Electronicsearch

Gosh, it is that time again. I just can’t sit in my chair without squirming until I get this out. What am I all riled up about now? Internet recruiting. Phlegggghhh!

Wow… Internet recruiting has gotten so BIGGGGG! Every day it seems I get another resume site, portal or e-solution sent to me so I can get EVEN MORE RESUMES! It doesn’t matter that I have enough resume services to last me another 100 years. “Industry People” think we need more and more. Well, maybe they are right. I guess I see the reasoning, I have empathy, I have seen the light… NO, NO, NO!… they are not right… I do not want 5 million resumes!

Time for a story.

Back in May of this year the phone here at Electronic Search, Inc. rang and it was Maynard calling. No, not Maynard Vallapadi, the Mexican accountant, it was that company out East in Maynard Land. Some of you may recall this “monstrous” resume joint that now has over 5 million resumes in their coffers. Why were they calling little old Electronic Search, Inc.? Well, sit down, cousin… they were looking for resumes. What? No! Yup… resumes… seems they didn’t have enough. Well, to be blunt, they didn’t have time to look at their own resumes and hire a dozen or so technical people. Our first response was…

“GEEEEZZZ… are you kidding? ”

“Nope.. .we need all these people and we will pay you nice fees to get ’em for us.”

So, what is the catch?

They, (the candidates we referred), couldn’t be on their system. So… let’s get this straight. You will pay us to bring you people, but they cannot already be on your database?

“Yes, not now…. not ever. If they were EVER on there, we will not pay you because we, of course, already have them.”

Hummmmm…the plot thickens.

“If you already have them, why don’t you HAVE them? ”

“Well, we COULD have them, if we had time, but we don’t have time, so we need you to get us some OTHER people who have NEVER visited with us electronically, and that’s what we want.”

After a few shots of Tequila, and a flurry of “what the hecks,” we thanked Maynard and agreed to spend some time on it.

We quickly learned why these folks couldn’t get their hires. It took them 2 weeks to respond to a resume submittal. “Holy deal killer, Batman…that’ll never work!” is what we said to them. They said they would “try harder,” but it didn’t work because they didn’t.

As an experiment, (I love research), we sent them someone who HAD posted to their site in the last year and they called back with some interest and some routine screening questions. After all that, they didn’t seem to notice that they already had the person. Gosh… this seemed “kooky” to us based on the previous caveats, and we waited to see what would happen next.

My recruiter, normally a very calm and collected person, was fuming and frustrated. We started referring to them as “Maynard dot blankety blank*&^#%$ dot expletive blank.”

This got so silly that it was actually almost worth the effort we wasted trying to help them. Did you know that laughing can actually prevent premature aging?

Well, the end of the story is really cool. They called about a month later, (in their first genuine attempt at courtesy) and said that all the positions were filled and we should cease and desist and thanks anyway but “we are under control.” We, (who had stopped working on it a month ago anyway, but are always inquisitive), asked, “How come?” They said they decided to buy a whole company and they used the techies from the company they bought to fill all those jobs… SO they are all filled with those people they inherited (bought) and they are doing those jobs now and they are all really happy and it only cost them 10 million bucks or something. This seemed to us sort of Jed Clampetty, but effective in a “fell swoop” sort of way. I believe, but cannot confirm or deny, that they called the other 50 contingency firms starring in this movie and read them the same tome.

End of true story.

For some reason this whole discussion has gotten me back on the soapbox for real service, real dialogue and real results gotten from real work. I dunno, call me old fashioned, but it seems like people with staffing problems still need someone to work hard and get the right people in the door for the right reasons. Sure, sure, sure, sure, SURE… you can get hires from candidates on blahblah.com, Headhoncho.getem, billybobsguys.com, resumedork and all nine hundred of the other ones. Sure you can. If you work at it.

The resume boards are creating a whole breed of “recruiters” who are merely database operators. This is a swell skill if you have 15 minutes on your hands for complete training. “Key words” are the king now in many search firms and HR departments. “Let’s match ’em up” is the battle cry for the new breed… “Sourcers,” “Gophers” and “Spiders” are NOT cute little critters in THIS world. They are the modern tools the staffing industry uses to beef up inventory. Heck, even my own database will automatically match the resume with the job spec. It’s kinda fun… just electronically shuffle the documents together like a deck of cards and if enough words match, then you get to send your client a big invoice for “recruiting.”

Of course, somewhere along the line, someone with a clue may have to have a conversation or two.

Hold on to your conscience Maynard, the new age has dawned.

Steve Eddington