Hank's Comments

I am having a blast with this whole blogging thing. I get to be in conversation with intelligent and thoughtful people who care deeply about moving to the next step in "Talentism." It is an honor to even be in the electronic shadows of people like Doug Miller, Heather Hamilton, John Sumser, Dave Lefkow, Hank Stringer, Jason Davis, Andrew Marritt and Jeff Bloch.

Speaking of Hank Stringer... he posted a comment today and I thought it was awesome. Part of the comment that really reasonated was:

There is much more work to be done to understand the complete business model and define appropriate measures of quality and value before we can adequately and appropriately measure talent.

Exactly! The hard part about moving to the next stage of development is that we can't create metrics in a vacuum. We can't be in the business of protecting our jobs with data to show that we do a good job even while the business is sinking. We have to be in the business of driving the business. But how do you measure that if the business can't even do it? We can no longer exist as merely "recruiters." We must be "talenteers." And talenteers must be business people first and recruiters second.

Thanks Hank.

Comments

[Heather]

Jeff, you are too nice.

So here's another point I'll throw out to add another wrinkle. Why aren't we treating our clients (hiring managers) like customers? From a marketing standpoint, companies just ask their customers if they are satisfied and then ask them why or why not to understand what they (the company) can do to impact change. If our clients are our customers, does it really matter how HR defines quality at all? I honestly don't think so. It's for us to understand, not define.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because some of my customers are recruiting teams (I do outreach and marketing to supply a candidate pipeline, build employement brand perception, etc). I've been treating my customers like business partners..ooops, my bad! I've changed my approach from a) figuring out how to work together to b) figuring out how I can deliver what they want/need. I've really stopped questioning what they need...if they say they need it and it's in the scope of my work, it's my job to deliver it. So I've been rethinking the position of stakeholders in the recruiting process.