Houston, Texas - When Rob Gladstone started recruiting in 1994, the old style relationship building philosphy had yet to give way to the frenetic search engine hunt for RESUME, RESUME, RESUME that often leads today's recruiter to submit 20 resumes where they would once submit three.
Now, recruiters increasingly find themselves under pressure from job boards, like monster.com, Career Builder and Yahoo Hot Jobs. Most even flood those sites with their own postings, even though the clients also have those same postings there. Recruiters spend their day combing through the thousands of resumes listed on those same job sites.
Candidates also visit, of course,
as well as going directly to
company web sites to post
resumes and signing up for
"job agents" that promise to elec-
tronically knock on their door
with great opportunties as
they're posted.
Thankfully, great recruiters are fighting back. Not by jumping on board the frenetic search engine quest for resumes, but by reminding hiring authorities and those most special candidates that great opportunities and great candidates don't belong in want ads or sitting in HR in-boxes.
They remind all those who'll listen that great candidates can go unnoticed just as the ho-hums can.
"It reminds me of a placement that took place my first year in the business," recalls Gladstone. "It wasn't mine, but it was beautiful to watch and and hear about. A great learning experience from a guy who'd been in the business a while.
One of the guys had come up with a great candidate. She had a Harvard MBA, had been with one of the best advertising firms, had impeccable references and she was moving to Houston.
She had sent her resume to all the great companies in the area and had come up blank. But, she had sent those resumes to HR departments. As soon as the recruiter found out, he got in touch with hiring authorities he knew. Two weeks later, she was working. Two weeks after that, without realizing she was already on board, HR called to tell her they didn't have anything for her.
Well, everyone involved in this placement knew what this candidate could and would do for this company. The hiring aurthority wasn't going to let this lady come to town and slip through his fingers. He made a place for her."
And that's what gets missed by the internet. These judgments don't get posted on job boards. Those decisions don't get made by HR. It starts with the people who make things happen.
As convenient as the internet makes it to track resumes and jobs, job boards are still want ads and HR still can't take the place of the strategic decision makers that the headhunter gets to know.
The headhunter is not a resume bank. He or she is a specialist in understanding career and business needs. The headhunter is a builder of human networks.
