MIT researchers gave a group of patients all the same placebo for pain relief, according to the latest Men's Health magazine. Some of the people were told the placebo was an expensive, brand-name medicine. Others were told it was a cheaper generic. Still, all of them were given the same empty pill.

Thirty percent more of the people who thought they were getting an expensive drug said it made them feel better.

It's a phenomenon that works any way you cut it -- if you tell people a hairstyle cost $200, they'll think it's better than if you tell them it cost $20 -- even if in blind trials, they can't tell the difference. The same goes for colleges; Clemson University charged more and people thought the higher price would mean they'd get a better education.

People will claim that more expensive vodka tastes better, but of course that's because it's more expensive .

A new study on wine shows similar results. If people are told a wine is more expensive, they'll say it's better than a cheaper wine, but $10 bottles beat out $150 in blind taste tests .

I wonder if this holds true in recruiting:

• Do managers and recruiters sometimes think one job candidate is better than another, simply because they're earning more?
• Do people assume that someone who went to a higher-priced, more expensive college is somehow smarter than another person who did not? Do employers value, for example, a public education at brainiac New College less than one that costs exponentially higher?
• When we hear that one recruiting technology vendor has a more expensive product, is our first thought: "it must be better"? Is this the case with the price of job-board listings?
• Most interesting: does taking a job that pays less lead an employer to think someone is less skilled and less valuable than if that job candidate had taken a higher-paid job? In other words, if a math major earns half as much teaching high school math than had she/he gone into private business, and then applies for a job, does a prospective employer think that $50,000 teacher is less smart than the $100,000 math major at an accounting company?

Some companies play hardball when comparing their products to their competitors'. But not all corporations play recruiting hardball.

 

And then there's PointRoll. It's getting pretty good about going for the jugular.

 

First on the product side: PointRoll, which helps Fortune 500 and other companies advertise online, last year issued a press release proclaiming:

 

 

Now on the recruiting side: PointRoll put a bulls-eye on employees of its competitor DoubleClick. PointRoll last week issued a press release with this title and subtitle:

 

PointRoll to DoubleClick: While Submitting Your Resume to Google, CC Us! In a not-so-subtle message to DoubleClick employees whose future is uncertain, PointRoll demonstrates their certainty of continued growth.

 

John Sullivan would be impressed.

 

"Sitting there relying on going fishing and putting your name on ads with generic information is not going to get the job done," says Matt Cadwell, who PointRoll brought on to head up recruiting a bit over a month ago from GSI Commerce. "We're not a household name."

 

Speaking of names: PointRoll, which is now owned by Gannett, dubs its products "FatBoy," "TomBoy," "BadBoy," "TowelBoy," and "PaperBoy" (though its job descriptions can be relatively boring).

 

Cadwell's task is to bring add about 80 people to the 250-employee company over the next year (he's starting to think about an upgraded applicant tracking system). About 35 to 40% of these candidates will be found through employee referrals. For the others, Cadwell and PointRoll are moving away from the Monsters and the Hotjobs of the world toward more niche sites like phillyadclub.com, actionscript.org, and creativehotlist.com.

 

"The interactive vertical -- it's a tough market to source for," Cadwell says. "There's not a lot of folks who do what we do here. The folks we're trying to hire -- they're not looking for jobs on the big boards. They're looking to rub elbows with the people who speak the same language they speak and are on usergroups, blogs, and so on."

 

PointRoll and others at the company (where 80% of candidates interview with the president) spend a lot of time on behavioral interviewing and assessing "cultural fit" -- trying to figure out whether someone'll fit into the environment of the company, which is highly entrepreneurial and involves a lot of trying new ideas. When pitching candidates on a PointRoll job, Cadwell and others play up the variety an employee will get if they work there. Cadwell says that at a larger firm you may work with one client and one campaign, while at PointRoll it may be hundreds.

 

He says a future round of PointRoll recruiting advertising, perhaps on niche usergroups, will feature current PointRoll employees. "You typically don't see a lot of companies doing stuff like that," Cadwell says. "The whole online advertising industry," he notes, is only about a decade old, so "there's just not this abundance of folks. You do need to take an aggressive approach when you're looking for staff within the interactive realm. I've been charged with thinking of new ways to do that."

--Employers face new immigrant hiring rules.

 

--For those who've learned everything: In Orange County, California, the University of California/Irvine yesterday announced it is offering a course called "Human Resources Basics, Recruitment, and Retention for the Spa Manager."

 

--The Sigma Group used to use recruiters and general job sites to find people. Now it's using networking sites such as LinkedIn.

 

--NightHawk is looking for a CFO and a COO.

 

--TheKnot is looking for finance and operations execs.

 

--McGladrey updated its site with videos; click on the phone on the left.

With the sun shining hard today in LA, and thus no reason for anyone to limit their activities to merely cutting their nails, turnout at the latest Richard Katz-SeasonedPro operation seemed strong, and on average, younger than last year.

 

Ameriprise, Deloitte, the CIA, State Farm, and the popular Disney were among those recruiting experienced hires here at UCLA.

 

Notably absent, particularly as compared to past fairs, are many banks.

 

Well, except for one: a major sperm bank. HR Manager Susan Herrera is looking for donor coordinators, who help manage the process of donations. She plays up the company's role in "touching people's hearts" and building and maintaining healthy families; the bank is also involved in stem-cell collection from umbilical cords.

 

Scott Patchett, of 1,400-employee Haas Automation, is here looking for engineers -- specifically, those with SAP expertise. Haas may hire 50-100 people this year, and with regard to the economy, Patchett simply says, "it hasn't slowed down for us. We haven't really seen those pressures." (Back to Herrera, from the sperm bank ... she gave me a similar answer when I asked her about the economy; the fertility business isn't necessarily directly tied to the cyclical ups and downs of GDP.)

 

Anyhow, at Haas Automation, Patchett is looking for "A players," and says the company's "comp plans are very aggressive ... a tremendous bonus program." Among the universities he likes for high-caliber technical talent: California State University-Northridge. Turnover at Haas runs less than 5%, he says. One challenge, however, is getting people to move to Ventura County, California. It's pretty, and it's cheaper than LA, but it's not always in the cards for city slickers. Look for Haas Automation to reconsider its policy of not relocating people.

 

Lara Schecter, Deloitte Recruiting Manager, is here looking for people to work in the tax division -- accountants, auditors, and sometimes attorneys. Up until just over a year ago, Schecter was recruiting for Manhattan accounting firms, and has a New York accent to die for as proof.

 

She says she's never been at a firm where the "partners and managers are so involved" in employee careers and helping employees do what they want, progress how they want, and so on. She's a recruiter, so she's paid to say that, but she sounds believable.

 

Schecter's not experiencing any economic downturn in her division. Among the universities her company likes: Pepperdine, USC, and Brigham Young; the latter's business school seems to be getting more attention of late.

 

Aaron Vactor, agency recruiter at State Farm (which has tight relations with UCLA), says that his jobs are mainly recession-proof, as people need car insurance and other insurance in any economy. Some of his favorite colleges to find recruits are Florida State, Penn State, and "Pittsburgh, of course" (where he's from).

 

Lauren Cavanagh came here to recruit financial planners for Ameriprise because colleagues in San Francisco had success with this event in the past. Says Cavanagh: "I don't want to find people lacking in trust-building skills, integrity. Integrity is one of the things I look for right off the bat." The supposedly slow economy isn't affecting her a whole lot either.

--New ranking of the best cities for jobs.

 

--Teleperformance is hiring hundreds of people for call-center jobs.

 

--A couple of Fortune writers like Taleo. Investors haven't been liking the company the last few days.

 

--Are you worried that this long stretch of good times is coming to an end? (We are fortunate to be living through an incredible 52 straight months of uninterrupted job growth, a large drop in the federal deficit, and 8.3 million new jobs since 2003.) Well, a global group of financial institutions says a recession "is likely to be avoided" in the U.S.  A recession may not happen in Canada either. And financial advisors don't expect a recession. By the way, if you're really a detail/numbers geek, there'll be a great chart on the bottom of I think page 11 in the BusinessWeek that will come out this weekend in your Barnes & Noble or the like. It will show how the least-volatile years over the last 75 years have been the last few years.

 

--Master Burnett and John Sullivan are about halfway through a book on managing an employment brand. Should be done in a few weeks.

 

--I took a few seconds away from work today to read this article about Andy Grove. Grove is a business legend ... a legend, period ... and hopefully he will do for disease what he has done for the business world.

Have you seen Quicken Loans' recruiting blog called What's the Diff? It's about "all the things that make the difference in business and in life."

 

San Bernardino County salaries online.

 

Lawsuit over hiring women for security positions is settled.

 

Engineering Pipeline Under Pressure.

 

New extensive report on employment of people with disabilities. If you have trouble with my link, it's at Adecco's website, under the knowledge center, the employers' section.