The Recruiting Nightmare #5 – Networking Nuttiness

Fine, fine, so making job postings, evaluating them, and getting them out is kind of hard and challenging.  So a recruiter can rely on networking, correct?

It’s easy to assume that.  We hear all the time that networking is the solution to us finding jobs – and in many cases it’s right (well, partially).  So it has to be the solution for recruiters as well.

Not exactly.

Networking relies on you connecting with other people who connect you with other people and so on to finding the right recruits.  Sounds simple enough, right?

The problem breaks down in that whole “other people thing.”  Networking only works if the people in your network do it as well, and do it well enough.  As is noted endlessly in job searches, seminars, books, and my own writing, a majority of people aren’t too hot at networking.

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The Recruiting Nightmare #4 – Sites And Solutions

Yes, so you finally managed to get a half-decent job post up on the web.  You may even have an idea of how to pitch it to work.  So next up you trust it to web sites and . . .

. . . er.

Yeah.

Let me get it out of the way – all these neat job search and posting sites to help you find people aren’t the end-all-be-all solution.  In a few cases they might be the problem.

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The Recruiting Nightmare #3 – Good Post, Bad Results, No Ideas

OK, so maybe a recruiter gets out a really good job posting.  They may have written it themselves, had someone else do it, had a team effort, whatever.  Either way it stands out from the bland, bullet-pointed nightmare of most job postings.

Then it doesn’t work.

See, here’s a terrible irony, a job posting that is well-written, clear, concise, perfect can still fail colossally – and you may not know why.

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