INTERNET RECRUITING: HYPE vs. REALITY - Page 1 of 3

I remember in the very early 60's when I was the Technical Staffing Manager for a Fortune 500 company, I was approached by a couple of sales reps from the National Career Center organization about attending a series of their career centers which were held every week in different cities around the country. One of their main selling tools was a rather bulky computer they toted around in a large suitcase. They unpacked it, put it on a table in the hotel room where they were pitching me, plugged it in and attached it to the hotel telephone receiver. After several grueling minutes of trying to get a connection to their main computer at their NYC office, they asked me to give them the types of people I sought by looking through a multi-page list of skill, geographical, educational and experience codes. Another several more minutes was spent plugging my requested codes into the keyboard and yet another several minutes waiting for a response. What finally popped up was a list of code numbers which supposedly correlated with qualified candidates I would be able to interview if I attended their career centers.

At the time, it was pretty high tech even though the telephone connection was broken half way through the presentation when the housekeeper called to inquire whether I needed extra towels. In those days, when high tech meant a Thermofax copy machine or a high-speed mimeograph, I was duly impressed. They told me that recruiting was about to undergo a massive sea change because of this technological break through and that we could probably never again have to pay a fee to an employment agency (that's what they were called in those days).

I signed my employer up for a few cities and upon arrival in each city, was presented with a book containing 500 or so resumes of people they said they could bring in for interviews during the three-day center. I usually selected several dozen people. I typically interviewed no more than half a dozen. Although all the resumes presumably represented people interested in changing jobs, many didn't want to move to where our jobs were, had listed erroneous information (salary, job skills, degrees, etc.) Or had some other reason not to want to talk with my firm. In truth, we were looking for some really weird backgrounds, but the "computer" led me to believe that there were far more with our needed qualifications than there actually were. Remember, we were competing with the 40-60 other companies at these centers for the same pool of people.

Every career center I attended provided the center coordinators with the opportunity to sell me on the next super hiring opportunities that awaited me in Cincinnati, Milwaukee, San Jose (or whatever other cities they were visiting next). They hauled out their suitcase computer to tease me with the great talent pool supposedly available in the next career center location and being young, gullible and not overly accountable to a boss who liked to play as well as I did, I was an easy touch.

Besides, I had made some great friends with other recruiters who daisy-chained from career center to career center and, what the heck, these things were a lot of fun -- a hospitality suite with round-the-clock cocktails and snacks, plenty of newly-found buddies who were in the same boat, a never-ending card game and new sights to see in a different city every week.
But after attending over a dozen of these functions, I was asked to justify the expenditures and what I discovered was that we were only able to hire 4 people as a result of the fourteen career centers I had attended.

next >>