I work with many clients who are overwhelmed with a schedule that is difficult to lose control over.

They are interviewing people every 30 minute, speaking with hiring managers, chasing those same hiring managers, evaluating, assessing, qualifying potential hires, putting together and extending job offers, checking references PLUS talking to 3rd party recruiters who are incompetent to evaluate talent (this is what they tell me).

It never ends. Every day.

When I qualify job applicants, I ask them where they have been on interviews and where they have submitted their resumes before submitting it to a client.

Recently, I have been hearing more and more companies tell me, "He's in our system."

Let me be blunt.

I understand that sometimes a candidate doesn't tell me the truth or forgets a place or two, but when you start to notice that the client has not contacted the candidate until I attempted to present them, I can see what is going on.

A firm has a contract with a job board and is harvesting resumes and having them input into their system or people are sending resumes and no one looks at the data base until a third party recruiter "tickles" them at which point they actually see the resume for the first time, claim ownership and contact the candidate.

I understand that you are stretched thin but this is wrong.

Be honest and don't cheat people.

If you have too much to do, hire a contract recruiter to review everything that arrives in your data base daily or hire a firm like mine to review resumes daily that you source from the boards or from other means and either identify possible fits based upon a basic screen or accept a discounted fee for referring someone who is hired that comes from your data base (like having a captive agency working with your data base).

Being fair will allow you to improve your job to hire ratios and get more jobs off your desk which with a recovering economy will become more important over the next 12-24 months.

 

 

© 2010 all rights reserved.

 

Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, is Managing Director of Concepts in Staffing, a New York search firm, He has successfully assisted many corporations identify management leaders and staff in many disciplines since 1971. He is a retired certified leader of the ManKind Project, a not for profit organization that assists men with life issues, and a practicing psychotherapist.

He is the author of “Get Yourself Hired NOW," “Get Your Job Search Organized NOW," "No B.S. Job Search Advice," "The Single Best Question You Should Ask on Any Interview," and, his newest, "Look Me Up: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Social Networking Your Way to Job Search Success," They are available at www.GetYourselfHiredNOW.com, www.Scribd.com and The Kindle Store on Amazon.

*The Big Game Hunter is a registered trademark of The Big Game Hunter, Inc., Milford, PA 2007