Let me explain right away that this is not an attack on the entire human resources profession. There are many thoughtful in-house HR Managers and freelance consultants with whom I worked. I have no problems with them.
This is about scores and scores of functionaries buzzing around in international headhunting factories that pretty much monopolize the executive search field – Robert Half, Michael Page, Execu|Search, Ajilon and their lesser competitors. I kind of hoped that they would be extinct by now.
These pests have neither time nor dedication to understand the actual specifics of positions they are paid to fill. Even in the pre-internet times, all they ever did was looking for matching items between some laundry lists of requirements and applicants’ resumes. Did you actually think they read them? Nope! It’s a matching game. Nowadays, they don’t even do that, they don’t even look at CVs. Now, they’ve got a “cool” software known as Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The computer plays the game and just reports the score.
This insults my intelligence. It used to devastate me as a job seeker. It offends me as a hiring executive who goes out of her way looking beyond the resume phraseology for the spark of brightness. For me hiring was never about check marks. Recruiting, especially on the senior executive level, is about real jobs and real abilities.
What I don’t understand is why there is still demand for their services? Why people are still willing to pay $30K-$100K for a “good enough match” that rarely produces satisfactory results? People tell me that they see the same job postings for six, sometimes even 12 months. Are you kidding me?
Don’t employers know that for a very reasonable fee they can post their ads on job boards such as Monster, CareerBuilder, The Ladders, where all job seekers look? They can be even more effective (still for a very reasonable fee) and use those boards’ search engines to access thousands of resumes. It may be time-consuming, but trust me, it has higher value/cost ratio.
Eliminating recruiters from the market would make the job boards’ fees even more competitive. Meanwhile, they are polluted by big-name ads. With this post in mind, I took a quick look. It seems that nearly 80% of postings are coming from just four players. And the “Requirements” are so similar – they must be copied from the same template. I am sure they enjoy big discounts too by getting the bulk deals.
With so many people presently out of work, the stories of headhunter encounters just pouring in. Some of them are so fascinating, they can warrant their own feature posts. However, there is a striking similarity in all of them – the notion of mindless attitudes and inconsiderate actions. It appears that like doctors, who have seen so much pain and devastation, they became absolutely insensitive to other people’s anxieties and worries, the recruiters also forgot that they deal with live human beings.
Well, I am not dealing with them. How about you?
The Frustrated CFO 