You want Simon not Paula...

What is a talent acquisition professional's job?

Talent acquisition specialists (aka Recruiters, Headhunters etc.) are the art critics, wine critics, sports scouts and movie critics of the business world. Their job is to be able to distinguish good from great in order for their clients to make the best decisions possible. Those decisions make or break a company because your people will always dictate your success or your failure. Their value to their clients is in having a critical eye. Too often in my past life as a VP of Sales & Marketing I was presented with "perfect" candidates who, in reality, were way off the mark.

There were typically 3 reasons:

1. The recruiter was blinded by the fee and ignored red flags that were obvious in hopes of just getting paid. I chalk this up to being short sighted and stupid and not understanding the value of always thinking long term.
2. The recruiter had not developed a critical eye. They focused on the good and didn't see the reasons why the candidate wasn't a fit. I chalk this up to inexperience and poor coaching.
3. The recruiter didn't do their homework. They didn't interview them in depth, didn't google them, check their social media, talk to references etc. Vetting is not "pitching" a company and a job opening, vetting is diving deep and interviewing a candidate harder sometimes then a client might. I chalk this up to the most common issue that plagues so many people, they are sloppy, lazy and take shortcuts. I could try to sanitize it but that's really what it is.

Eli Manning is not an elite quarterback and that's ok...

Here in New York, it's a common debate on sports talk radio whether or not Eli Manning is an elite quarterback. Some people lose their minds when others say he isn't elite. Not everyone can be "elite". By definition elite means that you are in a very small exclusive group. It's not an insult to say someone isn't elite it just means you know the difference between good, very good and great. In an era of 8th place trophies people can lose sight that evaluating, judging and stack ranking people is ok. In recruiting, thinking everyone is "great" is a disservice to the client and a waste of their time and money.

As a hiring manager you want your talent acquisition partner to be way more Simon Cowell than Paula Abdul.

SomethingNew is the 2017 and 2016 American Business Award winner for "innovation" and finds top talent for some of the best organizations throughout North America. If we can ever be a resource to you please feel free to give me a shout @ 888-223-9420 or [email protected]