Disqus - Latest Comments for johnsumser

Re: Relationships

John Sumser — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 09:52:34 -0000

Who says you need hundreds of relationships to fill a single position? I can't imagine why you'd need more than five or six.

I'm reminded of the I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel are busy trying to wrap all of the chocolates that come down the conveyor belt. They find ways to get around the system and the result is that the rate gets increased. ( http://bit.ly/oANo1T ).

That's what most contemporary Applicant Tracking Systems turn recruiting into. That's what the idea that all candidates are entitled to a positive experience looks like. It will only get worse now that every candidate will come with all of the data in her social graph.

Somehow, we've fallen into the trap that says because we have the data, we have to attend to it.

Of course you can't have relationships with all of those pieces of chocolate. You can barely get them wrapped.

Re: Expert Advice: Should Salary Be Disclosed On A Resume?

John Sumser — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:54:33 -0000

There are plenty of online resources for determining your worth or the worth of a particular position. Start with the material here on Glassdoor and then confirm it with one or two others.

If you are forced (and being asked once does not constitute being forced) to disclose a number for a job you really, really want, determine the range of compensation possible for the job (online research), determine what percentage of that you want to make and tell the person that this is your salary requirement.

The way to avoid disclosing the number up front? Don't disclose it. If they really, really want you, you'll get a call or a note asking you for more information. At that point, please reread the article.

It's easy to find out if you are on the same wavelength but you have to do your own research. If you want the employer to do your work for you (by telling you up front), then you will understand why they want to have you give them the number first.

Do you really think they are going to walk away from you over a couple of dollars? Do you really want to work for them if that's the case?

Re: Why Recruiters Don’t Get You Jobs

John Sumser — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:42:24 -0000

Sure.

I'd start by looking at information about the company here on Glassdoor. The more research you do about the place, the better.

Then, I'd do a company search on LinkedIn. You want to identify the people in the company who do what you want to do. Try to limit it to 10 or 15 people doing the sort of work you are interested in. It's a good idea to identify a supervisor or two. These people are referred to as 'hiring managers' by the folks in recruiting. They are the one's who ultimately decide who gets the next job in their department.

(You can do similar research using Google. You can also look hard at the company's website. Depending on its size, it may identify the people you want to get to know.)

Try to identify senior employees and hiring managers who share interests with you. Then reach out to them.

Building relationships takes patience and trust. You have to want to get to know the people for reasons of personal development. The moment that it becomes an obvious end run on the HR department, the relationships will get colder. So, limit yourself to trying to learn more about the company, the people you want to work with and the problems they are trying to solve.

Persistence, enthusiasm and curiosity are the tools of this approach.

Re: What Technology Wants, first draft

John Sumser — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:03:05 -0000

Congrats. It’s been a long time coming. It’s been a privilege to watch it unfold

Re: Disintermediation

John Sumser — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:36:30 -0000

The disruption won't happen in a uniform way. It's a two step thing that will happen differently by size, region and industry.

Glen nicely describes the fact that staffing, hiring and recruiting are prioritized differently by company. Some think it's important to be great at it, some are willing to be sloppy and expensive about it.

The next shift will happen in two waves. First, as the workload from a strengthening economy increases, recruiting services are going to be acquired rather than done in house. When additional inhouse recruiters are finally hired, they will have heavier workloads. It's a one-two punch.

Both waves will force companies to closely examine the value they get from their recruiting.

Right now, you can find a lot of waste in the recruiting process. Not for long.

Re: Disintermediation

John Sumser — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:02:26 -0000

You know, I am talking to a lot of people for the Top 100 project over at RecruitingBlogs.com Pretty much every senior leader I've spoken with assumes that the "disruption" is imminent.

Disitermediation, in this case, means the same fate that the newspapers experienced. It has been forseeable for a while. Soon, it will feel like dropping off the edge of a cliff.

It started with the earliest layoffs in this recession. You'll see it in place in the way that people rebuild following the downturn.

Re: Disintermediation

John Sumser — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:34:21 -0000

Good subject, Josh.

Before you go tarring the HMOs, let me tell you about Kaiser in Northern California.

Because the entire system operates from a single shared database of medical records, digital xrays, drug interactions and correlations between treatment protocols and population health, the system is astonishing. It delivers better care than is otherwise available. All of the experts look at the same charts. The data lags that cripple most diagnostic processes are absent (the tests are on your chart (and your PC) by the time you get home. The doc works your chart through email as well as in the office.

If anything, the HMOs are going to disintermediate the family doc and all of his friends.

That said, what is being disrupted is the recruiting department, not its vendors. The vendors get displaced because the essence of recruiting is shifting.

Recruiting used to be about finding people. Nowadays, it's more about being found. That's because a vast majority of people are online and easily discoverable.

During the downturn, lots of Recruiters got laid off. It was smart...no hiring, no need for recruiters. As the economy stabilizes, they are not likely to get rehired in the first ten waves of hiring. Instead, new entities and tools will shoulder the work.

It's a time where everything you know about recruiting is wrong.

Re: Entrepreneurial Success Story Contest

John Sumser — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:42:15 -0000

You pose an interesting challenge, Sue. In order to be effective, HR is often in charge of maintaining the status quo. Conventional wisdom is the stock and trade of the industry. Real intrapreneurs in HR are rare indeed.

It's not at all clear to me that 'lots of little conversations' do, in fact, pave the way for innovation. My sense is that innovation very rarely happens within the confines of an established market leader. The blinders of conventional wisdom are so severe that most interesting innovations are delivered by upstarts. Currently, our culture is littered with the carcasses of incumbents who couldn't innovate.

IBM couldn't have started Google (nor Microsoft, for that matter). None of the big last generation players invented Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or ten thousand new enterprises.

New ideas are resisted for a variety of reasons. My good friends Claudia Faust and Alise Cortez are trying to make a company called "Improved Experience" gain some traction. The idea is to use survey tools to assess candidate experience on corporate employment websites. It's a good idea that I sunk $150K into about 7 years ago.

No one was interested back then because it was too early. Claudia and Alise are having somewhat better results than I did. A great idea at the wrong time is a particularly useless thing.

It's also worth pointing out that great ideas are the cheapest thing imaginable. While there is a massive surplus of great ideas, there is an enormous shortage of good execution.

Give me good execution over a great idea any day.

Re: Print is still king: Only 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online

John Sumser — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:40:18 -0000

Of what's left, only 3% is online. That's one way of making lemonade from lemons. It conveniently ignores:
- what got lost;
- that the online stuff clearly isn't working; and,
- that the audience is gone.

There's good news, ma. It may have shrunk by 70%, but only 3% of blacksmithing is being used at the car factory.

Re: There must be some way out of here, revisited (Scripting News)

John Sumser — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:29:21 -0000

@johnsumser Reasonably prolific, interested. I am Nichier than tech / politics, focusing on HR - workforce - HRTechnology - social media.

Re: The 24-minute news cycle (Scripting News)

John Sumser — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:14:01 -0000

I am also seeing a related phenomenon. While the news cycle is measured in minutes, dispersion of the news takes longer and works on slow moving network dynamics.By the time I heard about Flight 1549, there were no more tweets and the standup comics had a hold of it. I watched the "Obama is a Wii Bowler" story percolate around the blogosphere for days.

If you're a complete news junky with uninterrupted access, the cycle is minutes. Otherwise, the information moves more like rumors than it did when everyone saw one of three versions of the six o'clock news. In other words, the news disappears very quickly. There are few archival sources with adequate coverage.

If you don't see it in the first tiny cycle, you have to catch it on the echo.