The JobSyntax Blog is currently participating in BlogSwap with other bloggers interested in recruiting-related issues. Each week during BlogSwap, another blogger will post to JobSyntax about topics that should be of interest to our readers, and we'll write posts for different audiences on other sites. It should be a fun experiment, and we hope you discover fun new content!
Our first guest blogger is John Sumser of interbiznet.com and the Electronic Recruiting News. Welcome, John!
(July 12, 2006)
Colin Kingsbury, from HRM Direct, can count us in his small group of adoring fans. Colin's blog,
HRMDirect, is one of the great examples of how to integrate a blog into your business. Each time Colin posts something, it is substantial and provocative. He always makes us think.
Vendors in the Recruiting Industry are faced with a difficult challenge. While providing innovation to their customers, they can not outpace the market's appetite for novelty. When an idea is good for recruiting software engineers, for example, it may be awful for the same task with Detroit based production workers. Recruiting, after all, is a local sport played by local specialists.
In his latest blog entry,
Wishing Doesn't Make It So, Colin takes us to task for the recent piece we wrote about Jobby. Jobby, if you haven't heard, is a delicious improvement on the paper based Recruiting model. Using self-generated XML tags instead of Resumes and CVs, Jobby is the first shot in an upcoming radical reinvention of the Resume.
Colin, whose company provides tools to filter and sort resumes, doesn't think so. He provides an apparently well reasoned set of arguments, including charts, of his position. We're impressed.
On the recruiter's side of the equation, there is an oft-repeated myth that says that a job posted on
Monster will result in an unmanageable flood of resumes. In our piece, we argued that the myth was not true in today's market, that it was a remnant of a tougher employment market a couple of years ago.
Colin replied, with original research,
The
chart shows the results. 53% of reqs received 25 or fewer applications. 15% received 26-50. But nearly 20% received 100 or more, and another 15% received 51-100. The positions receiving 100 or more ran the gamut from hourly manufacturing techs to vice presidents, in locations all over the US. Nearly every client had at least a few positions that got positively flooded, many in a matter of days.
As far as we can tell, that proves our point. 80% of the job postings in Colin's example provided about the right number of resumes in response to a posting. We've seen studies that suggest the number is much closer to 90%.
A really clever method for creating the appearance of an argument is to reframe your opponent's views to suit your needs. Colin suggests that we said that Jobby would transform the industry in a very short amount of time.
he reveals that he suffers from the malady common to IT analysts which I call novelty derangement syndrome. This is the situation where one becomes
so entranced by the sheer perfection of an idea that they fail to take sufficient account of the challenges to its success. (And, the punch line)
Will the way we recruit change enormously? Yes, no question. But if you are a recruiter making decisions on how to go about getting your job done it is important to focus on the world as it exists today and will continue to exist over the next 2-3 years. You are not a venture capitalist making bets on where the next billion-dollar company will pop up. You are a tactical operator with a dozen or more short-term objectives to accomplish. The more we as individuals enjoy new tools and toys, the more risk we run of losing our focus.
While that is very entertaining, the point we were making is that Jobby represents a generational difference, not an overnight sensation.
As a vendor of Resume Management and Applicant Tracking Tools, it is important for Colin to help his customers balance novelty, effectiveness and investment. We think his piece does a good job of doing that even if it does misrepresent what we said.
That's the basis of a good honest conversation...a clear view of the facts and biases and a willingness to give and take.
john at johnsumser.com