Why You Should Get Your Hands Dirty Recruiting

I beat HR at its own job because while some personnel jockey is hiding in an office diddling a database, I’m having lunch with the person the employer is going to hire.

Every now and then, the market gives us a gift: A space where competition has all but disappeared. If you’re recruiting marketers for your team, please pay attention because your competitors are vanishing. This will give you an incredible edge—but you have to show up.

I love it when lazy, sloppy (and stupid) competitors give me an edge. They make me money.

People ask how I can charge a $30,000 fee to fill a job when HR departments can find all the candidates they need on LinkedIn for around a hundred bucks. The answer is simple, and Woody Allen said it best: “Eighty percent of success is showing up.”

I beat HR at its own job because while some personnel jockey is hiding in an office diddling a database, hitting the reject key 95% of the time on all those superfluous job applicants, I’m having lunch with the person the employer is going to hire. I show up.

While HR managers tell applicants to fill out pages of online forms, I’m explaining to an exceptional candidate that someone I trust recommended him or her—and I’m discussing six important things I already know about the person.

That costs money. It takes time. It’s personal. LinkedIn can’t do that. Nor can most personnel jockeys.

So I smirk, shake my head, and tally up my gains when I read on Bloomberg that “Goldman Scraps On-Campus Interviews for Robo-Recruiting.” That’s right: Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will no longer send humans to recruit the best new grads. Goldman wants the best and the brightest to take automated tests, talk to robo-interviewers, and wait until algorithms screen their job applications.

While Goldman is waiting for a new grad to record themselves answering a list of questions on their mobile devices, then “processing” umpteen applicants who shouldn’t even have bothered, I’m finishing lunch with the candidate Goldman will never know about—and we’re discussing salary. While technology can aid recruiting, expecting it to substitute for human interaction destroys an employer’s edge. There’s your opening.

Goldman’s competitors are licking their chops. All you have to do is show up, shake hands, talk to the best new grads, get to know them, answer their questions face to face, and demonstrate the kind of professional respect that makes a job seeker say yes. (See “How To Recruit Robots.”)

Just last week, a reader wrote me that he had seen the Goldman story, too: “I cannot tell you how stupid I think this is. I am sure you will agree. As an electrical engineer, I have to say that this is a misuse of technology. People like me might make such technology possible. I’m tired of hearing about ‘disruptive technology.’ If this is the future, I want no part of it.”

Then he shared his experience getting hired by a company that showed up: “My current manager interviewed me in person for only an hour. Also in the interview was an engineer who now does marketing. I like that—a technical person who talks to customers! I was told right then and there that of the three candidates under consideration, I was the top one.”

Quicker than his old employer’s HR department realized what was going on, his new boss made him an offer.He accepted and wouldn’t even consider a counter offer. (Note that a member of the marketing team showed up, too!) What impressed him the most: “It was very personal.”

Goldman’s head of human resources, Edith Cooper, rationalizes not showing up to recruit: “We’ve created a process to create consistent rigor. We’re trying to take out an individual’s assessment of talent.”

Got that? Or did you miss it? Cooper just exposed her soft underbelly to all her competitors. She’s taking human judgment out of candidate selection and recruiting. She might as well have said, “We’re not showing up.”

Eliminating human recruiters and in-person seduction of candidates eliminates bias, she says. That’s the mantra HR is chanting to justify reducing recruiting costs. What these brain trusts don’t explain is how bias is removed when they watch umpteen videos of applicants answering questions, where they can smirk and guffaw from the privacy of their offices.

Gimme a break. I can’t wait for Netflix to syndicate everyone’s interview video on demand. While Goldman’s HR execs are washing their hands with rubber gloves on, my headhunter buddies and I will be getting our hands dirty shaking hands with those pesky job seekers.

I suggest you do the same. You’ll have virtually no competition. And you will save around thirty grand. Don’tcha love it when your silly competitors hand you an edge?