I am a very big fan of Kevin Wheeler, but his article in today's ERE is fundamentally wrong.
Assuming that he is talking about corporate recruiting departments, staffing firms and RPOs (as opposed to the single retained recruiter running their own show), Kevin misses the point that all economic activity is predicated upon continual improvement in process efficiency and the effectiveness of the results provided. There is absolutely no way to increase recruiter efficiency and measure the effectiveness of the results in multi-person shops without capturing data about the entire process end-to-end. And you can't do this with a rolodex and a phone.
What surprises me most about the article is that Kevin is one of the best strategic thinkers in the market. This article is a huge step backwards in making the case that recruiting is a strategic business function. Any business executive reading this article (especially in the finance and operations side of the house) would laugh out loud if they heard that recruiting is just about phones and rolodexs. Unfortunately this argument proves what business people have suspected all along - that recruiting is a just a dialing for dollars people business that has no real connection to driving competitive advantage and which can be done just as well by a call shop in India as by a talent professional sitting next to an executive.
My hope is that Kevin will think more deeply about both his argument and his analogy. A car with no frame, no windscreen and no headlights is only "functional" at low speeds in broad daylight. It would not be functional for the types of driving that most people do, or fit most people's transportation needs, nor even be permissible given the realities of government policy requirements (fenders for instance). Similarly, a recruiting department that is a phone and a rolodex is good for low volume, non-critical hiring environments where continually improving the recruiting and hiring process is not important. This type of recruiting department would not be functional for the types of recruiting that most companies need, or fit most executive's recruiting needs, nor even be permissible given the realities of government policy requirements (EEO 1 reports for instance).
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