(August 07, 2007)
The Facebook's response to Harry Joiner was due, in part, to the
dreadful reputation that Recruiters have around the planet. Spam, in the
guise of "talent pool development" has become a tool of the trade. Bulk
email, used because it works, has an unseen cost.
The waste within our profession is an
amazing thing to behold. Transactional recruiters, only worried about
filling "this" requisition, behave as if the resources of people and
reputation were, in fact, limitless. Broadcast email lists, totaling
tens of millions of names, are mercilessly beaten for results. It's
always the case that my "targeted email list" is someone else's spam.
Nevertheless, any internet operation
featuring community is wise to raise its eyebrows when recruiters begin
to approach.
Think for a moment about last week's
article on
Manners. It was written to remind us all that "just because we can
doesn't mean we should." It discussed the difference between good
manners and working hard to find the limits so that it was possible to
advertise for free.
As an industry, our reputation is pretty
out there. While we argue about the nuances of privacy infringement,
there's a whole class of people who think that the fact that we need to
discuss it is evidence enough. We routinely tread in gray areas where
many people wouldn't.
Some of it is the nature of the work.
Some of it is over the top. We don't police ourselves and tend to pooh -
pooh attempts to discuss the ethics of the industry.
So, it's no surprise that we aren't
welcome everywhere.
I don't imagine for a second that Harry
Joiner developed a rolodex of 4,200 executives in ecommerce by spamming
for them. I can't imagine that a young customer service kid could be
expected to tell the difference between Harry and some of his peers.
Maybe the question to be asking is how
much responsibility should the industry shoulder for Harry's
recent banishment?
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