The Politics of Recruiting

William Uranga NAILED IT today in his post on Fistful of Talent comparing the selection of Biden and Palin to similarities in the recruiting process.  Way to go William!

For me, the net takeaway is that hiring the RESUME is the safe, conservative and least effective way to hire anyone, VP of IT or VP of the United States.  (Imagine putting Sarah Palin’s resume in front of a typical hiring manager, “not enough industry experience, not enough years of expereience” blah, blah, blah)

If you want to shake up Washington DC or simply shake up the marketing department, hire the most talented, driven and potentially game changing individual you can find.  Use your insticts, your advisors and an eye to the future.  All it takes is courage, vision and leadership.  Any hiring managers out there fit this profile?

September 2, 2008 | Filed Under Industry Commentary 

Comments

3 Responses to “The Politics of Recruiting”

  1. KD on September 2nd, 2008 3:06 pm

    Phil -

    I liked Wiliam’s post as well (full disclosure - I’m a teammate of his at FOT). Did a HR-centric post as well over at the HR Capitalist…

    http://www.hrcapitalist.com/2008/09/looking-for-a-h.html

    Keep writing….KD

  2. William on September 2nd, 2008 3:16 pm

    Phil - Thanks for the kind mention and great thoughts. Also, congratulations in your new(er-ish) role at A-Q (I penned about what you folks here: http://is.gd/29oK). All the best -

  3. Aaron Ziff on September 10th, 2008 10:31 am

    I find this topic to be very interesting. As a former recruiter and masters degree holder in industrial-organizational psychology, I continually struggle with the tension between scientific analysis and instincts.

    My personal feeling (from my early, decidedly non-scientific executive search experience), is that instincts can be developed and are perhaps the single most valuable tool a recruiter possesses. I find that my appraisals of others are rapid, accurate and almost always substantiated. That having been said, there is much to be gained by supplementing these judgments with hard data and evidence.

    I have been dismayed at the typical recruiting approach employed by the majority of organizations. Most recruiters that I’ve interacted with think inside the box, read off a script and seek canned answers to canned questions you would find in any interviewing book. I always saw my job (even before graduate school) as being to creatively uncover talent and identify opportunities where they were not immediately obvious. Anyone can perform a check-the-box exercise and read through a resume; it takes skill to elevate one’s awareness to consider competencies, personality and disposition, and match these to the appropriate functional areas within different companies.

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