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The "Sarah could not be more wrong - and here's why" page follow this blog post

posted by on Sept. 26, 2009

ERE's requirement to register before posting comments on blog posts ensures that you don't have to deal with 83 zillion spam, phishing, or gratuitously nasty comments every time you post something is great.  

However, it does have one drawback:  The people with whom you are most likely to engage in a lively discussion - i.e. the people who hate what you've written - are reluctant to say anything because it's not anonymous, and we all know that what's said on the internet stays on the internet, forever. They resist saying what they'd really like to say - like "You're single-handedly setting back the recruitment profession by decades with your ill-informed and downright delusional opinions," for example - and confine themselves to gentle disagreement or, worse, saying nothing at all.  At least in public.

And I know for a fact that for every "Great post, Sarah!" comment I get, there are 5 others along the lines of "You're an idiot", "That was 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back", and "Nice theory, but I've been working in recruiting for 15+ years and I'm here to tell you that your last 3 blog posts were 100% wrong".  

But what's the point of us all yammering away about recruiting all the time if we never actually learn anything from each other?  Remember the old saying: "When two people agree on everything, one of them is a fool"?  

So I've created this blog post as a central discussion location, and we'll agree that this is where we can stop being polite and/or reluctant to ruffle feathers.  I'll put links to it within my other blog posts, so the next time you find yourself thinking, halfway through reading something I've written, "This post is just as stupid as the one she wrote last week - it's driving me nuts!", you can just come on over here and deal with them both at the same time.

Looking forward to the discussion...

 

 

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7 comments

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  • 1 point 54 days ago

    You raise an interesting question. I think there are two connected issues here. First, the principal value for me (and I think many others) of participating in these types of forums, is to make real connections with people. Commenting anonymously creates no value for me, since no one will know that I was the guy behind all those brilliant remarks.

    Likewise, public disagreement is often a very bad way to introduce yourself to people, and can be quite risky even with very good friends. In theory, robust debate creates an opportunity for both sides to learn and grow. In practice, it's easy to come across as a know-it-all, and can create negative perceptions even among bystanders of the conversation. After all, if you've had the nerve to disagree with Joe publicly, how can I trust that you won't do the same to me in the future?

    If you follow behavioral psych at all, you'll see that this preference for conformity starts early, and doesn't really let up much in life:

    http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/03/toddlers-avoid-dissenter-opinions.html

    As I joked once with the Recruiting Animal, being a contrarian may eventually get a statue put up in your honor, but it will usually be on the spot where you were hanged as a heretic in front of a cheering crowd.

  • 1 point 56 days ago

    Sarah,

    You are obviously trying to provoke comment so i will rise to the bait. This is clearly a blog written by a marketeer about sales. It is also written from a company heavily involved in RPO from your slant on RPO. I disagree with both. There are some really good bloggers out there with a big leaning towards sales. You might want to look at Recruitingblogs for the likes of Jerry Albright, Andy Headworth (from the UK), Slouch, Bill Vick etc to name a few. This gives rise to the image of great recruitment sales people wearing a sharp suit and talking non-stop when in fact the good sales people display very different traits, namely listening, questioning and fully understanding customer need. I would be glad to point you in the way of some very good sales orientated bloggers who also run very good billing desks. you only have to look rather than assume that only a marketeer could write a blog.

    In terms of RPO, i don't see this as taking over the industry, nor do i see the death of contingency recruitment. I have a number of reasons for believing this. The market for RPO is smaller at the moment due to scale of hiring. A recession reduces the cost benefit due to volume. I can provide UK stats on this if you need evidence, or you can take my word on it. Hopefuly you do not view me as one of the "noises" on twitter, although i do challenge people on points i disagree with. I believe that open comment and disagreement in 140 charachter debate, backed up by blogging enables others to form opinion on the issues of the day. Does that make me a noise?

    RPO is largely built around high volume recruitment and is predominantly transactional. There is a distinct trend towards relationship becoming increasingly important in the market as we head out of recession. You can find many blog posts from me on this point. Hiring companies are looking more to value and service over pure cost and speed. Being able to demonstrate service, work to agreements, show retention (not just introduction) and understanding are the key drivers in this market. Equally, the candidates are looking for the same and are looking for more than a transaction with a career portal. This will see some significant changes in practice by third party recruiters (and corporates) over the coming 18 months in response to a changing market. As you know from my radio show, "Ready for Lift Off" - Mondays - 1.00PM, the smart companies are working on building up talent pools and selling this talent to hiring companies. Diversity of product/service offering is also becoming key, over the one size fits all model. Equally, human interaction in the recruiting process beyond volume messages and an automated service is what is needed in response to demand from the best talent, and hiring companies want the best talent and not the cheapest to find talent. It is those recruiters that adopt this that will grow and thrive as the market rises.

    i would be more than happy to discuss this further on or off line. RPO is one of the client options but far from the future. As the market rises, so in turn will the war for talent, and with it margin. There is a new challenge from social media, but weren't the job boards going to kill off recruiters 10 years ago? The recruiters that raise their service level to clients and candidates and learn to find jobs for people rather than people for jobs will be the ones that excel in the new market.

    For the record, i'm never anonymous, always @BillBoorman

  • 1 point 56 days ago

    Thanks, Bill - your comment was EXACTLY the kind of thing I was hoping for! 

    To those of who don't know Bill, I encourage you to follow him on Twitter @billboorman and check out his radio show - both are excellent sources of news and info about recruiting.

    A couple of comments in response to yours:

    - Absolutely I'm writing this from the perspective of a marketing person about recruiting, because that's what I am.  (However, I did spend my first career as a real estate salesperson; I've had a marketing company since 2002; and been running Retired Worker since 2003 - so I've had to do a fair amount of sales, including sales in recruiting, over the years.)

    - My point was NOT that great recruiters/great salespeople CAN'T write great blogs or whatever - it's that I think in many cases they just DON'T.  My point was that when they don't write stuff, the blogosphere gets filled up with opinions from people like me - who are not, in the end, actual recruiters - which, frankly, are no better than theoretical.  

    - Here's the thing:  Head2Head - the recruiting company I work with most - delivers more recruiters to more organizations than anyone else in Canada, so we have a network of 4000+ recruiters.  And I have to say that the ones we know to be the most successful (whether you define 'success' by performance, earning power, client management, time-to-hire - whatever) seem less likely to be making a lot of noise in the blogosphere than (a) not-so-great performers and (b) people like me, who aren't actually on the recruiting front lines.

    - RPO is definitely one of those terms that means different things to different people.  (We did a survey on it, in fact, but I don't have the data to hand just this minute.)  Is Head2Head  "heavily" involved with RPO?  Well...yes and no.  Head2Head's core offering is, essentially, providing recruiters by the hour.  You can engage as little as an off-site recruiter for 10 hours per week just to do some sourcing/screening or as much as an entire platoon of recruiters to manage your entire recruitment function from stem to stern like we do for clients like Microsoft.  

    So it's outsourcing - we call it RPO Lite or unbundled RPO - of recruitment, but it's not what most people would think of as full RPO.

    - What we're seeing here in our market - we have about 350 clients, from big ones like Microsoft and Accenture to small ones you've never heard of - is that clients ARE increasingly outsourcing parts of their recruitment function simply because if you need to hire 15 people over the next 3-6 months, it's WAY cheaper to engage a contract recruiter on-site than to pay contingency fees.

    - Will Canada see the super-big, enterprise-wide RPO?  Probably not - what I'm hearing from clients and from people who know a lot more about the Canadian recruitment marketplace than I do is that there are probably only a handful of companies in Canada who are even big enough to warrant it.  But again - it's a matter of degree.

    Anyway, excellent comment - thank you!

  • 1 point 56 days ago

    Being in recruiting we often have to make judgements on people quickly--are they quality or not.  I like you.  You seek the truth in your arguments rather than winning.  That's part of what solid logic is.  In true logic if you find a flaw in your opponents argument you offer up the correction even if it lessons the strength of your own argument.  So many people just aren't trained in this school of thought--they argue only to win.  Winning is nothing if your argument doesn't seek truth.  Thanks for putting yourself out there with a strong point of view.  

    And...great to have such a strong contributor to the pursuit of advancing our industry! 

  • 1 point 56 days ago

    You're right that I'm interested in getting to the truth - or at least learning more about other perspectives.  It's the same old story:  The more I learn, the more I realize how dumb I really am.  And I'm relatively new to recruiting - I've been in marketing for 15 years, but I've only focused on recruitment marketing for the past 5, so I feel like I have a LOT to learn.  

    More importantly, in my experience, the recruiters with the most knowledge/wisdom/experience are the ones who are LEAST likely to write blogs/articles - they're too busy setting benchmarks by doing recruiting than talking about it.

    I don't know if you saw my posts about Mike Stearns, the MyHusbandNeedsAJob.com guy.  He sent me an email responding to some of the points I'd made - he didn't agree with anything I'd said - but when I asked him to post the comments publicly as a comment to my blog, I never heard from him again and I was SO disappointed.  It would have been great to have had the recruiter and candidate perspective on the same blog...

    Anyway, let's hope our (yours and my) comments here will encourage other people to join the conversation!

     

  • 1 point 56 days ago

    This discussion may end up just being more about opinion than anything else--you can come up with arguments on either side....I'm going to give you mine though because I do like that you take such a passionate stance.    

    I personally think the people who have to comment anonymously are cowardly and/or unskilled in strong logic/argument.  For me they are complainers versus industry advancers.  People who believe in growing the industry, sharing knowledge, taking a stance should be willing to put themselves on the line for their cause.  We aren't talking about a situation here where people need to fear retaliation--this is an industry forum.  Let's not be naive about what this is.  If it were a discussion board about voting in Iran and it was in Iran..that would be a different story.  This is ERE though..come on!  Those that need to be anonymous are wimps if you ask me...they complain or say something disrespectful and often times offer no credible alternative to the argument.  

    To each there own..but if I'm at work, engaging in one of my communities or taking on an entire crowd I disagree with--You better believe I'm going to stand up in front and stamp my name on what I have to say.  If there are guys hiding behind the bushes yelling out their comments...as far as I'm concerned they are just cowards with nothing real to add or to stand by.

    We make our organizational leaders and our politicians stand by their words and live with their decisions.  I think the recruiter hiding behind their cubicle can do the same...if not then don't engage in the discussion as far as I'm concerned.  There is progressive engagement and then there is just noise... 

    Signed...

    Steve Fogarty!  

     

  • 1 point 56 days ago

    Thanks, Steve - 

    Ultimately, I think 85% of recruiting - because it's so people-oriented, and people aren't rational - comes down to personal experience and opinion.  So I'm okay if this turns into a forum where people are defending opinions without a whole lot of statistics to back them up. 

    But I'm with you on the 'unskilled in logic/argument' idea - part of the reason I started this page was because lately I've come across a number of recruiting types who seem to think that the best way to build their personal brand is to say deliberately inflammatory things to people, and then cackle in delight.  

    And the signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes deafening, as you say:  A couple of weeks ago, one of the more prominent figures on the recruiting blogosphere/twitterverse front tweeted (publicly) something along the lines of "What do you mean you're popular on ERE?  I've never heard anyone say that - ha!  Who SAYS you're big on ERE?" in my direction, hoping, I think, to cause trouble (though I'd never spoken to this person before, so why s/he chose me is a mystery).  

    Of course, when my response was "Actually, ERE says it - my ERE blog has more traffic than anyone else's...", s/he went quietly away, and I was left wondering what the heck either of us had accomplished.  

    (sigh)

    Sometimes I think that 80% of the people making the most noise in recruitment are noisy simply because they can't get a job or clients.  But where does that leave me and my zillion-word blogs???  ;-}