Wendy Weber on Executive Recruiting

Although August is a tough month to find professionals at their desks, it is a great month to be an executive recruiter!

As companies begin to ramp up after a more relaxed couple of months, there is an increased urgency to filling critical positions. We have received a dozen calls in the last week and a half from new clients. The positions range the gamut from client side to agency side, traditional channels to emerging media. Two of the searches are confidential…replacements for existing personnel that have not kept up with the demands of their positions. And interestingly, two of the calls are from clients in other countries seeking a U.S. marketer to work remotely (here).

Our research team is already sourcing the names of potential candidates for these clients, and we will hit the phones in earnest right after Labor Day.

Apparently there is a woman in Belmont California who Abercrombie & Fitch feels is buying “too much” of their wares. They have banned her from shopping on their website, and will not accept future orders from her. Abercrombie is convinced that no normal customer would purchase that much for personal use, and they have accused her of reselling the merchandise.

The woman insists the orders are legitimate, and that “she has worn every single pair of jeans.”

Can a customer be “too loyal?”

To see the piece, click here.

…created on behalf of a pet or a child!

Pet profiles are said to be more popular than profiles for children.

This, according to a survey commissioned in late June by coupon site Couponcodes4u.com.

Makes you wonder about utilizing social networking for your business.

You may have seen QR codes, those black and white patterned squares, on magazine ads and on subways…but I’m going to bet you haven’t heard of this one: QR Codes on headstones.

These QR codes are similar to the bar codes found on most products. The digital patterns, when scanned by a smartphone or an iPad with the proper application, connect the user to a website with the person’s written history, photos and videos. The information on the site is provided by the family, and the service is part of the headstone purchase.

They are being called “living headstones.”

The owner of one cemetery said, “Before, you might stand on a grave site and read [the tombstone] and wonder what that person was about. Now you can read their life story. Every life has a story.”

This is direct response at the extreme. To read an article about this that appeared in the Seattle Times, click here.

Just came across a piece which struck a chord with me. It’s about Anti-Social Recruiting.

“Social,” as defined by Merriam Webster, is “…the interaction of the individual and the group,” and “tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships.”

To be antisocial is to not be interactive, and to not form relationships.

Here are a few examples of anti-social recruiting:

* When a company fails to respond to someone posting a question or comment on their Facebook page, LinkedIn group, or Twitter stream, they are performing anti-social recruiting. Oh the irony!
* Any time an individual or organization fails to respond to or even recognize any response to one of their job postings, they are performing anti-social recruiting. Automated emails may technically be “responses,” but I don’t know of a single job seeker that would consider automated email confirmations “social.”
* Any time a person submits their resume and fills out an online application and never receives a response, the company is performing anti-social recruiting.
* When a company using Twitter has 1000′s of followers and is only following a handful of people, they are performing anti-social recruiting.
* Any time someone interviews for a position and never receives any real feedback from the recruiter or company, they are experiencing anti-social recruiting.
* Whenever someone’s resume or social networking profile is automatically captured and added to a company’s database and they are never contacted, they are experiencing anti-social recruiting.
* Any recruiter who speaks to a candidate only once, submits the candidate’s resume to their hiring manager/client and never contacts the candidate again (the #1 complaint about recruiters, BTW) is performing anti-social recruiting.

In all of the above cases, there is a lack of interaction and an absence of forming cooperative and interdependent relationships with potential candidates.

That’s anti-social.

We at Crandall Associates pride ourselves on being “social”…but I would like to know if you think so. There are certainly times that we are unable to provide feedback after an interview (if that client doesn’t provide any) or we are in infrequent contact with a candidate (especially if they live in a remote location and are unwilling to relocate). In any case, we do our best. Does that come through?

To read the article in its entirety, click here.