LinkedIn does NOT solve all hiring
I’ve recently read more and more articles which state, unequivocally, that LinkedIn and social media will disintermediate the executive search business. Companies will seldom need help from headhunters, or even recruiters. It will go the way of the travel agency, and more organisations now tout their internal recruiting arm as a more cost efficient way to get talent on board. What’s a headhunter to do?? Here is the latest jeremiad from the FT.
Such voices also dovetail with the perpetual ‘war on talent’, essentially bemoaning that there are not many good people out there to be had. Let me call ‘em as I see ‘em:
Having a lot of on-line information on people is a start, but it has to be interpreted. To do so is a collaborative effort between a company, a consultant and a candidate. It’s almost like saying that because I can now see exactly how an engine is made must mean I can fix it easily.
I use LinkedIn; everyone does, whether searching or being searched. But if LinkedIn really and truly helped companies find everyone they need, I’d hope senior management would by now have shut up about ‘not being able to attract all the people we need. But as I’d recently written, jobs are not permanent anymore. Many people are less committed to a career with one company, and will brand themselves to various organisations. And how does a company interpret that?
LinkedIn is a great tool for professional profiles, and now endorsements and recommendations to burnish it even more. But all that info does mean everyone can interpret whether someone with 200 endorsements is a good hire.
The internet does NOT solve talent issues. That is the role of each organisation; how to determine their mission, their brand, culture, strategy, and their future. That’s not the same as information overload of CV’s through LinkedIn. That’s quant, not qual, analytics.
If it is a senior role, it’s unlikely a senior executive will simply email their details anonymously, even more so in the age of cybersecurity. (None of the C level people I know do so–and while we scroll through LinkedIn, most are not sending in their CV’s to internal recruiters..) Those who have spent years building their brand will seldom squander it; knowing who is trustworthy with another’s “brand” is hard to quantify, but it’s worth a lot.
There will always be a need for people and companies to help guide a company’s talent strategy. Executive search is hard. Finding, hiring, and retaining people is one of the hardest things a company can do, but worth the effort-with a sane methodology of counsel, not algorithms..
As long as there are people to be hired, there will be a need for special breed of consultant in the ‘ global talent assessment’ field to interpret disparate agendas, and understand how to market, attract, hire and retain the good ones.It’s as much of an art as a science, not easily finessed nor consummated through a social network.
Written by Neal Horwitz, President of Henry Hale Maguire
