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…

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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…

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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…

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'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…

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The rise of social media is a modern-day phenomenon and the idea that any business, particularly a recruitment business, should want to ignore it is madness.  Clearly, social media is particularly well-suited to recruitment: it provides ease of access to information about individuals and their networks; it provides the ability to exchange information rapidly with a community of interested and interesting individuals; it communicates with people in a…

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There are no such things as active or passive candidates in the recruitment market, there are only good candidates and the rest. OK, I know that at any one time there are people out there who are actively scouring the market for a new job, and many more who are not. But the point is that this is a candidate perspective, not a recruiter one. Where recruiters can go wrong is in looking for sources of new candidates who are not looking for a new role or may be unavailable to their competitors,…

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Recruitment consultants make a pretty easy target for criticism. Poorly briefed,

lacking insight, superficial assessment of candidates, poor feedback, difficult

to get hold of, won't return calls etc.  These are oft-repeated criticisms of

the industry and this list is neither new nor exhaustive. But is it always fair

to land all the blame at the feet of the consultant?



I don't want to defend the recruitment industry in general because there is genuinely much to… Continue