Death of Contingent Search

I read an interesting article over the weekend. It's called "The Death of Contingency Search", written by Adam Robinson, Founder & Editor of Better Hiring Today (http://betterhiringtoday.com/2008/09/10/the-death-of-contingent-search/). He makes some interesting points. One of them is - "Recruiting is no longer about who you know. It's about throughput". I thought this paragraph was particularly relevant:

"Which brings me to the issue at hand - the massive change going on in the recruitment business model. Pre-Internet, search firms would charge you 30% of their candidate’s base salary to access their network of potential candidates…and it was worth it. Back then. Now, those Rolodexes have substantially decreased in value. These recruiting technology innovations have served to greatly increase the amount of candidate information available to a corporate HR team, and HR departments across the country are now dealing with a huge influx of data. Their problem is no longer “how do I find someone for this job,” it’s now “who can help me sort through these 250 resumes?” That, my friends, is a throughput issue, not a recruiting issue. And throughput issues are solved with efficient and low-cost operating models."

Now a shameless plug:
This is where joblish can help. If recruiters, corporate & agency, were to use joblish in their job ads and were to demand that applicants submit resumes with joblish codes, it would allow them to machine search the 250 resumes, reading those that met the criteria and qualifications they are looking for. How much time could you save if you had to read 10 resumes instead of 250? Start using joblish and it will become a reality faster than you think.

Just a thought.

Comment by pam claughton on October 21, 2008 at 12:32pm: Mark,
Is your product only useful to corporate recruiters? Maybe you'd have a warmer reception if you didn't come onto a board filled with contingency recruiters with a headline saying "contingency recruiting is dead." :)

Comment by Salvatore Petrara, CPC on October 21, 2008 at 1:31pm: Well Pam does have a point!

Comment by Mark Bielecki on October 21, 2008 at 1:50pm: Question #1 - No, it's useful to anyone in our marketplace. Agency recruiters, corporate recuiters, active job seekers, passive job seekers. It's useful to anyone who uses English to communicate in the job market.

Second, the assertion is, by definition, either true or false. If it's true, wouldn't you rather have this information before something bad happens? Before you're caught unprepared? In time for you to make a change that may help you? And if it's false, couldn't you make use of the information there to cement your relationships with your clients?

I've been a contingency recruiter for over 11 years. I've developed a thick skin over that time. I'm not looking for a warm reception. I'm looking to improve the methods we use so we can all make more money.

Comment by Jeff Newman on October 21, 2008 at 2:03pm: Well, contingency recruiters do need thick skins, thats one thing I can agree with!

Comment by John W. Riley on October 21, 2008 at 4:37pm: its not outdated, I only do sales people and my clients HR people hardly ever know a thing about how to recruit and hook a sales person. Resume only counts so much on my side of the business. Plus, corporate recruiters are on that side of the business for a reason. The money is on the agency side. ...wow I love the fire in all these post..I understand the value Mark but it would be more for positions where personality does not matter.

Comment by Kevin Jenkins on October 21, 2008 at 5:58pm: what i would like to know is what the heck codes have to do with contingency recruiting? furthermore, coding resumes is about as archaic as it gets so i am not sure what is so revolutionary about this system. coding resumes is a very exhausting and rigid endeavor. they tried that in the old days and have long given up on such a system. you want to find 10 resumes instead instead of 250 i have one suggestion .... a good boolean value query.

Comment by Mark Bielecki on October 21, 2008 at 9:50pm: Codes have nothing to do with contingency recruiting. The highlighted comment from the article had to do with throughput. Of separating the qualified from the unqualified.

Coding is unpopular because it's requires discipline, which is hard for all of us; and because everyone makes up their own codes which hinders communication. joblish is a set of standard codes which can be used by everyone.

Regarding a good boolean value query. Success in boolean searching depends on the searcher using the same keywords as the writer. What are the "right" keywords to use? Unless you've got a way to get inside the writer's head, finding what you're looking for with boolean search is a crapshoot because you have no way of knowing what you didn't find.

Comment by pam claughton on October 22, 2008 at 9:17am: Coding is nothing new though. I've seen that attempted in the agency I worked at and also at the large bank that I contracted at. Both had sophisticated ATS systems and you could enter a standardized code.....it didn't work because recruiters just didn't do it consistently. That's the key thing. Very few recruiters are good with admin details consistently. They're too busy. The value of a coding system is only as good as the people using it. There's too much room for error, candidates getting coded incorrectly or not at all.

Comment by Kevin Jenkins on October 22, 2008 at 9:30am: Pam hit the nail on the head. You need totally automated tools for recruiters. They just won't consistently code resumes by hand. Another serious problem with coding is defining the codes and ensuring recruiters use them consistently. But interpreting a resume and skills set is very subjective believe it or not. I work in IT and one tech recruiter would could a resume as an analyst and another as a programmer depending their interpretation of the read. many programmers are programmer analysts. then you open a whole can of worms with skillsets ... it this a net programmer or a web programmer? there is overlap but the difference is significant. so now you need to start using multiple codes on resumes. and all recruiters have to read them and code them the same for it to be effective. codes do not work.

Comment by Mark Bielecki on October 22, 2008 at 9:34am: Pam - You're absolutely right. Coding is nothing new. And recruiters are too busy to use a coding system. They're talking with candidates & clients - that's what they're good at. However, candidates aren't too busy. Admin staff people hopefully aren't too busy - that's their job. Where coding systems have fallen down in the past is that each one is unique, and means little outside the four walls of your company. joblish is different. It's standardized across the entire market. It's simple enough for anyone to use, and it requires no special programming or software. Keyword searching in English is at it's best inaccurate. I say potato & you say spud. We pass like two ships in the night, neither of us aware of the other.

Ten years ago we didn't need joblish. We didn't have Monster, sophisticated ATS, LinkedIn, blogs, wikis et al. We didn't have the tsunami of data to deal with that we have now. Times have changed and our methods must too.

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