Moral, ethical or what?

I got up this morning to pay some bills, however I noticed an email this morning from Jason from the Semiconductor Jobs blog. So now I am writing a blog entry, as my wife would say I have just followed a “shiny object”, she thinks all guys do it.

It is very nice to get emails, this in its self is a strange statement, as my work email account is overloaded with spam although I do not see most of it as I am using ChoiceMail.

I spent a bit of time at Jason’s site and have to say it is an interesting experiment (his term not mine) which I hope is working. In short this is a job blog, a collective place for recruiters and candidates in the Semiconductor industry to communicate. Personally a great example of a social network within the big wide world we call the Internet.

Anyway back to the title of my post. Jason posed a question in September about a client who took referral’s from a candidate but did not want to give the recruiter credit for the referrals. This is a very short summary so you should read the full text at his site.

I initially was going to post a comment but thought no, it needs a full post. The question Jason posies is both ethical and moral but might also be legal depending on the recruiter’s contracts. In Australia I have been talking to many different client organisations who put recruiters in the same class as used car sales people and personal injury lawyers, not the best compliment. Infact this week I was being chased by a sales person who wanted some advertising, he called 3 times one morning and the client I was at still thought recruitment agents were worse! Now before I get done over by the recruiters out there this is a perception and as we all know perception is reality in the eyes of the holder.

There seems to be a general move away from using recruiters. I see this comes from two trends first the continued growth in job boards and secondly the low ROI received from recruitment agencies. Figures I was reading recently (of course I cannot find them now) show more jobs are now on jobs boards than in the paper. (Open to being corrected if this is wrong.) The ROI question I believe stems from low quality candidates being sent to clients vs what a client could get if they sourced directly. At the People in Business conference this week there were many comments about the movement away from supplier agreements with recruiters, is this a true trend in the market I do not know.

Given this I can clearly see what a client might want to circumvent the recruiter if they did not feel they were getting value out of the relationship. However it would be sad if the client was just using recruiters to get candidates (knowing they will not match the job but might be in the industry) through the door so they can then get referrals to then not pay for the sourcing process.

I hope this all makes sense, in reading the post it seems like a rant.

The stupid recruiter

Ok, there are many ways to determine the skills and fit of a candidate some good and some bad. Adam Barr refers to a very old post from Joel Spolsky on some bad recruiting tricks. Both are very interesting to read, even though Adam slams Joel, Joel does provide some interesting perspectives on things.

On a side note it is interesting to see that Adam wrote his item this month, while Joel in March 2000. I wonder if the timing of the pieces has anything to do with the approaches? Joel’s was before the DotCom bust? Probably not, but an interesting thought.

More on blogging fear

Corporate blogging believes the lack of blogging is about knowledge not fear as per Scoble. This is probably true, however before we get everyone out there to blog we must have clear acceptable usage policies from within organisations.

Otherwise more and more workers will get fired.

Ok, after 9pm is not a good time to blog.

Stapler Testing?

Found an interesting item on stapler testing of all things, ok maybe that is an overstatement. However Mike Kelly provides a really interesting listing of tests he created for a stapler. You might ask why did he do this, well Johanna Rothman “made him do it”. These two posts provide great content for today.

Firstly, from an interviewing perspective, how a simple test can be used across several job areas within a single company and as such would provide some interesting benchmarks on how potential recruits handled the activity.

Secondly, Mike’s posts shows just how complex testing can be, I wish most HR applications were tested as completely as Mike is testing the stapler ;-).

Are you afraid to blog?

An interesting perspective on blogging from Michael Gartenberg of Juipter research. He talks about the differences in organisational culture and industry and how this impacts blogging. (thanks to Scoble again).

However having spent the last day and half at the People in Business conference and seeing the response to the SurfControl session I am now 100% convinced that HR has dropped the ball on this one, and in fact all internet acceptable usage. SurfControl have produced a white paper that states over 100 people have lost their job or been disciplined in Australia over the past 12 months for Internet or email abuse. This is an interesting figure, but what scarces me is that most HR managers have no idea about the technology or the damage it could do.

(Watch this space as there will be more movement very soon to help educate HR managers in Australia on this issue.)

Ikea, Volvo and HR?

Today was day 1 of the People in Business conference, while I will not give you a complete run down of the first day I want to share a couple of things.

The first key note was very good, I must say I was skeptical, based on reading the brochure. The topic was “Energy, trust and success in leadership – the essential links” given by Dr Göran Carstedt the ex CEO of Ikea and Volvo Europe. Now given my background is IT and not HR I wondered what new soft HR things I would hear, sorry if I offend.

Dr Carstedt was very interesting. Firstly he presented with overheads! No powerpoint, no fancy things just plain old overheads! Compared to some of the other speakers who battled with the technology this was fantastic. It was clean, clear, easy to read and most importantly relevant!

He spoke about change, not a new topic but personally I found his point of view very engaging. Ideas such as “when you introduce change look at what you should conserve and what you should adapt, not just changing everything.”

And “approach each day not thinking what is good for your company, instead what is your company good for?”

And “if you are not serving the customer then you are serving someone who does”

And ” the mission is not the issue, the issue is what does the mission do for you”

And probably the one that got me thinking the most “who would miss us if we were not here?” The last item gives a foundation or a centre point or philosophy for an organisation.

Dr Carstedt also presented on what leadership means to him, he made a comment about inviting people to something that is meaningful. This process provides engagement, meaning and helps with change. To help develop this meaning he suggested we look at 3 factors, economic, ecological and anthropological. These there elements can form the invitation.

This got me thinking about Scoble and his post a couple of weeks ago on product philosophy, your product’s philosophy should be the invitation. The invitation as Dr Carstedt puts it is kind of like evangelism. Which is really funny (or ironic depending on your point of view) as I am currently re-reading “Rules for Revolutionaries” from the master of evangelism, Guy Kawasaki.

Another interesting point he made was about ideas vs things. If you give away a thing you have nothing left, however if you give away an idea (aka share an idea) and someone shares back you now have three ideas, yours, theirs and the combined.

Overall an interesting session.

The other two key note’s I attended were on emotional intelligence and linking metrics to the bottom line. Summaries of these will have to wait.