Liquid HR

Recruiting with inflated nonsense job titles

So the other day I happened upon a job posting for a company called Concep. I'm sure it's a lovely company. They were advertising for a "Marketing Executive." For some goofy reason I clicked on the job description, and found out that this "Executive" would be paid £28,000 annually. Not in the outskirts of Hyderabad, but right here in London. It was an entry level job. Why in the world would this company refer to this position as an "executive" position? Perhaps they meant the role entailed "executing" entry level marketing stuff? It reminded me of a conversation I had with a recruiter long ago, who explained to me that a "Business Development Manager" managed the process of business development. Silly me, I thought managers managed people inside a company, but by now we have all become accustomed to the meaninglessness of the word "manager."

Such inflated, hot-air bullpoop job titles make us all take recruiters less seriously. And when you add up all the wasted seconds clicking on mistitled job-postings, slows down the process of searching for jobs and getting people employed. Of course, these kinds of job titles gum up online recruiting, as the precision of various search engines and matching engines is dulled by job titles that don't match required skills or role definitions. I guess the upside is that we can now be "Global Heads of " something.

Liquid HR Angle

Stop for a moment. Put on your conspiracy-theory hat. Think about the number of conversations you have had with recruiters that have led nowhere. Think of the number of CVs or resumes you have created and posted. This process isn't improving recruiting. It's not helping you get a job faster. It's slowing you down. It's making you get a job slower. It's making companies operate less efficiently because they have open positions. It's destroying value, not adding it. Let me run it by you again: these folks are taking money from companies, creating imaginary value by slowing down the recruiting process, and sending you on various job hunting misadventures. Think about it.

I remember a documentary clip I saw about a firm that would measure your body and send the measurements to their factory to create a bicycle that perfectly fit you. They would then intentionally slow down the delivery of this bicycle to raise perceived value. Let that notion inspire you. Be creative. Think about it.

Why the recruitment industry often irritates me

Some time ago - before my day job, I assure you, I was interviewing for various positions, and was called for an interview by one particular company, BMS IT, in the UK. Now, normally I wouldn't name and shame in this fashion, but since I do review online Internet companies by name, I ask myself why a recruiter should be treated any differently.

So I sat down with the recruiter (he'll be unnamed) in an office in downtown London, and we had a conversation about the job at hand. It seemed somewhat relevant for my background, so points scored there. More importantly, we talked about recruiting as an activity. He expressed how baffled he was that recruiters didn't call back their candidates after talking with them, and seemed to really understand the perspective of the candidate. Music to my ears! Very professional. We discussed another position and said he would send the details of it after our meeting. I believe I also needed to follow up with perhaps another cover letter or version of my CV, or something of this nature. I did my part in a follow-up email. And I heard nothing from him...ever.

How can a person criticize unprofessional behavior and then turn around and do exactly what he has just criticized? Oh, life, and the injustices we see every day.

So that irritated me. What irritated me more was when somebody else from that office called me weeks later for a different position. I expressed what had happened and told the person on the phone, quite clearly, to remove my name from their database of CVs. That was roughly a year ago.

Now, what's really funny is that this company called me AGAIN about a week ago. The guy said he wasn't sure whether I would be the right fit, but might know somebody who is. I politely told him to email me the details of the job. How did they get my name? Have they seen my CV? My guess is that they have, because they never got rid of it in the first place. It's possible he found my name on linkedin.com ...but as far as I can see my phone number is not published there. I have to assume the worst.

Now, my instinct tells me these guys could get into hot water for ignoring my request. So my overall assessment of this company is:
1: Jobs (as published, for what that's worth) are pretty good.
2: Organizational skills are bad.
3: Long term relationships and intangibles (trust, etc.) -- well, read the passage above if you are still not clear on my view there.

Enough on that company.

Recruiting companies often simply behave like card shufflers. The stack of cards on the left are jobs. The stack of cards on the right are CVs. Shuffle left, shuffle right. Turn over a card from each stack. If there's a vague match, make a call.

Guess what? A computer can do that--and faster. And this is what got me interested in the online HR business so long ago. Now, my own venture is far from perfect (though not bad considering only one guy was ever really driving it), and my blogs may not have won prices for journalism, but at least my heart has always been in the right place: Eliminate the people that aren't adding value to the system because they are not helping people find jobs, and not helping companies find employees. Create a more liquid economy where companies are not rewarded for hording jobs and CVs, but for making the right match through real understanding of the candidates and of the jobs. Everything else? Leave to the machines.

Coming soon, a return to Zubka..

Horrible interviews, and what to do about it

I once did a psychometric evaluation with a psychologist poking around in my psyche in front of the hiring managers. On a Sunday. In another country. It was really weird. I had answered a battery of 240 questions some weeks prior, and now my results were being analyzed by a registered shrink while the potential hiring manager watched. It took close to 2 hours, but there were no real time limits. Apparently, I'm quite diplomatic and optimistic (I'll leave out any potentially bad scores or flagrant boasts). The real juicy part was when they departed from professional and started in on personal stuff. But what the hell, I signed up for the torrents of international business a long time ago.

So what's the fundamental problem with interviews? For that matter, the hiring process in general? Answer: It's way too one-sided. Companies learn all about us - we don't really learn about them. We can't apply the same scrutiny. This is strange, as it would help both us and the hiring companies if we did have such access.

Let me be gratuitous: rather than acting as if they are looking for a mate, partner, or a business equivalent, companies are still looking for commodities to acquire (candidates). Each commodity item has an ingredients label (CV or resume), and the hiring process allows the company to inspect the commodity, kick its tires, raise its lips above its gum line, see if gets along well with others. Psychometrics. Reference checks. Interviews.

The Golden Rule:

My feeling is that by allowing candidates to do gain equivalent access to information about the company, the candidate will feel more comfortable and respected, the selection / matching process will be greatly improved, and employee retention will improve. We need a CV for companies. We need a corporate culture analysis equivalent to an individual's psychometric analysis. We need a bi-directional flow of information.

When in interviews they ask me if "I'm a glass half full" or a "glass half empty" guy, I respond but ask them the same question.

High Level: what's wrong with HR

Let me start from the beginning. I’m going to attack the HR industry. My beachhead is the Internet. I have several strategic positions that I’m going to take. There are some that are helping me who are part of the natural Internet evolution. However, some of those people are being converted by the old enemies who are adapting to the new technology brought by the evolutionaries. What the hell do I mean by that? I’ll tell you later. I'm a little tired.

Strategic Positions in this attack:

1: Direction of information flow. Information needs to flow in both directions for effective hiring and collaboration. Right now if flows from us (Candidates) to them (companies) – they take the information from us. We’re going to start taking the information from them. I’ll explain why we want to start taking information, and how we’re going to take it, later.

2: Liquidity of information flow. We need pipelines for the universal flow of information. We need to open wider the pipelines that are already there. Until recently Internet 1.0 produced regurgitated versions of the old pipeline tycoons – companies like monster.com – who sat on the flow of information and capitalized upon our resumes and CVs.

3: Standardization of information format. Come on, that’s an easy one – what’s the purpose of improving the information pipelines if we can’t read one another’s CVs and job descriptions?

OK. So I’ll rattle off more about these topics in days and weeks and months to come.