So, here we go. In the early days of my recruiting experience, I felt like a crusader finding the "Perfect" Candidate for "My" Clients. Well, time has passed and I realized that there is neither a "Perfect" Candidate nor are the Clients solely "Mine". You see, in the beginning recruiters believed that candidates never really lied about their experiences, but "stretched" the truth. After all, not everyone is perfect. Learning fast, one of my greatest quotes in training is "the best lie ever told is the one that lies closest to the truth." Not only were we surprised at the misdirected fact, but down right shocked to believe, as the statistics began to show, that resumes were a mere 44% embellished, if not just down right made up.
Clients have always USED recruiters, many recruiters, on a contingency basis, storing and stock-piling resumes until they themselves are glazed over with a term we call "Candidate Drunk." We believed that hiring authorities felt that if they didn't review and interview several hundred (my embellishment) candidates then they could not justify the hiring of the Golden Child to their bosses, who they themselves were glazed over with interviewing Senior candidates. Oh yes, contingency fee, defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, as a noun, is "a fee for services paid upon successful completions of the services and usually calculated as a percentage of the gain realized for the client." Way back when, recruiters were paid a flat rate, "finder's fee", for rounding up resumes and sometimes the actual candidates. They were not really recruiting them for a special opportunity or next step in their career. So, resume factories sprang up everywhere. And in 1987, Canon came out with "the first plain-paper Fax Machine" which brought on more efficient and affordable technology to aid in reducing verbal conversations. No more talking about a candidate's personal or professional history, or their wants and needs for the future of their career. And with the introduction of e-mail, conversations that used to be conducted by the phone or in person, are now being executed via e-mail, Blackberry or text. Recruiters were being paid to fill data banks for human resources and then told to get out of the way and let the interviewing talents of the hiring authorities prevail, giving recruiters very little involvement, if any at all, in the hiring process. Without the recruiter to prepare the candidate, the interview style (i.e., negative, soft, hard, group grope, etc.), most often would result in the candidate appearing as a deer caught in headlights or left with the feeling of being ambushed by the hiring authorities.
You see, back in the day we had a lot of Engineers and Scientists to go around. Ph.D.'s were in fact "Piled High and Deep." Jobs were few and employed engineers were grateful to have one. Annual wages were low and I mean low. Tim Colebatch says in an article he wrote in 2004 that, "The money level of our wages has increased sharply over time. It was only in 1973 that the average male earning first topped $100 a week - female earnings were excluded until 1980 - and when the bureau started collecting data in 1941, the average male was paid just over ?5 ($10) a week."
Back in the day, if a candidate gave thought to making a change, hiring authorities had one basic question, "Why are you looking?" This gave the impression that something was wrong with the candidate. Ironically this question has lived to repeat itself, for a whole different reason (more on this later). The decline of graduating engineers over the last two decades in specific sciences and the turn towards big money lure of the IT engineering world, has shocked a lot of us and cost us additional graduating engineers that were needed for the up and coming building of the Infrastructure World. It was also a shock and a blessing when we ran into the Dot Com crash, as more engineers with wrong engineering degrees filled the job market and were not the right fit to fill the rise of the Infrastructure growth of the late 90's and early 2000. However, it seemed to add a little more argument to having sons and daughters go into traditional engineering coarse work.
In closing, through my Way Back When-esday posts, I want to get into the whys from our eyes. In the mean time you should read some. Try reading a cool little article by Fareed Zakaria from Newsweek Magazine published on May 12, 2008 titled "Rise of the Rest". This article should help you sleep better hearing that it isn't all bad, but also hopefully optimistic.
But remember, things have changed:
- You need a good Doctor to keep you healthy
- You need a good Accountant to keep you wealthy
- And an excellent Recruiter to keep you moving on a good career path,
- ...and a good career opportunity provided by some of the best engineering people and companies I know, My Clients.
Over the coming weeks and months, my team and I plan to address the why's this post includes, in much greater depth. However, if something in particular has caught your eye and you want to know more now, leave us a comment and we will cover that first. I profess that I don't know everything, but after a few decades of actually talking to people on both sides of the interviewing trail, I can at least give you my opinion.
See you next When-esday!
Daniel Hydrick, CEO
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