I saw this in an ad that turned up in my inbox recently.  The ad was for a recruitment manager for a professional services firm:  "You will have had experience in a similar role in a professional services organisation."  Nothing particularly unreasonable or earth-shattering about that, you'd think.



In fact, if you analyse most of the roles advertised in recruitment at the moment, or in many other fields for that matter, the bottom…

Another week and another social media conference goes by. Another chance for the ever-increasing number of social media experts to tell recruiters how to attract and engage with candidates, create talent pools etc.

But here's the problem.  In this avalanche of 'this-is-what-you-should-be-doing' information, who is representing the views of the candidate? In the social media recruitment equation, candidates are customers and they have a voice.  They are the ones who need to be…

A long time ago, back in the mists of time, an executive set up the first ever recruitment business and said, "What are we going to charge for our service?  I know!  We'll charge 30% of the successful candidate's salary."  And so an industry standard was born.



I have absolutely no evidence to support this scenario, other than that it reflects the totally arbitrary nature of the arrangement.  However there are two facts of which I am pretty…

'Cost per hire, time to hire' is the modern mantra of the recruitment

industry. But like many mantras, the phrase continues to be chanted by rote long

after the real significance of the words has been lost. We are told that

securing and retaining top talent is a strategic goal for all

companies. Significant sums are now being spent on developing employer brands,

and there is a recognition that recruitment is no longer entirely the

responsibility of the…