume.  My mind automatically jumps the jugdment I can expect from the candidate in question.  Will you crash the rental car?  Perhaps fail to back up the server?  The possibilities are endless once you have determined it "a good idea" to send your photo on the resume.  The only thing that could make it more surreal is if you used a photo from "Glamour Shots" (my favorite - the black and white with you hanging your jacket over your shoulder with one thumb - sweeeeeet....)

Below is one we received this week.  The name, photo, and some of the non-critical info has been changed, but this "personal info" section was the candidate's lead.  Take a pass through and let me know how many Title 7 identifiers you can find on this one. 

Graduate Oversupply, Mismatched Degrees, and Employer Greed Collide with the “American Dream”

Workforce Magazine's recent article by Faye Hansen, "Recruiters Still Court College Grads but Signing Fewer New Hires", is, to say the least, a real eye-opener.  While it's not uncommon for us to see things happening around us, such as emerging trends in hiring and slow-brewing shifts in talent market psychology, finding so much reinforcing data in one central source is highly unusual.  In fact, CERI's survey touches upon so many societal and generational undercurrents that it's difficult finding a place to begin. The following represents my best effort --

Key Data Point #1: 1.85 Million workers with bachelor's degrees or higher are unemployed.  1.5 Million new undergraduates will receive their degree this year and enter the workforce.  These numbers "reflect a long-term trend toward producing more college graduates than labor markets can absorb."

Insight: The American Dream, as we once knew it, may have officially evaporated.  Paraphrased best by Robert Kiyosaki's 'Poor Dad', the dream may be more irrelevant today than any time in our country's history -- "Study hard, earn a degree, and get a good job."  I ask myself what may happen at the point Gen-Y becomes self-aware; aware that what they've been taught to believe their whole lives may have been wrong.  Seeing the cup as half-full, perhaps we will experience an explosion in entrepreneurialism.  Perhaps.

Key Data Point #2: In 2006, U.S. Colleges produced ~83k new graduates in the visual and performing arts, but only ~67k in engineering.  36 Percent of surveyed employers plan to hire engineering majors, while only 6 percent are looking for liberal arts or humanities graduates and only 5 percent looking for social science majors, "which are among the most popular majors."  Such phenomenon further "represents an equally long-standing mismatch in the fields of study students pursue and the skill sets employers require."

Insight: This immediately brings to mind a 2005 article, "Can America Compete?", written by Geoffrey Colvin of Fortune Magazine.  He notes that within the engineering degrees, we are graduating 5 times less than India and 9 times less than China.  Obviously, there is the population disparity . . . however consider the statistics that in 2006, we experienced a greater number of performing arts graduates than engineering graduates.  This is a problem - a big problem.  As we did during the late 1950s, we must make science and math cool again.  Sure, we're not racing the USSR to the moon, but I'm in agreement with Colin Powell that we need to start applying ourselves again.

Key Data Point #3: 29 Percent of surveyed employers indicate shifting their hiring in favor of new college graduates over experienced workers "primarily because of costs."

Insight: Above all data points in the article, this is the one that left me with the worst taste in my mouth.  And not because I don't get it - as a 'numbers guy' with a natural inclination toward financial analysis, I do.  I'm also aware that globalization lends to a normalization of the world's wealth distribution and quality-of-life, of which a natural consequence is a leveling declination of our own (as the U.S. has consistently been noted as a society of overabundance.)  Speaking from a point of the Global Economy, these are good things . . . yet it hurts to say this, as I envision experienced employees with higher education denied employment over the fresh graduate for mere cost concerns. 

Yes, despite my penchant for the financials, this is a crude vision of which I have a very hard time swallowing.  In addition, my gut tells me that if HR is going to focus purely on reducing initial salary offers, there will be a point of diminishing returns, and it will not be subtle.  It will be distinct.

Editor's Note - Josh Letourneau is the owner of LG and Associates, a Strategic Sourcing, Executive Search, and Human Capital Intelligence firm based in Atlanta.  Prior to founding LG & Associates, Josh worked as a Sales & Marketing professional in the software biz and was a hard-charging Sergeant in the Marines.  In his spare time, Josh enjoys shooting at other sourcing and search professionals as available in random paintball games...

Recruiters Partnering with an Outplacement Firm Seems Like a No Brainer, Right?

WRONG.

Normally, I would say that recruiters masquerading as carrion after a RIF-fest is not the best career move. Not because it’s not a great opportunity, not because those employees aren’t as smart and capable as the employees safe from the proverbial guillotine, not because it’s a conflict of interest (as this article in the Times stated over 17 years ago when this practiced was debated and yes, frowned upon) but because it only reinforces the idea that recruiters are unfeeling opportunists who are only in it “to win it”.  However, 2009 is as far economically from “Normal” as I ever want to see things get.

Instead of the idea of “ambulance chaser”, the recruiter could emerge as a “savior”, helping the client out of an awkward situation (because despite how we have compartmentalized, downplayed, excused and dressed it up, getting fired still stinks. . .for nearly everyone involved) and is providing a ray of hope, no matter how small, for the candidate. This is good news for recruiters, who are already starting to see how much a needed part of society they have become. But with this new lauded status, with all this conversation about how the black sheep cousin of HR can actually be of use, comes a more sinister slippery slope.

Okay, maybe it’s not that sinister. Maybe it’s just an expectation that every recruiter can immediately get a job for every candidate in every industry. And it’s DANGEROUS.

It’s dangerous to the candidate, who is at an extremely vulnerable and scary position and cannot afford to have his foundations in the system rocked anymore than they already are. On the flip side, while outplacement is nice, for some employees it’s not necessary. There is a whole new generation of employees that can connect themselves to recruiters who work in their field, polish up their resume, mobilize their network and create opportunities in a matter of weeks (in fact these things may already be happening). Perhaps a more generous severance package, so they can do their job search, their way?

It’s also dangerous for the client, because half the reason they are using outplacement services is because they want to “do the right thing”. But who defines that “right thing”. If a recruiter can’t help, how will the candidate feel about the outplacement services then? It will not serve one of its original purposes, which is to keep a talent pipeline full, to keep ties with former employees who could serve one day as future employees. If, despite the outplacement services and recruiters “assigned” to them, these displaced employees still can’t find gainful employment, what happens to those expected perceptions?

And it can be dangerous for the recruiters, especially now. The kinds of recruiters that would make good “job search coaches” are probably the kinds that are already overloaded with jobless candidates. Unless they have a well-placed rival client who needs these folks (assuming that company is not also laying folks off) there is little chance they will be able to make any significant debt. And even if they do have such a client and can pull off this feat, the aforementioned desire (keeping ties, filling the talent pipeline, extending the network) of the outplacement firm competes with the recruiter’s goal, leaving one to wonder, who’s out for the job seeker’s best interest?

There are ways this can work. If a large outplacement firm works side by side with a volume recruiting outfit, it would be simpler to get a large workforce placed. “Purple squirrel” candidates can be attended to by specialty third-party recruiters. I guess it's a solution for desperate times but not one I'd pursue anytime soon.

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, recruiting and development for multiple companies. When she's not doing that, she's blogging at Marenated.com and becoming addicted to Twitter...