StlRecruiting

Recruiter Freakonomics

I'm reading a new book, Supercrunchers, and it reminds me of my Freakonomics post back from the Recruiting.com days.  I'm going to recreate it, because it asks a very important question:  Is your Recruiter working for you?

Originally posted on Recruiting.com in May 2006.

Freakonomics was a NYTimes bestseller, bringing economic tools to answer such great questions as why drug dealers live with their mothers, despite supposedly making so much money.

The book is really about dispelling myths by explaining how incentives drive us to act.  One of the examples is real estate agents.  Using some basic numbers, the book explains that a $300,000 house that sells yields a $4500 average commission for a real estate agent.  A $310,000 yields an average $4650 commission.  Thus the effort to hold out for the best price yields very little for the agent, but $10,000 for the seller.

Tracking the agents who sell their own homes, the book finds that the agents hold out for $10,000 more when it's their own home, but not so much when it's someone else's.  It's an example of simple math. Effort matched to reward.

Third Party Recruiters working for national firms are in much the same boat.  During a permanent placement,  we're fond of saying, "the more you make, the more we make," as recruiters are usually paid a percentage (20-33%) of the annual salary.  But Third Party Recruiters working inside don't make the full commission amount.  On a salary of $100,000, with a fee of $25,000, the recruiter receives half-credit, $12,500 which she then receives a percentage of - somewhere between 10-30% (depending on if they are commissioned or salaried).

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St Louis Job Posting

COMSYS is hiring for a Senior J2EE developer in St Louis.  This is a 3-4 year project for a contractor.  That's right - 3-4 years. Contact COMSYS today for more information

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Writing A Book On UnEmployment

I have a really cool book that I'm writing on unemployment.  Okay, when I say writing, I mean I have the outline and four chapters and I know what the rest of the book is supposed to say, but I haven't taken the time to write the rest of it.

Sad, I know.  Especially when I'm clearly not suffering from writers' block - but the question is how I put the book out.  Online?  Self-published?  Send off a manuscript?

It's got a great title, a good story, relevant information, and my social network, is well, it's not small.  I'll try to post up small bits here and there on the different recruiting blogs - but if anyone has suggestions on the publishing - please let me know.

BlogSwap Post: Never Eat Alone

The following is a BlogSwap Post from Liz Handlin.

    I am currently reading a book which I had heard a lot about but had never read. One of the reasons that I hadn't made time to read it before now is that I had heard that it is a book about building relationships and networking which are two things that I tend to do quite well. To describe this book as being "about networking" is like saying that Pope is a guy who goes to church a lot. That is to say that a description as simplistic as "networking" sells this book short. The book is called Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi and it is really worth your time to read it even if you are an extrovert or a skilled networker.

I won't summarize the entire book here but I will tell you about one chapter that I found particularly insightful. Chapter 18 is entitled Health, Wealth, and Children. Mr. Ferrazzi posits that health, building and maintaining wealth, and family are the three things that are universally important to every person you will meet. Those issues are common denominators that define each of us.

Methuselah's Daughter

Two very talented writers, Dean Esmay and J A Eddy have put out a new book based on a blog they have been writing for some time.

Methuselah's Daughter is sure to please, and congratulations, Dean and JA!  Zsallia was one of my all time favorite characters.

Lisa Balbes Has A New Book Out

If you've spent much time online as a St Louis recruiter, you've probably run across Lisa Balbes.  She's a technical writer (and oh so much more) who is well-networked and in demand in the region.

She also has published her book, NonTraditional Careers for Chemist:  New Formulas for Chemistry Careers.  Lisa has also started a blog to promote the book.  It's about career development for chemists.  The book link is below.

Next To Review

I've been working on this book for some time, and it's fascinating.

Digital Formations:
IT and New Architectures in the Global Realm

Edited by Robert Latham and Saskia Sassen

I will have a review out by next week, as well as one for The Structure and Dynamics of Networks.

What's cool are some of the digital pictures you get when you explore networks.

This graph is of Recruiting,com, and it shows how interactions online are from the hub and spoke model, not one big interactive mash-up.  The clustering effect should be obvious.  if you understand this map, you understand how communities work.

Here's a url for a prettier map, compliments of Bruce Hoppe.

A different visual network map.

Danger Quicksand Have A Nice Day

Change Someone's Life.  Encourage Them To Start A Blog. That's the message of David St Lawrence, a retired technology warrior with a weblog and a heart of gold.

I had the opportunity to speak with David, and he graciously sent me his book, Danger Quicksand Have a Nice Day, which he self-published as a guide to navigating the waters of corporate employment.

The book is written like a reference guide, with chapters that employ great content chunking in getting the point across.  David calls his book a "survival guide" not a philosophical treatise, and I want to share some personal thoughts on the book before I publish a larger review over at Recruiting.com.

The first three chapters of the book struck me as bitter.  21st Century Employment, Assessing Your Workplace, and Warning Signs come across like an angry man lashing out at the inanities and frustrations of corporate life.  If I had stopped right there, I would have concluded that David was  a Company Man, part of that Greatest Generation that believed that you worked hard and gave your loyalty and companies rewarded you with lifetime employment and a pension.  While reading those first three chapters, I thought he was bitterly lamenting the farce that modern employment is about anything but a social Darwinism gone awry.

That's what I would have thought, if I had stopped reading.  I would have been wrong.  The first three chapters, by necessity, define conditions where a person's career starts to head the wrong direction.  They represent accurate descriptions of dysfunctional workplaces, not a harangue against former employers and co-workers.  As I went through the book, the astounding realization hit me that David wasn't the one being bitter.  That bitterness was me, recognizing portions of my career where managers failed to live up to my expectations. 

What's great about this book is David really lays it out on the line as to why we're caught in those situations.  It's not that modern employment is full of jackals and the insane, it's that some workplaces develop bad habits that bring the worst out of people, and learning when to stay and when to go is a survival skill that is not taught or trained.

Starting a new job is a time of hope and optimism.  Far too often, the eventual reasons for our separation with a company are evident from the beginning, but masked in the hope of something better. 

Where Danger Quicksand Have A Nice Day stands apart is in the message David delivers.  There is hope.  You can control your career if you are willing to analyze it and accept the tradeoffs that come with every position.

Don't let me fool you - this book won't be easy for some people.  A sample comment is the sad fact that a willingness to move, taking the family out of the home and moving the kids out of their schools is an option many people don't take.  When you close yourself off from options, you're forced into tradeoffs you may not like.  As recruiters, we see this everyday when candidates in a bad position decide that commute, title, position, type of company, salary and work environment are all non-negotiable, and then find themselves unable to make a necessary change or find themselves unaware when layoffs appear at their door. 

The book says its not your fault, but it is your choice.

Most of all, I recommend the book to people in all stages of their career who feel like they are, well, drowning in quicksand.  The message of the book, in plain terms, is that you're not crazy, you're not alone, but you are responsible for making your own way in the world.

David St Lawrence is blogging his post-corporate adventures at Ripples. 
His book can be purchased for $19.95 (a few bucks more if you want if faster) at www.bentcrowpress.com.  If just might change your life.

The New Division of Labor

I've been doing less reading this month as I start the business.  My reading habits, are, well, they aren't normal.  I read in the shower, at stop lights, on the way down to pick up the paper, and even, if you can believe it, in a dentist chair while they put tempories on my two front teeth.

That said, I still rifled through four books.  The fifth is proving challenging.

The New Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market: Frank Levy and Richard Murname.

Let me start with the quote for the book jacket - Every legislator, educator, and executive in American ought to have this book on this bookshelf.

This book has proven vexing precisely because I can't just power-read through it and produce a review.  It's one of those thinking books that has me putting down the thin volume and picking up pen and whatever paper is nearby.   

The cover of the book seems to take its imagery from an Ayn Rand novel, which should have been my first hint that this book is far from normal.  The thin volume packs philosophical insights into every day business sentiments in a subtle manner easily missed if you're skimming.

On the surface, what I've read is pretty straightforward.  Computers are replacing some jobs, and creating new ones.  Easily automated tasks are given to computers, and tasks requiring more cognition are left or formulated for humans. 

It's a headline ripped out of any newspaper defending progress - but there is more to the principle than the easy soundbite. 

 

The New Division of Labor

On my desk: The New Division of Labor: How Computers are Creating the Next Job Market.   by Frank Levy and Richard J Murnane.

Thoughtfully sent over from the Princeton University Press, I'll read and review the book whose premise is that jobs lost in recession never come back, but are replaced by new jobs and new paradigms of working.

Considering my wife and I run a business out of our home based on easy access to computers that quite literally could not have existed ten years ago, this is a timely addition to the Durbin library. 

And once we catalogue the independent recruiters in St Louis who run their businesses in a similar manner with a phone and a computer  - well, you see the connection.

The Why of Contract Staffing

An ongoing Review of Guns, HIred Guns and Warm Bodies

Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies provides a lot of information on the what of the staffing agency.  Barley and Kunda do a great job providing objective descriptions of the players in employment, but the "why" can't really be described in a study. 

They do however, provide information for us to analyze:

From p.113

"I get literally, two or three calls a day from these contracting shops.  'This is Joe at Pyramid Consulting and we're just calling to see if you have needs.'  Some of these guys call me once a week. It's the same person every week. No matter how many times I say no, no matter how many times I don't return calls, they jut call over and over and over.  It's brute force.  I get hundreds of these little companies calling me."  Most managers found cold calls from agents to be disruptive, unpleasant and time consuming.  Shirely Daner was clear on this point.  " I hate them," she told us.  "They're like use car salespeople, except they're selling people instead of cars."

The chapter then goes on to explain that this process, as distasteful as a hiring manager may say they find it, is often the way they hired.  It worked for the agencies, the contractors and the companies.  It worked, and thus is continues.  .

This the essential dilemma in staffing relationships.  Agencies are reacting to the employment needs of the hiring manager in the only manner that works.  If their internal departments, or some other kind of consulting salesmanship worked to place contractors and help these businesses, it would be used.

For the vast majority of hiring managers, taking calls is part of the job.  And when they are in a rush - when they actually need that talent quickly - they're grateful that there was someone there who calls every week at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday to ask if he or she has needs.

This brutal pace is also what leads to such high turnover.  Most people don't take rejection well - and account managers in staffing are no exception.  Managers often tell you that they want personal relationships and that they will call you when they have needs.  They do call, but only after you've established a relationship.  Without cold-calling, how are you going to form that relationship?

The summary of the chapter describes the problem hiring managers faced.  They (and the contractors) believed the best source of hiring was their personal network, but the quality of the network never matched the quantity of the need.  The staffing firms understood the sales and marketing aspects, but their quality was often suspect overall (not for a specific job order or candidate). 

Staffing agencies fill an information void on available contractors, which is why they exist, and why they get paid.  A pretty simple explanation, but one we forget when that phone rings.

Guns, Gurus and Warm Bodies

I'll be reviewing Guns, Gurus, and Warm Bodies this weekend between football games and blogwriting.

Stephen Barley and Gideon Kunda have launched a book and the publisher forwarded me a review copy.

My initial thoughts are the book is thick with wonky goodnes, and the stories I've flipped  through are compelling.

You can get an excerpt on negotiation, social networks, tax status and the philosophical difference of billable and non-billable by flipping open just about every page.  Coming soon...

Book Reviews

Hey - I managed to do some site upgrades - and now the books of the authors who have been so kind to send in advance copies of their books to review are shown over on the right.

Laurence Haughton, C.M. Russell, and David Perry were all kind enough to send in their books and get some feedback. I wish all three success, as I enjoyed reading their texts, and will continue putting out posts that incorporate some of their strategies.

Click on their books to buy if you would like - or send me a note if you'd like further information.
I do get paid a small referral fee if you click through on the Amazon ad to the right.

Book Review

C.M. Russell was kind enough to send me his book Ultimate JobHunting Secrets for review.

I received a slim volume in the mail, complete with a refrigerator magnet and two business cards, and started reading through to see what Mr. Russell considered Ultimate Secrets.

The book is split up into eight chapters, with pie graphs, chartss and those little boxes that promote Job Seeker Secrets.   Russell has put together, well he's put together an action plan for getting a job that has something that every other job-hunting secrets book misses.  He speaks to the candidate as if they have never looked for a job before.

Shakespeare Recruiter

In the mail:  Jim Stroud's Digability - The Art of Shakespeare Recruiting.  I'm looking forward to reviewing this thoughts on competitive advantage for recruiters, and his background in sourcing, internet search, and recruiting is excellent.

While we wait for his second series to arrive, allow me to entertain you with poetry.

In truth, our monies are entwined,

Your presence on the web shows proof

To search the internet gold mine.

in efforts to secure a roof

A resume in pixel form

for job descriptions locked in rust

to click submit is now the norm

just piles of paper locked in dust

The long tail search is not yet known

tis wrapped in google mystery

with few there are who seek renown

to make recruiting history

As job boards fall into decay

We live to search another day.

Bet you didn't think I had it in me.  We are finish-ed.   

Laurence Haughton: Book Review

"Your book is subversive"

"What do you mean?"

"Your book. I can't recommend it to people. It will cause them to get fired. I read it, and all I could think about was calling up my CEO and telling him how to run his business"

That was the beginning of a conversation I had with Laurence Haughton, the author of It's Not What You Say, It's What You:How Following Through At Every Level Can Make Or Break Your Company. Aside from an ability to write catchy titles, Laurence is a subversive that delves into the guts of a corporation and comes out with some startling information - corporations are big on image and terrible in follow-through.

That's why the book is likely to lead to awkward Christmas parties where peons like me corner the CEO with a copy of the book in hand and a martini in the other.

Some facts.

A third of all software projects fail. It's a terrible number, but development is complex. 33% Failure is pretty good compared to the failure rate of the Major Company Initiative, where a whopping one-half end up failing. Why is it so tough to push through effective change in an organization? Laurence tells us. It's because we're big on plans, and not so good on details.

Archaeologists who sift through the remains of teh 20th century would see the problem immediately. Every major corporation has the debris left from past campaigns hanging from their walls. Contests, marketing slogans, Ethics manuals, and banners about quality litter the walls and storage closets of corporate America, and yet each year, some big new project is announced to huge fanfare, trumpeted in press releases, and quickly forgotten among the excrutiating minutiae of everyday life.

This book has some answers. From speaking with Laurence and reading his book, I can tell you several things. One, the book was a learning experience to write, and the conclusions that are reached and not what was expected at the beginning of the project. Two, Mr. Haughton is a devilishly clever writer who peppers his book with examples, fables, stories, jokes, and historical trivia that make it fun to read even if you need the dictionary, the Reader's Digest, and a laptop opened to a Google Browser nearby to fully appreciate his writing. Three, this book is not meant to be blazed through at a Borders and tossed aside for a paperback romance.

Business Books bore. Most authors tell their story in the first three chapters, and then spend the rest of the book justifying the $25.00 you spent on the hardcover. Some of those books have great themes, but are very thin on advice. Others are great on anecdotes and worksheets, but fail to convince you that they apply to your company.

It's Not What You Do, It's What You Say is different than most Business Books because isn't a quick read. I spent four hours reading 220 some odd pages. I read at a normal pace of over 100 pages an hour, and tend to speed through bad books at about 200 pages an hour, seeking to extract some nuggets of information and call it a day.

Laurence's book made me stop, and think, and write.

Bad News Bears and Blogging

Please forgive the look of the place - we're working on style sheet changes

I read Hugh Hewitt's book on blogs. It was well written for those who don't understand blogs, but nothing new to someone familiar with blogs. His facts were straight on and his chapter on blogging recommendations is a must read.

What Hugh did exceptionally well was explain what was why blogs are important, citing Pope Leo and the Reformation. Blogs are the new Gutenberg printing press. That's a tough sell in person.

I've had a terrible time trying to explain blogs to friends, family and clients over the last four years.
The responses I've received are:
1) Everything you read on the Internet is untrustworthy
2) No one who works has time to blog
4) Teenagers and cat-bloggers are a waste of time.
5) There's no accountability.
6) It's like Usenet or Yahoo groups
7) It's a fad.

What's tough about these responses is they are accurate for large portions of the blogosphere. Considering the number of blogs started and stopped, and the average age of bloggers hovering around 15, and the number of people how either "have" a blog, or "know a person with a blog," it's little wonder that such disparaging remarks are the normal response.

Then again - perhaps blogger triumphalism is a victim of it's own success. If I tell you blogs brought down Dan Rather, and the only blog you've ever read is your 13 year old daughter's, you're going to be skeptical. Of course if I told you the television is the number one way that people get their news and all you have is the Public Access channel or daytime soaps, you might be skeptical about television. If I told you newspaper reporters brought down a President, and the only paper read was the back pages of the Riverfront Times, you might be skeptical.

So let's compare apples to apples. Blogs are little league baseball, and the Mainstream Media is professional baseball.

So - blogs are Little League baseball, complete with screaming parents, crying kids, ice cream, warm sodas after the game, and marketing campaigns that sell chocolate to raise funds.

Mainstream Media is Professional Baseball, with lucrative television contracts, revenue-sharing, stadiums, and the world's best athletes. There's no contest right?

Little Leaguers dream of the big leagues - the fame, the fortune, the respect. They know the big leagues require more effort, more training and they deliver a better product. They know they have to work their way up through high school ball, the minors, and finally to the majors. That's the same as the blogs. Leaching off hyperlinks and commenting on the bigs like Maureen Dowd and George Will and Thomas Sowell, blogs started off as the Little Leagues - and some started out as teeball, or quit after one game.

But some had real talent, and a heck of a learning curve. And the fans of Little League prefer the pureness, the authenticity if you will of the sport over the overhyped professionalism of the big leagues.

Before Trent Lott and Howell Raines figured it out, the blogs had exposed them and started to realize their potential. When Dan Rather happened along, we suddenly had the blogosphere vs the Mainstream Media.

Dan Rather's Memogate was the New York Yankees vs the Bad News Bears. And the most amazing thing happened.

The Bad New Bears got base hits. They struck out Derek Jeter. They scored a couple of runs - and they won the game. And they started crowing about it.

The MSM and it's fans struck back, belittling blogs and their supporters like Yankees fans deriding a Little League Team. Yes, it's true the Yankees of the Media dominate for the rest of the season. But what does it say about the Yankees that blogs could get base hits and score runs, much less win the game? It means that either the blogs have more talent than expected, or the MSM has a lot less than it thought.

If there was a Little League team that could score on the Yankees, it wouldn't mean that all Little Leaguers could. It sure would mean that those Little Leaguers had a lot of talent.

And one more thing. Little Leaguers eventually grow up. What's going to happen when they play those same MSM Yankees in twenty years?