Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink: the power of thinking without thinking, (Penguin, 2005) provided me with some fantastic insights highly relevant for recruiters, specifically when Gladwell explores the ‘less is more' syndrome.

Gladwell asserts that in certain circumstances, receiving more information about an issue can cause you to become more inaccurate or ineffective in your response to, or conclusions about, that issue with a corresponding increase in your…

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In The Start Up of You by Reid Hoffman & Ben Casnocha (Crown Business, 2012) the real gold is in Chapter 7. The chapter opens thus:

 

A decade ago, Bill Gates wrote: 'The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from your competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage and use information will determine…

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One of the more humiliating recent events within the Australian recruitment industry was Chandler Macleod’s withdrawal from the $400 million Australian Defence Force recruitment contract it had won from incumbent provider, Manpower.



At the time of the contract win in July 2008, Stephen Cartwright, the CEO at that time of Chandler Macleod, described it as a ‘landmark contract’. And so it proved to be a ‘landmark’ in how quickly a contract ‘win’ could turn into a morale-sapping, PR and… Continue

In August 2009 I blogged about the innovative recruitment campaign of Australian software company, Atlassian. This campaign invited open slather recruitment agency participation ... with a catch. The Atlassian32 campaign was launched with the purpose of hiring 32 software engineers for their Sydney head office.



After I posted the article on my personal blog 39 people commented on the article, easily the most number of comments any of my blog posts has received. To say… Continue

*Conditions apply



Sounds fabulous, doesn't it? Surely it can't be true?



But it is! There really is a hiring boom in one organisation, in contrast to the hiring hibernation occurring almost everywhere else in the recruitment forest. And you don't have to have ANY previous relationship with the company to submit candidates.



Surely this is too good to be true? So what's the catch?



You bet there's a catch. And this catch provides a revealing glimpse into… Continue