Relationships Take Time 1
(October 10, 2007) "You can't
pick up where you left off." So spoke a frustrated recruiter on the
phone late last evening. In Metro New York, job ads are starting to
produce fewer and fewer results.
When the pipeline breaks, companies
scramble to hire contract recruiters. False bravado fills the halls as
CEOs assume that they know how to recruit in today's environment. Old
time recruiting consultants will chime in as well.
These days, I am experimenting with
Linked-In. After years of
pooh-poohing the service, Shally and Don Ramer persuaded me that there
was real value in the system. I'm fairly certain that a well groomed
Linked-In network can be the foundation of a solid recruiting practice.
I'll take a long look at LinkedIN in a future article.
(If you'd like to join my LinkedIn
Network, please send me a note at "john at johnsumser.com". I'll respond
quickly)
So, as you can see, I'm revisiting the
question of relationships and how they impact recruiting.
It's very hard to generalize about a
process that handles both call center development and strategic
executive acquisition. It's like trying to talk about construction
generalities with a plumber a carpenter and an architect. The thing
looks different one nail at a time or one drawing at a time or one leak
at a time. The overall view (building a building or maintaining and
expanding a culture) has generalities that don't always flow down to the
specific discipline.
You simply don't need the same depth of
relationship to recruit an assistant that you need to have when you
recruit a rock star.
Historically, executive search
professionals focused on relationship development (at least some of them
did) while their HR based brethren focused on scale and relative
anonymity. Between those two extremes, the range in technique varied
from pure direct marketing (no real relationship, lots of volume) to
pure advocacy (low volume, high touch) with all sorts of flavors filling
in the gaps. When you are talking about 50 million employment
transactions a year, there's lots of room for variation.
.Send To a Friend
-
Email John Sumser.
- .Permalink. - .Today's
Bugler