I had a fantastic coffee with Hugh Munro, of H. Munro Associates.
Hugh brought a wonderful inside perspective on how recruiters segment and think about job candidates, how the industry works (past) and how social media will be impacting how companies hire executives in the future.
Hugh has an extensive background from Southam, IQ parters and DHR International – and so it was an absolute pleasure to listen to someone who knows what they are talking about. ( you know – someone with deep industry experience who get the ‘ah-ha’ of how that industry will be changing and how to help organizations take advantage of it)
The timing of our coffee was perfect as I have been conducting a lot of research into social recruiting 2.0, the modern job search as well as teaching unemployed individuals how to use social media in their job search.
The one area that I’ve been struggling to understand is how corporate hiring managers turning to social networks and still using job boards avoid being overly reactive to filling job postings. By seeking applicants in a great recession – hiring managers need only post a job for 72 hrs. Its just like buying a house in Toronto! And yet – passive job seekers and non-job seekers do not necessarily get in the mix.
HR hiring managers will need a social media/networking strategy to ensure they are adequately balancing between active, passive and non-job seekers to get the best candidate for the role.
In this way – I have great respect for the work that recruiters do. They are often very talented individuals coming from the sectors they are hiring for – and hopefully can see past the stigma of an active searcher vs. passive and find non-searching candidate.
aside: the stigma of being an active job seeker - the belief that an active job seeker will take anything presented to them, that because of a lack of corporate links that they will not help recruiters get more business at a firm and so are less desirable to spend time with, on the market for a short time, etc. Read more on the stigman associated with active job seeking.
Hugh described his work hiring an executive at a bank and how he needed to find the right cultural, ambitious, motivated individual to match the corporate need – ah.. if I just had some popcorn, I could have listened to so many more stories. It was his description of his hiring strategy that made me appreciate this fine difference between recruiters and hiring managers.
How will companies who want to take over a lot of the hiring from recruiting agencies make sure they are still applying the right strategy to hiring? How will they make sure they are using the right individuals to conduct the search (or offer the right training/adequate training budget to exisiting individuals)?
Another intesting idea from Hugh: some executives who want to become passive job seekers have no idea how to use social networking to do so. I’m not exactly sure who they would turn to for education but I hazard to guess that that some of them would expect help from traditional executive placement firms – who may not know much about personal social networking.
My final thoughts about recruiting in this day and age is how organizations are dropping the age old diplomacy around how to reject job applicants. I made a joke presenting to unemployed individuals about how much job searching has changed. “remember when you used to get a rejection letter?” A lot of people nodded and knew what I was talking about.
Today – job applicants get absolutely no communication back from many, many companies they apply to. Its a huge black hole. Its as if the companies know how to gather resumes from modern social sites but still have yet to master how to converse.
I think it is very important to acknowledge those who apply for jobs that their application was received and appreciated. Afterall, these are individuals who are signing up to spend a great part of their life dedicated to advancing an organizations’ goals, regardless of role, individual suitability or pay scale. Social media and technology can make notices, updates and communication a great deal more humane. Certainly, if a company is brand centric (heavy believers in the brand), than wouldn’t this just be part of the branded ‘customer experience strategy?
Hmm.. time for lunch.
Posted by Laurie Dillon Schalk 
