Making Matches in a New Way

Circulating among the recruiting sites these days has become a tad boring. Always the same topics. Always the same answers. Always the same voices shouting down the others. And everyone in search of the better mousetrap to find the best talent for the job in the shortest amount of time.

There are all sorts of assessments to determine whether the applicant will become a candidate. And there are all types of assessments to measure the quality of skills the candidate has. Then the subjective stuff gets smushed in — the recruiter’s judgment — as to whether (according to the resume) this person or that has the right qualifications.

I have a feeling many of these recruiters simply do not read the cover letters that accompany the resumes wherein the lateral experience is delineated for them. And I also have a feeling that some of these recruiters simply do not understand what it is they’re searching for because they don’t want to show their ignorance. They’re ignorant because they don’t understand the terms used in the job req or the position description. What they do instead of asking for clarification or saying, “To me, this means . . .,” is they just blow it off as something that everyone does and should know, and they wonder aloud why no one else understands what the terminology is saying. You know, they use psychology.

Well, I’ve turned somersaults and cartwheels in this post and not gotten very close to saying what I’m thinking about. But after looking at all of these factors that go into finding the ideal slate of candidates and many times not coming up with the right answer, why are we not using the techniques employed by eHarmony or Match.com or Yahoo! Personals (or similar matchmaking sites) in order to get the right match?

These personals sites claim to have a very high match rate and that they connect people who wind up as enduring relationships. They start with the basic premise that social networking sites and job boards use — a profile that gives a thumbnail version of who You, the person, are. There’s the section for likes and dislikes, what you want, your ideal situation. You tell a bit about yourself and your background (is that called a “resume?”). Buried within all of that is something that brings out a bit of your personality (can someone say “cover letter?”). You talk a bit about why you are the best thing since sliced bread, look things over for glaring errors and little tweaks that may be needed, and the click “Submit.”

Once that Submit button is clicked, each site starts its processes for sorting and sifting. eHarmony has 29 dimensions through which it sorts. Yahoo! Personals checks for the body type you’re looking for, while Match.com sifts through what your friends and acquaintances say (references), it double checks places where you’ve been — or want to go. Yahoo! Personals delves into things such as body type, ethnicity, and education level. There’s really not that huge of a difference between the job boards and the matchmaking sites except for the fact that at one you’re looking for employment and business, at the second, it goes beyond business into the personal side of life and perhaps sex. The other isn’t that type of business.

But each one goes through filtering, looking for keywords, assessing whether there’s a match and if not, continuing to sort and sift until there’s a hit. The recruiting and job board side of this matchmaking process (we’ll just refer to it briefly as the “recruiting” side) seems to be filled with land mines that are set to detonate at the slightest glimmer of a potential match. The recruiting side of the process is destined to ruin because there is so much that’s at the mercy of subjective decision making. However, the matches are supposed to be just right for the company and guaranteed to work out. There are all sorts of instruments that are used to make certain the candidate is just right. As I said before, there are personality assessments, interest assessments, skill assessments, psychological assessments. You name it and there’s a screening assessment that’s been invented to handle it. These recruiting assessments are a bit like finding the right application to use on Facebook or MySpace. That is, there’s lots of stuff but only a few that really do the job.

Well, the personal sites would seem to have a higher percentage of good matches than the recruiters. People at the personal sites seem happier and better adjusted for the transparency of the process. People using the personals sites don’t find theirselves interminably left on hold. They get results or they get refunds. So why don’t we just dump all of these recruiter-type assessments and matchmaking?

In fact, why don’t we just get rid of recruiters? What we would use instead are the personals sites. They seem to be much better at figuring out people, what their likes and dislikes are, who they get along with, and the sites help people communicate and meet! They have a better record of matches that work.

This Isn’t Kansas Anymore

There are some things in Life that just flat out scare me. They leave me with knocking knees, chattering teeth, and whites of the eyes the size of half dollars. While “Aliens” may have qualified for this category the first time around, it no longer deserves that position. It was fiction. Movies have an ending. Even when they’re part of a series, there’s always an ending to the one you’re watching. And, it was fiction. It was make believe. It wasn’t real.

That’s why there are some things in Life that just flat out scare me. They’re real and people actually believe what they’re doing is not only right but laudable.

Recruiting Bloggers Are Journalists

Let’s look at the first thing that scares me. It’s blogging recruiters. It looks like time is passing faster than I can keep up. It was almost a year ago that the California Court of Appeal held that bloggers are journalists. That is to say, bloggers are purveyors of news. Because of that status, they are entitled to protect the identity of their sources.

Randy Dotinga of the Christian Science Monitor put the issues precisely in the eye of the reader when he pondered whether bloggers have the same responsibility as journalists with an “obligation to check facts, run corrections, and disclose conflicts of interest? Or are they ordinary opinion-slingers, like barbers or bartenders, with no special responsibilities - or rights?” Dotinga’s analysis was written a year before the Court of Appeals decision. Notably, Dotinga ponders whether along with the rights of a journalist, bloggers will also take on the responsibilities of one.

Eugene Volokh looks at the Court of Appeals decision and sees that it is a victory. He discloses his conflict of interest perspective by stating outright that he was one of the amici briefs in the Apple case. Apple argued that bloggers “are not members of any professional community governed by ethical and professional standards.” Excellent point, Apple. But I’m getting ahead of myself in regard to things that scare me.

To be sure, there are good recruiting blogs on the Net. There are good HR blogs out there, as well as consultants, and other parts of the employment industry. Some are written with care and consideration of the thoughts put forward as well as the quality of the information and its value. There are others that seem to challenge the reader to keep up with the syllable count. Things are dashed off for the shock value. And in some “communities,” what you find is a lot of gossip among a bunch of buddies trying to top the other, without regard to the consumming readership (except for the numbers).

Judge Volokh instructs us that “Under the California journalist’s privilege, all those who communicate to the public in a relatively regular way (as opposed to speaking only occasionally, or speaking only to a few friends) are protected, and are covered by the language ‘newspapers, magazines, or other periodical publications.’” The act of a recruiter who maintains a blog and keeps it updated makes them a journalist. The court sidestepped the issue of whether the content is legitimate or illegitimate news. the issue is that there is a regular communication to the public. It doesn’t matter whether it makes sense or not nor whether others are able to interpret what it says. And as to “illegitimate” news, I guess that could be considered lies? Not valid information? Gossip and conjecture? The court refused to address it.

There are those who care about the content that they publish and its value to the public that reads it. There are those who are not cut from the “give me the money” cloth. They apply critical thinking to the concepts they ponder and provide usable information. It is, therefore, the public’s responsibility to do careful reading in order to find the legitimate news and patronize it. Perhaps it is encouraging to realize that 34% of bloggers see what they’re doing as having journalistic form and strive to uphold those standards.

As controversial as my words have been deemed to be, perhaps I, especially, should be glad that my status is that of a journalist for several reasons. And I am allowed to draw the analogies I do from other situations in comparison to recruiting, staffing, retention, and all the other disciplines that go into the employment industry formula because of my status as a blogger and therefore as a journalist.

But I’m still scared. It appears there are not many in the recruiting industry who are capable of drawing analogies. This fact was unequivocably demonstrated earlier this month as a Bush press conference made its impression on me and I shared the thoughts and equivalencies with the larger community for discussion. The response was essentially, “Don’t rock the boat!” I’m scheduled for beheading very soon.

Recruiters Are Ethical

For every single negative, it takes ten positives to compensate for it. That is to say, a 1:10 ratio is necessary in order to maintain a status quo.

There are recruiters who are driven by numbers and only numbers. The numbers may be amount of bodies they took from one location and put into another. The numbers may equate to how many days it took to make the transitions. The numbers may be dollars and cents that were derived from getting the warm bodies into the new site. Or the numbers may equate to how many times they were able to get their words and name published on a particular website. It’s just about the numbers and nothing more.

There are some recruiters who don’t care what they have to say in order to win. If it means they need to lie in order to be in the front of the pack, then that’s what it takes; it will be done. If it means manufacture some loose translation of history as fact in order to get what they want, then the cloth will be woven. Some recruiters will create a distraction in order to make it seem that they’ve been wronged and therefore deserve the award. After a time, the purpose of the antics is lost and there’s just a drive to keep up the behavior because it’s become the accustomed thing to do. To the extent there are those who will support this or else pander to it in order to just shut up the noisemaker, there is encouragement and the system will spread.

Not all recruiters are like this. But it makes you wonder if there are sufficient numbers to not only maintain the status quo but also tip the scales to the positive side. So I guess I’m not really scared in the traditional sense of the word. Unethical recruiters do not scare me. They disgust me.

Unethical leaders do not scare me. They disgust me. The reason is because they counsel their selves and their followers to do unethical things to the detriment of anyone and everyone in their way. They care not the consequences of their actions. They care about the big payoff that they gain. The payoff could be money, power, prestige, control, website traffic, advertisers with more revenue, money, power, prestige. Oh, I’m repeating myself. If these leaders cannot show others how to follow the very rules that they have set out for their organization, how is it that they can in any sense deem theirselves to be ethical and good leaders?

There are some who would say they believe in diversity. Yet when it comes to hiring a person with a disability, that person is passed over in deference to one who has no impairments. The person of color is negated but the person of the leader’s ethnicity is hire even though not as qualified. Women are in the organization but in support roles. And women are encouraged to be petty and sniping; professionalism is discouraged. Skimming is encouraged and stealing log notes so that candidates can be claimed who are actually part of the Rolodex of someone else.

Yet another example of poor ethics is taking content and shopping it around a community before publishing it. Thus, it looks like an also-ran rather than the original content that was intended. Meanwhile, the shoppers have had time to opine on various aspects of the content and appear to be quite insightful and astute. Yet another is pretending to be a student and asking for help on a project. It’s actually a means of getting someone else to do all the research while the fake intern gets credit for the work. Have you seen someone ask for a project and then prevent the person who is to do the work from learning about the process? It’s a little difficult to write a report when there’s no knowledge and barred access. But it’s easy to point a finger and say that the person who was to do the assignment failed and didn’t follow through. What a reference!

So what scares me is the thought of having the negative side of recruiting be in charge of setting the rules and steering the recruiting ship. What scares me is leadership that doesn’t understand the very rules they’ve written. What scares me is that the negative side of recruiting is very capable of using all the tricks in the bag to defeat those who are ethical and then leave us in a jungle of snakes, venom, and flying bullets. If that’s the way the system begins to work all of the time, then maybe it’s time for us to abandon the system and not use it at all.

journalism, blogging, professional standards, ethics,
recruiting leadership,

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