IF SOMETHING HAS TO DIE YOUR VISION SUCKS

i don't know about the rest of you but i am sick to death(pun intended) of all the self appointed thought leaders, gurus and myopic purveyors of the visions of the future of recruiting being predicated on something being dead. The smell of decomp has hardly ever been part of my experience in this business.

Yes, things evolve and change. New things are added all the time but it's my take that if your vision of the future means that the recruiting agency business wil die, internal recruiters will die, job boards are dead, resumes are dead, interviews are dead and everything except what you came up with over a bottle of something or lunch with your idiot followers engaging in mental masturbation, you are too damn focused on things dying to make your philosophy work. Elvis may be dead and you don't feel so good yourself but trust me you can remodel a house without tearing out the foundation.

To wax sophmoric for a minute, let's take the wheel. It didn't die guru. Somebody took the first one made of stone with a few chucks out of it that made it a slow slog and rounded it a bit. Then somebody put wood on it, then somebody figured out if it had spokes instead a solid chunk of something it would be lighter, move faster, be easier to fix, then we put rubber on it and on and on. We don't have stone wheels anymore but the wheel didn't die, it evolved.

In the world of blogging all one has to do is flop something out there saying that what someone else does for a living, or how they do it, is dead or dying. Voila they get lots of comments from kookaid drinking followers and a contingent of pissed off people. It's my take that a real thought leader has enough vision and experience in an industry not to reinvent the wheel then declare everything but their latest brain fart as dead or dying.

in my opinion, after watching the so called "thought leaders" come and go for over three decades in this industry, real thought leaders don't call themselves one. Other people do. Real thought leaders don't have to declare everything dead or dying. They have the insight to take what is ,add what is happening and suggest what could happen if we added this process or changed what wasn't working. Thought leaders evolve along with their thoughts being something that give other people an idea of their own as to how to add something to their business or process.

I think the self proclaimed thought leaders can be identified by their self promotion and their wallowing around in glee ,describing anyone who agrees with them as being posessed with superior intellect and those who don't as naysayers, dinosaurs or slow thinkers at best. Here is a flash mob moment for you pal, some of us have survived , repeat survived and prospered in this industry for about three times longer than you have. So before you throw the baby out with the bathwater or think your latest idea came to you as a vision from God that will cause a plague to wipe out all that went before you. Take a look around ,recruiters have been evovling for decades before your brain fart and nobody died to make it happen.

My suggestion is that change happens, kids, industries, people grow up, evolve, add new things to get better and more productive. If your vision includes everything dying to make it happen it's not a vision ,it's destruction of common sense, learning and enhancing. Case in point, people found out about jobs in the mist of history by someone on a horse riding in and telling them that the rancher in the next county needed a cowbody. I think that might have been called networking or a personal referral. So dear thought leader if your brain fart gave you the idea that networking is the wave of the future and everything else is dead or dying ..you missed something in the last 100 years. The evolution of networking is pretty easy to follow.

What say you? Is the smell of decomp the only thing that stirs you to think?

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Permalink Reply by Amy Ala Miller on August 12, 2011 at 2:12pm

love this Sandra... seems to me the smartest kids in the room are the ones making all the noise while the rest of us are busy making placements. :)

Whenever I see someone refer to themselves as a "thought leader" I stop reading and go back to something more intelligent like a trashy romance novel with Fabio on the cover.

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2011 at 2:58pm

My standard comment is "talk, talk, talk doesn't anybody ever place anybody anymore?" A derivitive of one of my guy friends take on dating. He always says, "talk, talk, talk, doesn't anybody ever just hook up and shut up?"

Course he hasn't had many dates lately.

I sort of like historical fiction myself. Go figure. :)

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Permalink Reply by Tim Spagnola on August 12, 2011 at 3:12pm

Great post Sandra- now I must go back and edit a few things from my LinkedIn profile. I kid I kid.......

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2011 at 3:16pm

That's funny Bill, really funny. If i did he would probably tell me i had just bumped my head on a jagged piece of sky. Sorta like i feel about guru prophets of doom with a bicycle pump attached to their egos. "Blow it up sucker, there is such a thing as over inflation right before a splat!

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2011 at 3:19pm

Good eye Tim, wouldn't it be a fun search to do on LInkedin. Just enter "thought leader" and see what comes up. Then block them all and save ourselves all that time and irritation.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Childs on August 12, 2011 at 3:40pm

Sandra...thanks for the post. Refreshing to read as always. You are the "voice of reason" in a sea of noise!

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2011 at 4:11pm

Thanks Jason. I think there are more reasonable people than there are eye rolling thought leaders, probably i just have a bigger mouth or a burning keyboard as the case may be. Or maybe i am just from West Texas where we can identify bullshit without taking a bite of it.

Most folks don't even bother to post a quick line for these noise makers that says. "Stuff a sock in it bozo, you are so full of yourself i want to puke" "Come back around after your next three job changes and tell me how it's workin for you". Has anyone else ever noticed that they move around a lot. Maybe it's the old moving target theory, creep in, crap and creep out. Ego 5.0 does not make for longevity.

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Permalink Reply by Barbara Goldman on August 12, 2011 at 5:01pm

I think it's easy to spot someone who doesn't work a desk. The opinions they have are wonderful, but not for real recruiting. It's HR thinking. HR attitudes, etc. Almost like one would expect in junior college.

I know who works a desk by reading the blogs. Working a desk keeps one in the loop, so to speak. Working a desk means that blogging doesn't pay the mortgage.

Those who work a desk know that everyone has an opinion, (opinions are like ________). Those of us who work a desk know why nothing is dying, and we know why our clients need us.

After too many years to count in this business, it's fun to read the blogs. All the fakes just make room for the rest of us, those who make a living actually placing people.

Because we can find the man behind the man you don't see. We are headhunters. I refuse to call myself a recruiter, it's too broad a term for our business. I steal em. I steal em right out of their offices, I know who I want, and I go get my prize. I'm a headhunter. Too many people have claimed the title recruiter. I opt out.

Like fortune tellers, the gurus tell us we are dying. The business is rotting, but the entire industry continues to grow.

We know why. They need us.

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2011 at 5:23pm

You is correct Barb. i have always loved the term headhunter. If someone doesn't know what that means i just tell them i am a body snatcher. The last time i told someone i was a recruiter they asked me which branch of the service i worked for ,which i kind of liked ,so i do sometimes call myself a recruiter,depends upon whom i am speaking with at the time.

As i suspect with you. I have fired more clients than have fired me. Even when i don't want to work they track me down at home and ask me to find someone. My pulse is not thready. And you are very correct it is easy to identify who is in the trenches and who is sitting in their office in a company thinking great, new thoughts.

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Permalink Reply by Brian K. Johnston on August 12, 2011 at 6:31pm

Bingo... "Work Your Ass Off" Has Worked Well For Me...

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Permalink Reply by pam claughton on August 12, 2011 at 7:24pm

Sandra,

I always look forward to reading your posts, and smiled all the way through this. Have never been a fan of self-proclaimed 'thought-leaders'....especially when they have never successfully worked a desk. :)

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on August 12, 2011 at 8:07pm

@Brian no kidding, all the good recruiters I know are too busy making ideas work in the real world to pontificate about who or what they turn into roadkill on the recruiting highway. Loved your F bomb. We should insist that all these gurus sign their names , " I.R. Bigdeal, FDS" or F. N. Poochiepoop.

@Pam, I always appreciate you taking the time to read my drivel. Love making you smile. I'm in it with you. I would bet big money that if most of them were given a desk and a phone and told to make their brain fart work they would be whimpering like baby goats within two months.