Dinosaur Recruiters-Back from Extinction in the Age of Web2.0

Posted by SourceCon

August 20, 2008

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Dinosaur Recruiters-Back from Extinction in the Age of Web2.0

By Marvin Smith
Talent Community Development
Microsoft

When I became a headhunter, my heroes and mentors were more like artists than recruiters. They had honed their craft to such a level that it was almost magical watching them work. These men and women could take this routine search assignment and turn it into the next best opportunity that the targeted talent just had to look at if they wanted to take their career to the next level. This sizzle created an appetite for the client’s opportunity. These artists were story tellers; they understood people’s motivation (aka Maslow et al); and they understood their client’s investment in their services to solve this business problem quickly. These recruiters were creative hunters that used their imagination to solicit intelligence about their prey. They appeared to use sleight of hand to bypass gatekeepers to their target audience. They used the technology of the day, but in the art vs. science continuum, the scale definitely leaned toward art.

My heroes were the valued by their clients because when a headhunter was called, a chain reaction was created. Immediately the headhunter called people that would be in the know or at least in be in the position to recommend a likely prospect. Most of the prospects were employed and busy serving their current role. But one call from the headhunter and they began to realize their unhappiness and certainly they were not living up to their career potential.

My heroes were respected and valued by talent in their networks. Their reputations spread by word of mouth and one would find their business cards or names scribbled in the rolodex of talent that were part of the recruiter’s area of specialization. When the headhunter called, the targets listened or at least returned their calls.

Well, as the saying goes, “that was then and this is now.” “Then” was last century. “Then” was a time when employee was thought of as a human resource. “Then” was a time in which the latest technology was a fax machine, a word processor, the yellow pages, and a non-rotary dial phone. “Then” was a time when long term employees were valued. “Then” was a time when retirement was possible and pensions were solvent. “Then” was the dinosaur age of headhunting.

The “now” is this century. “Now” is a time when employees are part of a human capital supply chain. “Now” is a time unimaginable technology growth. “Now” is a time where a cell phone can perform all the tasks the fax, word processor, yellow pages, and phone did last century. “Now” is the era where just about everyone that we want to know about is in a database somewhere. “Now” is a time where employees are still valued (if it makes economic sense). “Now” is the time where our mantra is better, faster, while gaining more value. “Now” is modern age of sourcing, attracting/recruiting, interview schedulers, account management, and on-boarding. “Now” is an era of metrics driven technological solutions, the science of recruiting has reached a peak of influence.

But sadly, where are the headhunters? Where are my heroes? If not extinct, they certainly are an endanger species. What happened to the masters of our craft?

The answer is that most of my heroes have retired or moved on into other realities or are victims of self inflected investment mistakes, entrepreneurial aspirations and the start-up, dot.com mania at the turn of the century. But the truth is, as recruiting evolved from a very relational experience to a more automated, highly technological systematic approach those skills were no longer in demand. The era of my heroes is gone. But we should hang on to their craft and artistry. In fact, their art is very valuable in this era of technology as I found out first hand.

For the past year, I have worked on a most contemporary challenge-building a talent community. A talent community requires the most modern of technology. But somewhat ironically, it is the art of my dinosaur days that will make this initiative successful. In short, by putting art back into the science of recruiting, we are able to realize the promise that talent communities can bring to recruiting.

We are in an era of social networking sites (MySpace, FaceBook, Jobster, LinkedIn, Ning, et al), blogs, and RSS feeds. This is the era of era Web 2.0 and online sharing, collaboration, and community. Yet, somehow all the recruiting technology in the world will not allow recruiters to be successful. Why? In this time when talent is seeking relationship in every facet of their life (including the recruitment process) we offer them the recruiting equivalent of a one night stand. We have become transaction focused. Butts in seats. The pendulum has swung to science away from art. Our scientific method has automated one-off transactions. This science of recruiting measures everything twice and saves us lots of money. But if we look closely, we will notice some gaps. We notice that up to 90% of our prospects opt out of our application process before completion; we notice that we email more than we actually have real time conversations; and we notice that human interaction is getting lost in a world of administriva. And most of all we notice that great talent is still hard to find.

So, at SourceCon 2008, I am going to unveil our work at Microsoft Entertainment & Devices. As we discovered, this project is clearly about putting art back into the science of our era. As a backdrop to the presentation and to provide some context for the discussion, I am previewing the talent community development work here. I am going to look at talent community development through the lens of the mantra of our century-better, faster, with more value. Next time, I will discuss how a talent community represents a “better” solution to the challenge facing this new age of recruiting. Among the reasons that that talent communities are better is that we move beyond transaction and build relationship; we do more with less; and we source from a wider and deeper talent pool.

Until next time, I invite you to consider how the modern art of recruiting draws on the ways of the headhunter. I encourage you to learn more about dinosaur recruiters. Take a boomer recruiter to lunch or visit the retirement home after nap time and learn about the old days. Dust off the tapes from Peter Leffkowitz, Bill Radin or Danny Cahill. Or if you really want dinosaurs check out Phil Ross, Tony Bruno or Tony Byrne. You will find a lot of great tips and techniques about building relationship. You will hear about a lost art form. You might even begin to see as we learned–that one-off transactions (no matter how elegant the system) do not equal relationships in our era. The Chinese word Guanxi captures this idea very well-it places relationship at the very core of business.

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Global Sourcing Conference | Atlanta, Georgia | September 2nd - 4th 2008