I am a Job Seeker and I _am_ making a list of who got back to me even to say, “Thank you, but I don’t have any positions that fit your profile at the moment.” and who do not. As a senor level manager, when I find my next career move I will certainly be in a position to remember those who spent 10 seconds to touch another human being.

Since I am quoting you (and maybe channeling you) I thought I should copy you on the comment I posted to the March 03 blog “Forget the passive candidate”. I read some of the articles on ERE, including yours, but rarely the blogs. I almost never post a comment. But I happened to read this (“Forget the Passive Candidate”) blog, and it got me going. I am as anxious about my business as anyone out there. But I have high standards for serving my clients, and I hope in the long run those will prevail.

Hold Everything
posted 3/4/2009 at 8:39 p.m. PT by Lynne Sebastian

As a retained search recruiter, my job is to source, evaluate and recruit the best candidate for my client. I really don’t care whether that candidate is passive, aggressive, quick or dead (well, maybe dead is a knockout factor). And as Howard Adamsky succinctly put it recently, my job involves aggessively defending my client from the wrong candidates, of whom there will be plenty. Yes, let HR worry about the numbers. And I am always nice, but I don’t believe I have to reply to everyone who asks for my attention.

As far as “social responsibility” goes: If I secure the best candidate for my client, that enables them to continue to create jobs. And if the candidate I help them hire comes from a competitor, then that competitor helps the economy by replacing him or her. Duh?

Bill Josephson

We’ll still bring select candidates to the party. But now its about ways we can participate in process improvement. Build for the future. Ways recruiters can envision tactics to take inefficiencies out of the system. Ways to optimize process. Ways recruiters can go belly to belly with client managers to ask a host of “what if” questions followed by less frenzied opportunities to listen, to learn, and to bond.

It is very refreshing to hear you cut to the chase. I could not agree with your summary more. Great advice for everyone, rookies and veterans.

Doug Beabout CPC CSP

Wholeheartedly agree … what we are seeing now – and have seen for a while – is that the 3rd party placement vendor business is all about ‘finding needles in haystacks’ – only the needles are more rare and the haystack is larger. My concern for the future of the business as a successful third party guy is that unless one is able to really create a sustainable niche and relationships as ‘go-to value added resource’ (which is getting harder and harder to do and generally only involves ‘strategic hiring’ initiatives) the income opportunities in this profession will continue to diminish – the paradox is that all of the late-generation tools (LinkedIn, Jigsaw, blogs, etc.) are utilized as little more than ‘sourcing’ imperatives – and the value of paying a fee is rarely if ever as much about ‘sourcing’ as it is about ‘assessment’ (or should be) – therein lies the value of what we do …. and in my considerable experience it is truly the rare ‘internal staff recruiter’ (or hiring manager, to be blunt) that has the perspective to be able to accomplish this effectively. Therein lies the business challenge. This is too tough a business to make mediocre $$ – (i.e.: early six figures) – there are way too many other gigs to make the kind of $$ we’re used to, IMHO. Good luck, all.

To be a little shameless here, your thoughts and mine seem pretty similar – take a look at my article “Cognitive Dissonance” that was printed in the ERE Journal of Corporate Leadership.

I particularly love your question, “What new breed of recruiter will evolve from this misery and what will they bring to the table to meet the still undefined future all of us must face?”

The new breed is, well, the old breed – those of us old schoolers that remember the days of working the phones, getting to know our clients genuine needs, wants and expectations, etc. and in knowing those candidates whose own needs, wants and expectations match up well. Oh, and being able to deliver them of course.

Work done well is going to re-emerge as more important then simply getting work done fast. The old addage that it is faster to do it right once then to have to do it over again is especially true right now.