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Truth, Justice and the American Way of Headhunting

Are All the Problems in Recruiting Solved?

by on February 13, 2009, 9:21 am

4 Comments

Hey! I need to hear from you. We need some questions for future Pinnacle Perspectives columns. I could not think of any problems to discuss for my scheduled Friday rant so maybe they are all solved. Frank has the recession covered and he is certainly drawing comments on that.

I noted in another entry that our niche has challenges, but the recession is not one of them. It IS a problem for most in our business, and with no intent to “go political” at all, I just do not see how printing up money that does not exist is going to stimulate anything except debate.

Speaking of debate… I won’t get into a public one with Frank here, but I will say that I hope his “drooling” over the recession was intended more tongue-in-cheek than commenters seem to be reading it.

My list of stuff I wish I had not written is long and legendary. If that was one of mine it’d probably be on that list. I got as close as I wanted when I called the recession irrelevant.

Now…go out there and cause some problems for us to comment on!! :-)

Dave Staats places top executives as well as implementation consultants with software companies. He also has made more placements in Artificial Intelligence than any other headhunter. His career began during the SDI (Star Wars) years and included placement of scientists in laser, stealth, and other high-tech fields. During a short hiatus from the recruiting industry in 1994 he obtained a Private Investigator's license which he keeps as a constant reminder that a headhunter is what he really is. Dave is on the Board of Directors of The Pinnacle Society and a founder of The Tennessee Recruiters Association. He has a BA from Western Illinois University. Dave also blogs at Truth, Justice & the American Way of Headhunting
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  • Keoughan, Tom

    Dave,

    I think you’re right. Frank appears to be saying that just throwing your hands up in despair and blowing through pints of Häagen-Dazs is a sure road to ruin.

    Even in a god-awful period like this there are some tactics you can use to try to create your own silver linings. Some may work, most will not but it’s better than just pure negativity which leads to – living in your parents’ basement and working at Starbucks…..wait! They’re closing stores too! It’s all “so very gnarled”!

    Tom Keoughan
    http://www.toyjobs.com

  • http://www.mcnultymanagement.com Neil McNulty

    It’s called sendouts. That is all you need to focus on, no matter what is going on. I was doing this business in the recession of 1990 and every desk that put one interview on the board every day did just fine. You want to survive whatever comes? Start each day with one goal: to generate one sendout, and do not go home until you have it. (Not what some people want to hear).

  • Keoughan, Tom

    This conversation seems to have drifted over from “A Sendout Per Day” and you are beginning to sound a bit shrill. A sendout per day is just not possible for every recruiter in every specialty in every circumstance no matter how successful, highly skilled or hard working they are. You can shout from the highest mountain that it is but the readers here know that it just ain’t so. Certainly more sendouts are usually better than less sendouts if the sendouts are of high quality. That’s not any great revelation, that’s just basic math.

    I’m far more interested in final results (total cash in) than in any gimmick or single intermediate metric. The recruiting business with all its necessary skill sets and all of its different moving parts is far more complex than that.

    It’s pretty clear that you have drunk your own Kool-aid but by arguing “sendouts. That is all you need to focus on, no matter what is going on”; you are putting yourself in a nearly impossible situation. For your argument to be true you need to be right for every recruiter, in every specialty, in every circumstance, every time. The rules of logic state that I only need to come up with a single exception. It is quite literally impossible for you to prove your point. Need we go on….and on….and on. There can be no magic bullet.

    Tom Keoughan
    http://www.toyjobs.com

  • Dave Staats

    Right…now that it has drifted off Neil’s blog and into mine, I hope he is just yanking my chain. I hope we can all agree…and then stop…that ‘We go fishing every day and we try to do things that get us a bite and the rest falls into line’. Trying to dictate the number of bites beyond that is …well…funny now that I think of it that way…