Why You Won't Find Your Next Exec On The Internet
By Gary Kaplan© Business & Legal Reports, Inc. Best Practices in HR.
March 18, 2000.
Headlines and personal experience motivate HR professionals to shift their recruiting emphasis toward the Internet. After all, you can post your jobs on your Web site at virtually no cost and expect to receive hundreds of responses with the click of a mouse. Why spend money for classified ads, job fairs, or recruiters?
Gary Kaplan says, "What has been missed in the hype about job seeking and finding on the Internet is that when all is said and done, successful placements still depend on the old-fashioned power of personal relationships." This is especially true with respect to upper middle management to CEO positions.
Kaplan, with over 25 years of experience as a senior human resources executive, is founder and president of Gary Kaplan & Associates, an international retained search firm headquartered in Pasadena, California. He emphasizes, "While Internet recruiting may be effective for entry-level professionals, specialized technical jobs, and middle management, it has yet to yield top-tier executives who are eyebrow deep in their work and already have the connections, even if they are flirting with the idea of change."
Active candidates vs. passive candidates
Kaplan says active candidates are worlds apart from passive candidates. Active seekers are shopping for jobs. Passive candidates are already fully employed and relatively happy with their positions. While some may log on out of curiosity, for most successful executives, a job change is furthest from their minds.
Kaplan likens the current Internet "audience reach" to the classified ads. A flood of resumes from job postings inundate the HR contact, and are consigned to a database.
In addition, the confidentiality issues surrounding all aspects of the Internet almost guarantee that senior-level executives will not be willing to risk their jobs or reputations by posting a resume or seriously looking for new opportunities on-line.
Kaplan's opinions are confirmed by a recent study by Forrester Research Inc., an independent research firm that analyzes the Internet and how emerging technologies impact on business, consumers, and society.
Forrester says that despite the drawbacks of the current job sites, companies plan to:
- Increase on-line spending 52 percent by 2004.
- Cut newspaper spending 31 percent by 2004.
- Bring retained and contingency searches in-house to reduce costs.
However, they do not plan to eliminate either newspapers or head-hunters, which will continue to play some role in sourcing candidates, according to the study.
The reason, Kaplan says, is that in-house and external recruiters looking for senior executive talent know that the people they want are "passive candidates". The pool of talent is relatively small to begin with. The executive recruiter identifies the best candidates through a value-added process that leverages a network of personal contacts coupled with intensive reference and background checking as well as careful evaluation to ensure that the final candidates are a good fit for the company.
"To think the Internet is a shortcut to finding high-demand executive talent today is to misunderstand where the sought-after really are and where they are not. They are not looking for jobs. They are to busy managing the issues of the day, building an enviable track record of successes, and moving up in their current companies."
"Filling these senior-level positions is more about finding and evaluating the human qualities of leadership, vision, and decision-making and that requires the human inter-mediation of experienced judgment."
One day, perhaps, top-level executives will post their resumes, but it is not likely to be soon. Meanwhile, the fundamentals of successful executive searches still apply
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Should you make a counteroffer?
On the other hand, what if one of your executives or managers tells you that he or she is giving consideration to a job at another company? Do you go off into a corner and lick your wounds or do you try to persuade the employee to stay by making a counteroffer? A nationwide survey by Robert Half International, Inc., revealed that while 56 percent of CEOs and CFOs would likely use a counteroffer to get a good employee to stay, a significant 42 percent would refrain from taking this measure. Counteroffers for top-performing employees have become more common in recent years as unemployment rates remain at record low levels. However, while the immediate reaction might be to persuade the employee to stay, the contributing factors leading the individual to seek out or be receptive to other employment opportunities must be addressed and a decision made about resolving these issues. What is a sound approach to counteroffers? Be cautious. A spur-of-the-moment counteroffer can lead to big problems down the road. When other employees in the department find out an employee is being paid more, they may begin to question the appropriateness of their own salaries. Also, even after a counteroffer is made and accepted, the loyalty of the employee involved will always be suspect. If the employee was tempted this time, what's to stop him or her from saying "Yes" the next time? |
