Back To The Future

This afternoon I listened to the latest excellent podcast from Lee Whitfield and the guys from Forensic4cast. 

Towards the end of the episode they got into a very interesting discussion about whether forensic tools have evolved so much that this may, in fact, negate the need for specialist forensic investigators.

If you haven’t listened yet I suggest you do as they raise some very interesting issues: 

http://www.forensic4cast.com/2011/03/episode-35-anonymously-yours

On a related point, I have been pondering whether the steady prevalence of social media will in fact negate the need for recruiters, even in specialist markets such as mine.  As with the computer forensic analyst, the decline of the recruiter has been forecast on numerous occasions over the years, probably most recently with the rise of the job board which was going to kill us off for good.  As many of you who are contacted regularly by recruiters will know, we are still out there in numbers.

Let me share with you my view of the future.  

Advertising is still at the heart of the recruitment industry in 2011 but in a niche area such as Computer Forensics / Electronic Disclosure advertising has always been a bit hit and miss due to the limited size of the target market combined with the fact that the best people – the ones Clients want to hire – are rarely actively looking so aren't reading adverts.  As an aside, one of my hates as a recruiter is posting a job on say, Forensic Focus, and then other recruiters post what is clearly the same job a day or so later.  Don’t these people realise how silly this looks or do they just not care? The whole advertising of jobs in this area is all very haphazard to my mind and results are usually poor.

I don’t think that recruiters will carry out the actual recruiting in the future as this will lie with the hiring manager (HM).  I see the future recruiter as someone who can advise the HM on market conditions and help the HM to use the correct tools for sourcing certain roles, eg, Boolean search techniques on Google/Bing.  Think about it – the recruiter always used to have a valuable database but with the growth of social media the value of this database has massively receded.  The skill now is finding the best people from the huge social media database available to everyone.  Arguably, the only reason the HM doesn’t do this all the time in 2011 is time and habit.

The way recruiters are currently paid is ludicrous.   If you don’t know, recruiters are paid a percentage of first year salary by the organisation that hires a jobseeker which leads to significant problems with the treatment of the jobseeker.  As recruiters get paid by the hiring organisation, not the jobseeker, this means that the levels of customer service for jobseekers is, well, consistently awful.  This could all be changed really easily by allowing recruiters to act as personal  agents for individual jobseekers, paid by them rather than the organisations they join.  This would mean the recruiter/jobseeker could form a genuine long-term career partnership, based on the same model as sports agents or the people who represent movie stars during their careers.

If the recruiter is still required to carry out a specialist search by a particular organisation, wouldn’t it make sense to invoice for the number of billable hours worked by the recruiter on the specific requirement rather than a random percentage of year one salary?  Doing this would mean that recruiters were engaged exclusively by an organisation and this would again lead to a much stronger partnership between recruiter and HM and much more accountability.  Everyone would gain from this development of the relationship.

In recruitment there is lots of talk about partnership and the awful cliché ‘adding value’ but this is usually just words.  The reality is that once a jobseeker has accepted a role at an organisation the recruiter usually walks away with a fee and there is no ongoing engagement with the hiring organisation or hired jobseeker.  This can’t be right?

As always, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Be very afraid....

Today I waited outside a school and stole the dinner money from the cutest, smallest children.  I then committed a number of armed robberies before finishing off the day with a random killing spree.

That is bad enough, but even worse, I am a recruiter!  I know you could accept all of the above and still be seen with me in public but well, when you know what I do for work I quite understand that you will shun me if we ever meet at a party.

I was prompted to write the above as on Forensic Focus yesterday, someone called ‘4rensics’ posted the following about recruiters:

“Dont get me started! Completely useless... but thats a different rant for another day
If I never rang back any of the people I've done jobs for, both forensic and before I joined this I would have been saked a thousand times over... yet when they don't call back, it’s the norm... sounds like a cushy number, get CVs... End! Go home. OK I've started....
Walk away from the keyboard!!!”

Clearly ‘4rensics’ rather tediously falls into the arrogant trap of thinking that others have easy jobs.  However, sadly the basic views of ‘4rensics’ are shared by many jobseekers and due to the number of terrible recruiters around I have to accept these are widely held for valid reasons.   

This is a major problem.   The perception of recruiters isn’t changing – in the fifteen years I have been in recruitment I would say it has got worse.  I think the basic problem is that as recruiters our fees come from Clients which means there is a tendency to neglect jobseekers unless we can clearly see how they are going to make us money.  As I work in niche markets I can spend a lot of time helping people with their CV’s and discussing the market as although this doesn’t earn me money in the short-term over a longer period of time it is invaluable, but generalists aren’t able to do this.  Surely, however, the model has to change so that we can use our industry expertise (especially those of us in niche areas – I think the generalists are doomed) to help people effectively manage their careers over a long period of time?  

As an amusing aside (well, maybe not amusing at all), I did hear one excruciatingly bad story in the computer forensics area about a real cowboy recruiter who made a ‘headhunting’ call to ‘sell’ an Analyst role to the Computer Forensics Legend Professor Tony Sammes.  To get through to him he told people he was a friend and, well, just came across as a complete idiot.  It is a bit like me calling David Cameron and offering him a role managing parking regulations for a local council.

It is increasingly clear that recruiters don’t just provide a patchy service to jobseekers but also to Clients.  In his excellent blog an HR Manager (http://myhellisotherpeople.com/2010/10/26/listen-to-the%C2%A0music/) compares the slow death of the recruitment industry to the decline of the music industry for a number of reasons but mainly due to arrogance and a reluctance to accept inevitable change.  

On the whole, recruiters still expect to work to a percentage fee structure regardless of the actual work involved and there is usually no follow-up after a person has been recruited.  In the rapidly changing environment in which we work and with the huge growth of social media this just cannot continue.   In particular, I agree with one commenter on the above blog who says that the big organisations and many medium-sized ones are embracing resourcing as part of a wider talent strategy and as a minimum now have the tools and the ability to eliminate all but the very niche recruiters from the process.  As a niche recruiter it really must now be all about how we can genuinely add real value.

Moving on......

Today, I am entertaining at Twickenham as England see off the All Blacks whilst of course keeping an eye on events at Coventry as the Mighty Leeds United bring their unique brand of silky football skills to another stadium of admirers......Have a good one!