Shelf life of candidates

I’ve recently been talking to Recruiting professionals who seem to be holding onto a antiquated misconception:

“I own my candidates”.

In the past, when you sourced a highly valuable candidate, it was common practice to hold onto them with white knuckles, never knowing if you’d see them again or if they might get “discovered” by one of your rival companies.

It’s 2008 and there are no secrets in recruiting anymore. If YOU know a candidate, so does your competition, in fact, that candidate may have already interviewed with your competition! So this “open source” idea of recruiting begs the question:

“What is the shelf life of a candidate?”

We all use some form of the acronym “QIA” (Qualified, Interested and Attractable) so we’ll use that industry term to answer the question.

Qualified: Chances are, if you find them qualified today, they will be qualified tomorrow – for the role you have today! What you don’t know is what new qualifications they may have in 6 months or what new competencies you would want to leverage for a different role.

Interested: Hopefully, if you’ve created interest in a candidate today, that interest will last. But how long? Today we all have a bit of ADHD due to the bombardment of stimulus from our electronic addictions and therefore our interests wax and wane. Here is where we start to lose “shelf life”. If you’ve brought someone to the table, passive candidate or active candidate, chances are that person is ready for a meal! This means, if you don’t hire them they will probably not go right back to being the heads down passive candidate they were when you first called. Don’t kid yourself, once someone has crossed the line and committed to interview with your company, they are ripe for someone else too!

Attractable: I use this term to denote your ability to actually ATTRACT someone to your role. You can have someone who is Q and I but wants too much money or has knowledge of your hiring manager and won’t work for them etc. Once you’ve chosen someone else for the role, a declined candidate’s ability to be attracted AGAIN goes down. Think of dating, if you date someone a few times and then are told “I just want to be friends” – you are less likely to answer the phone 6 months from now when he/she calls!

In short; the shelf life of a candidate (even in today’s economy) is about 30-45 days, even less if they possess competencies that are in high demand. Act today, act swiftly, and stay in touch with relationships you have but don’t think for a moment that Silver Medalists are loyal to you because you called first!

July 21, 2008 | Filed Under Industry Perspectives | 1 Comment 

Heartburn on Monday morning.

It’s 9:27 a.m. and I have heartburn. I thought it might have been acid reflux from the bowling alley chili dogs on Saturday night but then I read a blog post by Phil Rosenberg from “reCareered & Rainmakers Global” and the dogs were off the hook.

What gives me heartburn is the concept of “Resume Search Optimization” as Phil discusses it. Basically he takes SEO (search engine optimization) and applies the concepts to creating a resume tailored to the job description for the job to which you are applying . Here’s why this concept does nothing to “optimize” the recruiting process:

  • Job descriptions are rarely written any better than a resume. They are usually a complex amalgamation of inputs from HR benchmark reports, Compensation, Recruiting and some final tweaking from a Hiring Manager with too much on his/her plate. They don’t really tell you about the person needed to do the job. They simply describe the laundry list of skills and arbitrary timeframes (3-5 years? So if I have 2.5 or 6, you DON’T want to see me?) the “machine” says will produce the best employee. Matching one poorly written document to another poorly written document is not anyone’s definition of optimization!

 

  • Optimization is not desperation. Today the talk in recruiting is all about the “passive candidate”. The virtual panacea of recruiting is locating people who are NOT looking for a job (because they are engaged at work today!) and convincing them to make a move. There is a spectrum between “passive” and “active” and in between the extremes is where quality meets quantity. None but the most active candidates are going to tweak every resume sent/posted to each job description. This means that recruiters who pull up your “rigged” resume will see it but may also perceive it as less quality once they see how “optimized” it is (indicating a very active candidate).

The system is broken and “rigging” resumes is a HUGE part of the problem. There has to be a better way; one that relies on a more reliable search methodology that produces the best resumes coming from people currently looking for a job as well as those who may be putting a toe in the water but are not desperately active in a job search. Recruiters have to balance the need for speed (easily retrievable resumes from the top of the search) with the imperative for quality (those who are not rigging and therefore lower in the search results) if they are providing the service they promise to hiring managers.

Please don’t rig your resume, it doesn’t optimize anything. Find a better way to get in front of the people who are actually looking for YOU and the unique competencies and value you can add to their company.

 

July 14, 2008 | Filed Under Industry Perspectives | Leave a Comment 

Inaugural Blog

Welcome to the first AllianceQ Blog. Actually, this Blog represents a series of firsts:

This is the first blog on the AllianceQ website. This is also my very first post. As such, it will be simple, but will give you a flavor of entries to come. I believe Corporate Recruiting needs to change immediately to remain relevant in the new landscape of hiring. Occasionally my posts will touch upon AllianceQ updates and news, but that isn’t the focus of this blog. It’s about sharing my perspectives on industry trends and insights around what’s next in Corporate Recruiting.

This is also the first time I’ve made a move from the world of recruiting to the world of recruiting software solutions. AllianceQ is a very unique solution for Corporate Recruiting and it took something of this magnitude to pull me away from my 17 year career in recruiting.

And finally, AllianceQ is the first true recruiting collaboration of F1000 companies. As such, AllianceQ represents the change I will be advocating in this blog. When companies come together to collectively solve the issues and challenges that have been plaguing recruiting departments for so many years; we are on the precipice of true industry change! As we head into the coming “war to talent” (more on this in posts to come) it is the mantra of “we are more powerful than me” that will truly win the war. AllianceQ embodies this mantra.

I look forward to getting to know your thoughts on corporate recruiting and sharing mine with you!

Phil

July 8, 2008 | Filed Under Industry Perspectives | Leave a Comment