The Future of Recruiting (Tom Neff’s vision in 1985)

March 7, 2010 | (No Comments)

I’m continuing my study of the “History of Job Search” and was greatly interested by these quotes from Tom Neff in 1985, then CEO, today Chairman, of SpencerStuart:

“It’s possible for a firm to lose a competitive edge. Should we be investing in some form of research and development that will be critical in the future? Interdatum [a name-sourcing firm - Ed.] people now walk around with a computer terminal in their briefcase and dazzle clients with real-time access to a database.
That’s impressive looking.
My view is that someday in the future we’ll all be doing that kind of thing. But if one of the majors [headhunting firms] is first will it give them a big advantage?

Very interesting to note that twenty-five years ago, the executive search business was acutely aware of the power of computerized databases to transform their businesses. Yet no executive search firm launched an internet site or application that successfully competed in the marketplace.

It’s an excellent example of Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma”: large firms focus on perfecting their current skills to grow their present business with existing clients, and they do it very well; and they tend to be incapable of developing new skills to create non-existent businesses with theoretical future clients.

I also found the long-held by the hope that technology would drive productivity was back then:

“We may be able to shrink the candidate identification stage to one week or one day. So we could place greater emphasis on our sourcing skills, on screening and on evaluating candidates and counseling clients.”

This has not come to pass. Search firms still spend up to four weeks pulling together an initial slate of candidates.

This is the technology paradox: as something gets easier to do because of technology, expectations of process output increase and time spent in the activity remains constant. In other words, it’s a case of “you’re getting better at it, keep doing it better longer until you get it right.” Refined search criteria and capabilities lead to a refinement in clients’ expectations of candidate matching and more time trying to satisfy the client’s new tastes – thus, no productivity gain.
And this is one of my favorites:

“How about videotaped candidate presentations? The question here isn’t if, but how much and how soon.”

I probably get five to six calls per year from eager, breathless “inventors” who have discovered the secret of video interviews. So it was amazing to see that they’ve been the technology of the future for the past twenty-five years, and, in my view, will remain the technology of the future for twenty-five more.

I found all of these quotes in John Byrne’s 1986 book The Headhunters, which doesn’t have much relevance to today’s recruiting market, but is a fascinating look at the development of the industry with first-person interviews with most of the originators of the business. Very interesting and useful for researchers interested in this field.