The "Dark Ages" of Recruitment

I really really loved this blog post from Greg Savage. Truth be told, I was not recruiting before the age of the internet, but surely before it became a 'thing'. Certainly before the naukris and monsters of the world became the universal database, and most certainly before CEOs could post their profiles on linkedin in plain sight of the world and not have any worry about being questioned by anyone. Every senior exec is ASKED to and EXPECTED to have a linked in account, someone who does not is not considered professional nowadays.
In my "dark ages" I was just starting out in recruitment (placement, rather, this was my previous job in a placement and manpower firm) fresh from an advertising stint, still a junior executive in the ranks. We still had files upon files of paper resumes, "hard copies"... only they were just called resumes those days. And we had to sift through hundreds of pages before coming up with 10 or so profiles which would sell. Then we had to mark those paper profiles with our names and date so that no one else could lay claim on "my candidate". Miss out on one and often fights would break out on certain candidates when they made it to the final round. Because we had percentages to fulfill, targets to attain, and unless our guy was placed with the client and money safely home, it would not be counted.
Often a recruiter with years of experience would have his or her own troop of candidates they kept sending to interviews. Since we dealt with entry and middle management level positions in insurance and banking sectors, profiles would be very similar. Get some smart loyal candidates at your beck and call, and you didnt need time to send a bunch of profiles to the client. Often in these industries, at that level, smartness is what the client looked for, and a closure was definite. And often, after 6 months one could easily recycle the candidate as he/she would be right back out in the market and calling you to look for opportunities for him.
Good old days?
Maybe not. Maybe. Greg Savage certainly seems to think so! I myself prefer the ease of google search and monster help, linked in  profiles, and researching anyone and everyone from their facebook to their twitter feeds, right from my home office. Technology has made things more easy, maybe reducing our effectiveness but not our efficiency. Yes we remember a lot less, and we dont rush around as much, but we know more and we can network much much more. Yes things used to be more well stated and urgent, but now ease of communication also ensures less turn around time and more ways of reaching both the client and the candidate. True, now we never switch off. I am on call 24*7 but maybe, just maybe, it is a price I am willing to pay.

Reproducing part of the blog here. All recruiters as old as or older than me would love this. And need I say this- SO SO TRUE!!

1) Qualifying a job order

No one sent you a job description in the ‘dark ages’. There was no 2-line email from a disengaged client saying, ‘send me someone like you did last time’. (And trust me, many recruiters act on this type of ‘brief’ right now, scurrying around like headless chooks, busily working hard for the pleasure of NOT being paid!). No, ‘dark ages’ recruiters took briefs over the phone. Or face to face. And the good ones became mega-skilled at qualifying those orders. In other words, working with the client to create a brief that is fillable! They asked the hard questions. They gave advice. They finessed the requirement. To the benefit of all parties. They sold exclusivity and retainers. These are skills lost on most recruiters today, who hardly speak to their clients at all, and try to fill orders by keyword matching candidates’ resumes against emailed briefs. Madness. Take me back to the ‘dark ages’, please!

2) Telephone influence

Listen up! The telephone is the most powerful social tool you have. Yet, so may modern recruiters ignore this weapon of mass placements. And the beauty of the telephone is that it allows you toinfluence crucial decisions. (Decisions so many modern recruiters leave to chance). You try to convince a client, via email, to interview your candidate whose résumé looks a bit patchy. And I will try the same thing on the phone. Want to bet me some money who wins? You send an Inmail or email to a candidate you want to headhunt. Go on. Do it. (Millions of recruiters do only that!). What’s your success rate compared to mine, once I have them on the phone? ‘Dark ages’ recruiters weremasters of telephone influence. It was a beautiful thing to listen to. I mean it. Gorgeous. I am not talking about hard sell. Quite the reverse, actually. I am talking about charm. About reason. About subtlety. About seeking to understand. About listening as an art. About common sense. There is little more exhilarating than being in a room full of sophisticated recruiters making things happen on the phone. Now? Seriously? It’s like being in a public library. Or a typing-pool from the fifties. I have to get up and leave.

3) Telephone screening

I have no time for the data-scientists and other ‘techno-screeners’ who tell us we should usekeyword matching to screen candidates. In fact I see millions of dollars being lost by incompetent recruiters using 5-second résumé screening. Dark ages recruiters knew that an hour in an interview with an inappropriate candidate was a dead hour for them, and for the candidate. But they also knew that a great candidate might not shine through a résumé. So they phone screened. Powerfully, efficiently and with deadly effect. Honing in on great candidates, and gently screening out the less appropriate with empathy and guidance. Now? It’s almost as if actually speaking to the candidate is a dirty thing to do. Sad and costly.

4) Selling candidates

Oh, but now is gets sexy. I am not saying I was a super-star at this because basically I was not that good at anything to be honest, (except kicking a rugby ball, maybe, but that did not help with placements), but one of my best party tricks as a young manager in the ‘dark ages’ was to pick up the résumé of a good candidate that a recruiter was struggling to place, and phone a client to ‘sell them in’. (Any of my ex-employees remember me doing that? Please do tell in the comments below). Yes, I would research the candidate first, and yes it’s best if it’s your candidate, and you know them, and believe in them, but the lesson holds. Dark age recruiters would get their candidates interviews over the phone. Do you remember the scene from ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, where Di Caprio is unemployed and sells penny-stocks over the phone to ‘shmucks’, as they called them? Well, it’s nothing like that because I told no lies, and you must tell no lies, but it’s everythinglike that because it’s all about phone influence! Today? We have become experts at sending emails with résumés attached. WTF?

5) Urgency!

This makes me want to cry with nostalgia. Urgency! In the ‘dark ages’, if a great candidate came to see you, you knew that if they left your office, you had lost them. Literally in some cases, because they would go across the road to a better recruiter than you, who would move fast and get the job done. But even if they did not go to another recruiter, you had lost them for a day at least. No mobile phone. No email. So the dark ages recruiter was an urgency freak. If the person they just interviewed had the skills, and the client had the need, the two would be put together. Fast! The candidate would be given a coffee and asked to wait with a mag. The recruiter was on the phone to the client in a matter of seconds. The interview created there and then. The candidate briefed, enthused, and if necessary given the train-fare to get there. But wait! The candidate is not in her best interview clothes? No matter. I have seen with my own eyes a great dark ages recruiter take that candidate to the bathroom, and swap her corporate clothes with the jeans of the candidate, and send her off to interview. Got the job too. Today? Are we doing that? Or even thinking like that? Or are we stuck in process to the exclusion of outcome? Hmmmm?

6) Memory!

One of the things I ask recruiters to this day is this, “who are your three most placeable candidates with XYZ skills”. It is incredible how many turn automatically to their keyboard to work out that simple answer with the help of their database. The ‘dark ages’ recruiter could quote you their best candidates in their sleep. They could tell you their skills and their qualifications and their availability. They could remember candidates they placed, and did not place, from 10 years ago. There was no database other than the database of the brain, and memory was a prized dark age recruiter skill. Now? We can’t even remember how to use our database search function in some cases, let alone recall our hot candidate profiles. Digital has made us lazy and hazy.

7) Down time.

In the ‘dark ages’, when we left the office, it was over.

Think about it my recruiting friends. A recruiting job with no Internet. No mobile phone. No database. The working day was hectic, hard and non-stop in the dark ages. But when it was over, it was over. No ‘urgent’ mobile call at 8 p.m. No text with a candidate accepting a counter-offer at 9pm. No ‘urgent’ email to return at 11 pm, and stress over all night. No temp bombing out at 6 am. via Twitter.

When the work was done, the play began.

Is the female formal dress code sexist?

There is so many ways to look at this topic I wondered if I should change the headline. In the end of 2014, Montana in US passed a dress code in its legislature. The dress code was strictly formal, but it had lots of guidelines for women, with more stress on length of skirt and neck line. Schools around the western world as well as in India has often come under fire for their dress code for women. On

poweredbygirl.org

the other hand, men say that rules are always lax for women and they have to strictly keep to the tie and jacket code.
While most of the world's companies have moved from a strictly professional dress code to 'business casuals' for women all around the world, business dressing is still a hugely grey area. Cultures around the world have allowed men to move easily from their culture's dressing to the trouser suit look, but for women it is not so simple. In places like India, apart from urban elite, women still dont wear trousers and skirts are frowned upon.

thenation.com

Western dress code in the West: The point of contention is the definition of formal for women. While men are told to wear a clean and smart suit, women have often been told not to dress "slutty" in the workplace. However they cannot also slack off where dress is concerned. While the parameters are not clearly defined, a lot of factors come into the picture here: too high or too low skirts, too low or too prudish neckline, too tight or too frumpy, too transparent or too layered, too figure hugging or not defining enough and then the new problem- tights or no tights. It seems that the western woman have to try really hard to get it right. And then what about the Western Muslim who chooses to wear a head scarf? That is still a matter of contention in many countries.
Western dress code in the East: Often it is a no brainer. In many countries women dont wear western clothes. In such countries the traditional dress itself is often considered formal. However for those women who choose to wear western clothes, it is often a fight between the skirt suit, the trouser suit, any suit at all, given that countries like India have tropical weather which is very unsuited (pun intended) to anything more than cotton garb. Here men too have moved away from the suit. The cotton smart shirt with well ironed trousers are widely accepted business clothes. Women too make do with a shirt and trousers or skirt. However, the other aspects dont go away, the neckline- skirt length (if there is a skirt) conundrum.

Hina Rabbani, from imageconsultinginstitute website

Eastern formals in the East: Indian women especially have a wide variety of choices when it comes to dressing for the workplace. While the urban educated woman is comfortable moving from the Indian clothes to western, the more traditional type can still choose between salwar kameez and saree. However, here is the problem. These clothes themselves bring in a lot of associated rules just like the skirt suit. Salwar kameezes cannot be too loose or too tight. It has to be well tailored. It cannot be too frumpy. It has to be sharp and smart. Salwars should not be too ballooned. Tights are preferred. What about the saree. Most business women who prefer the saree will stick to the crisp cotton.

Chanda Kochhar from vervemagazine website

Anyone familiar with Indian women's clothes will agree that here, we love bling. The loveliest sarees are the Benarasis or the Balucharis or the Kanjivarams, heavy silks with lots of gold/ silver thread work. However, these are more occasional wear. Everyday sarees are mostly cotton. Even in cotton there are
variations. A woman with less experience cannot easily carry off a Bengali cotton saree in the workplace. As the day trudges on, the saree will gain volume like magic and will balloon up making the wearer look like a sack more than a stylish doyen.

Sonia Gandhi from fashionlady.in

Seems like being a woman, you cannot win easy anywhere. They say women have to work twice as hard to be even noticed. There are the glass ceilings and the family pressures. On top of that, we cannot get away with wearing a simple suit and tie and get away with it. Every morning has to be planned and thought out well in advance.
As a recruiter however, here is my last word. Wear what is comfortable. Wear what suits the weather. Wear what fits well and is suitable to the job. And for the all important meeting, just throw on a smart and stylish blazer on top of anything, jeans or saree and rock the board room!

Building Brand YOU on Social Network

So you have been waiting to get that dream job or that coveted promotion and feel that this year should be it. Or maybe you just want to increase your network. Or get a professional reputation. We dont need to be marketing managers to know that we need to stand out in the crowd to be considered amongst our colleagues or other job applicants for the coveted role. We would like our work to speak for itself but often, it is the person who makes the impression who gets the first cut.
The way to stand out, and we have all heard the term is to Build a Personal Brand. There are books in the market that teaches just how to do so. However we are mostly yet to realise is that with social network so widespread as it is, it is also an excellent opportunity to build our personal brand online and reach the very people who we would build a personal brand for. In fact there are online reputation management firms making a killing for movers and shakers out there. But for everyday people like us, it is not so difficult.

Image: garyhyman.com

Recruiters and company HR more often than not nowadays vet their candidate on social networks. Linkedin is often used by recruiters as the first step in their search. Often social networking sites like facebook is used at the reference check stage if not before. Nothing we do online today is out of the purview. While legislature is still very grey in using social networking sites to relieve a person from a position, nothing bars a firm from not recruiting you if they dislike something on your facebook page, for eg- the drinking binge photo one went on with one's buddies last weekend.
While many would argue that facebook is supposed to be a private domain and companies have no right to make their decision based on what we are doing on your free time and putting up just for fun, company HR looking for their next Legal Head candidate, might not feel that way.
This is not a full tutorial for building or managing a personal brand online. This post would just give simple things to keep in mind while managing your online presence- the do-s and dont-s in order to get closer to the image desired.
General

Netpreneur.co.in

• First rule, of course, is Be Online. If one is being interviewed and does not have a linked In profile, or any online presence, it may be seen as a negative.
• Choose the websites you would like to be represented on. For professional purposes LinkedIn and personal purposes Facebook is used by all the world nowadays. However, like said before, nothing is personal on cyberspace.
• The first point once one has the chosen vessels, would be to differentiate oneself from the crowd. Build a unique selling proposition. The USP. Any basic marketing book would say that. But building an USP online would entail selecting what to post on the chosen sites. Eg: If I am an HR professional who loves reading, and I would like to project myself as such, I would 'like' or 'repost' relevant news articles on various work related issues on linkedin, and on facebook, and to keep it fun and personal, would link my Goodreads account with facebook so that the books I read and review, would be posted on facebook also. (Goodreads is a book reviewing and appreciating website). Similarly, other websites can be researched according to a chosen line of interest. Some websites which have interesting content for professionals are time.com, hbr.com, other business sites which can be easily found on the net.
• Stay strictly professional on professional sites like linked in. Some personal views and posts can be overlooked on personal sites but never on professional sites. Linkedin in a place to increase one's network, choosing relevant people who would further our cause. If  searching for a job, actively or passively it would be helpful to search out people working in executive search firms and sending them friend requests. Own industry people should also populate our network, with HR executives and managers thrown in for good measure. 

Professional networking sites (linkedIn):

• Linked In is a place where one can get noticed by writing small articles on the field of expertise. The articles must be original and should be something helpful to the professional community. This also gives the recruiter confidence in the seriousness and the potential candidate's expertise in her/his field.
• Follow industry experts, comment on their articles. This automatically gets into one's feed.
• If there is a profile attached, it helps to have one worth remembering. Look up how to make attention grabbing profiles. This may not be one's usual professional profile being sent to a recruiter or the HR manager. This profile would be custom made for the web. The profile you put up on monster.com, on the other hand, has to be professional and to the point. The linkedin profile can be colourful and fun.
• The photograph should preferably be a professional one. Too casual ones are best avoided if one is seriously looking for a job change, or for people who are not into creative/ media industries.
• Get recommended by people who matter. Co-workers and friends do not really count. A client, your boss, the CEO, these are the recommendations a recruiter will look out for. Honest (or dishonest for that matter) recommendations are very easy to spot.

Personal Networking sites (facebook):

• Photos on facebook should be strictly U.A. if one is serious about changing their job or for a senior professional, or any professional actually. Comments about workplace are a no-no, even positive ones may be misconstrued. Negative ones may cost a job. Try to limit all posts to immediate friend circle from the privacy settings. However, even if one does so, any post 'liked' may show up on a general feed. So it would work to 'like' select posts. A lot can be understood about likes/dislikes/ passion/ character from even the 'likes' and feeds on facebook.
• If one is actively searching for a job and going on interviews, it helps to clean up the facebook page, or at least the public parts which are not blocked by privacy settings. Please assume that your facebook page will be part of the recruiters research. There is no law to stop them from looking. It is even considered part of the reference check.
• Learn from the experts. One can look up the online presence of the people who are idolised. That is where you want to take yourself. To emulate what they do and like the pages they like are some ways to be seen. Or to follow the articles they write. 

Blog

Image: chrisg.com

• If one is serious to be looked at as a field expert, which is what self branding is about anyway, it helps to have a blog on ones favoured subject. For writers or people in creative media it is imperative to have their blog. Otherwise a senior manager or a field expert also gets a lot of positive feedback if they have a blog dedicated to their area of expertise.
• It also increases one's online presence to have a blog. The blog may be on any free blog hosting sites like blogger.com. Some people who are serious bloggers also have their own blogging sites and v-logs or video blogs.
• Link the blog to other used online sites, likes linkedIn or facebook. It helps to increase traffic. That way, even if one is a passive blogger, there will be ways to reach ones blog online. Active bloggers can post on other blogs to increase eyeballs and traffic.

Email

• An often neglected piece of online tool to make or break an impression, it is surprising how many people dont know the basic email etiquette. It helps to read up on email etiquette online.
• Professional emails should steer clear of personal vision messages. It should definitely contain a good signature at the end with ones phone number or other relevant details, like designation and city.

Further resources on the net on this topic:

Chris Ducker on Online brand building

Personal branding

Comprehensive personal brand building guide