Why Internet Recruiting Doesn’t Work Efficiently

No question that many companies, perhaps even most, have turned to electronic recruiting, especially for mid-level and junior employees. Subscribing to the various recruiting sites is relatively inexpensive (as compared to paying a recruiter) and for very little money when there is an opening, a company can receive dozens of résumés.

There are many recruiting sites on the internet.  Some are more sophisticated than others, some are more expensive than others. Some are actually better than others. In the final analysis, they are all only as good as their input allows.  And, among other things, therein lies the problem.  Companies don’t know how to prepare proper job specs (in most cases, they write job descriptions which are not actually specs for who they want to hire; they are rally only top-line explanations of the job), electronic recruiting ultimately finds candidates who match those insufficient job specs.  They save money for companies, but ultimately and can only send résumés; some appropriate, most not. They all lack one thing – interviewing and the ability to actually qualify candidates by personality.  

A few years ago, at its height, one of the first and largest internet recruiting companies was trying to sell me their service.  After months of turning them down, a representative volunteered to come to my office and show me how to use the site.  He was going to conduct actual searches with me at no charge.  He spent an hour and a half with me.  We chose several different jobs – all in advertising at different levels. 

We did searches for all kinds of titles, experiences (such as they had) and even current companies (there are thousands of advertising agencies, but we inputted the twenty or so largest and then tried several smaller agencies where I thought that likely candidates might come from).  Guess what?  Nothing.  Nada. Bupkis.  In each search a couple of names came up.  Few were appropriate, although a couple of names showed up who I already knew. The representative expressed shock at their inability to be able to give me appropriate candidates because, after all, their data base had hundreds of thousands of names.  He promised to look into the issue and get back to me.  I never heard from him or them again. 

We did come up with one or two people who seemed appropriate for my practice, but when I contacted them (through their web site), I got no response. Now candidates complain about companies not calling them back or responding to submitted résumés. Recruiters who contact candidates have the same problem whether through job websites or simply by calling or emailing directly.  All recruiters will tell you that many candidates do not return calls or even emails, which is something I have never understood.  And that problem is getting worse.  As companies have eschewed recruiters, younger candidates actually don’t know what a recruiter does or can do for them because there is no exposure for them to the use of search people. So, as a result, they don’t return calls or emails.

But I digress.

The point is that the logarithms that the recruitment sites have are just not sensitive enough to show companies their skills or what they can actually accomplish.  When every good recruiter gets an assignment, they can ask questions about the job and about the intangible attributes that the position requires.  Hearing the nuances of an assignment can make a significant contribution to the ability to find the right candidate.  Those distinctions, so far, just are not available from the online sites which provide volume over quality.

There is no substitute for interviewing and knowing candidates.  The whole purpose of paying a recruiter is to save money for a company by efficiently recruiting.  In essence, a good recruiter who receives or who can determine who a company wants to hire can actually save them money by doing the interviewing for them.  No question that many recruiters are what I call “senders” and don’t do much more than the internet web sites.  Single industry recruiters, like me, have large data bases of qualified candidates.  They know the companies as well.

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