Random Thoughts On Recruiting - Financial Crisis or What?

Fun week, wasn’t it? The Markets provided a lot of entertainment and food for thought this week. Meanwhile, business went on as planned. We had a good week, made placements, took on new job orders, set up interviews etc…. Business for us has been growing since it bottomed out in ’08 with the Financial Crisis. Yet there are a lot of bad things going on out there (long term unemployment for starters) and there is an underlying feeling that things are not so good. Here is an article from someone that I think has a solid take on the situation, Umair Haque. I don’t quite agree with where he would probably go to fix it exactly, but he’s on point.

http://bit.ly/qNDjn0

The one thing that I think is lacking from his discussion and most these days is the real long term big picture on this. Discussions like this lead us to the perspective that something could have been done differently to stop this. I don’t believe that. Certainly things could have been done to lessen the damage or change somewhat how this all played out, but we were destined for a bubble and a burst. The Baby Boom Generation is huge and it came along at a time when our society was ripe for innovation. The communication revolution was destined to create a bubble and this huge generation with a lot of smart people was destined to inflate things. At some point, innovation levels off and the huge generation gets older and beyond their innovative and peak earning phase. This is where we are and no matter what this was going to creat a bubble and a burst. So at this point, those of us in business and in recruiting have to learn to survive and prosper in the post bubble world. Many are doing that. I think this will play out in a long stagnation, as Umair suggests in one part of the article. I envsion a long period (like a decade or two) of minor ups and downs similar to what we have now and have had for the last year or so. There are big problems with this, yet many will do fine if this is how it goes.

Todd Kmiec

Todd Kmiec and Associates

todd@toddkmiec.com

www.toddkmiec.com

Comment by Barbara Goldman on August 6, 2011 at 7:54pm: I like to think of the market as a rolling recession. Some segments of the market are under attack during the best economic conditions, and some segments of the market are high flying, regardless of economics. It seems as if everyone has their turn. The secret to staying alive in this business is to have the ability to analyze markets, and recognize opportunity. In the worst of economic times, there is always opportunity.