Comments on: Guerilla Recruiting: It’s Time for a Revolution!

By: Maureen Sharib

Maureen Sharib — Wed, 04 May 2005 11:10:00 +0000

They say you can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs…

By: Pam Claughton

Pam Claughton — Wed, 04 May 2005 01:55:00 +0000

While I generally applaud creative recruiting techniques, it is to seek out top talent, with the intention of improving the companies business, never for the sole intention of harming the competition. To me, Guerrilla recruiting is smart, proactive recruiting, where you identify candidates that are exceptional and go after them.

I found this passage disturbing,

‘In guerrilla recruiting …. you attack and withdraw quickly, delivering significant yet targeted damage. In guerilla recruiting you attack competitors where they are vulnerable, even if you have no direct need for that talent’

Why can’t you just do your job well, put out a good product and win on your own merits? To me, the above approach is akin to cheating. And it gets worse…

‘because while your competitors counter to repair the damage inflicted, they leave other more desirable talent unguarded. Every weakness must be attacked until the competitor is weakened and can be annihilated, enabling your organization to pick up market share and revenues without the costly expense of a merger or acquisition.’

This isn’t how I would ever want to do business, and I would not want to work for a company that did this. It is not necessary. If it is, then I think you need to seriously question the quality of your product, or service that you provide. Plus, it just feels like ‘bad karma’, the whole ‘what goes around comes around’ kind of thinking.

Just my two cents….

:) Pam

By: Sudhir Kamath

Sudhir Kamath — Tue, 03 May 2005 06:20:00 +0000

While I have no dispute with the tactics described in the article, I wonder if the military metaphor is necessary / warranted. I’ve always been uncomfortable with the military / violent imagery of even marketing tactics where there may be some justification for such descriptives (the war for market share). I really don’t see the need for it in a recruiting scenario. Wouldn’t farming / husbandry kind of metaphors work just as well for the description of the need for new ways of talent acquisition? Given what I do from Bangalore is very non-traditional – remote talent acquisition support – I really do agree with the need for different ways of identifying and acquiring talent. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, maybe I’m just a wooly headed pacifist flower child, but I genuinely do believe that we are entering an age of coopetition where it makes more sense to look at all human activity – business included – as something that benefits everyone rather than taking away from some to benefit others.

By: Carol Mahoney

Carol Mahoney — Mon, 02 May 2005 06:18:00 +0000

Colleen Gardner (Gardner Consulting), Elaine Fortier and I developed a Guerilla Recruiting workshop back in 1997 that was obviously ahead of it’s time. Our clients loved it and I have incorporated the principles into the recruiting strategies for the companies that I have since worked with. The guerilla recruiting principles have morphed a bit, but the message is the same… recruit with req-less abandon