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Eunuch Coaching & Jedi Mind-tricks

Is there no end to Sophie Robertson's knowledge, check this page - she knows everything. She is the latest in a string of self-appointed experts teaching Jedi Mindtricks to use on the internal recruitment weaklings....yesterday's article on Recruiter Daily includes the below:

ask whether the freeze pertains to permanent or temporary staff, remember to ask about maternity leave, long-service or any other type of prolonged absence, ask how they plan to cope with the increased workload, ask how much money they expect to save, do an analysis, break all costs down, such as ad costs, man hours, phone calls, email time, testing time, cost of testing, interview time, time to negotiate offer, and lack of guarantee. Remind them that if a placement doesn't start or falls off, they have to start again, candidates who come second do not want the job, so the cost just doubles.

Well, I can't wait for this Mac Truck full of questions to trundle down the phone at me.....what do you think internal recruiters actually do Sophie?

The above is most likely to create frustrating and meaningless conversations with inexperienced 457 visa holders who do not wish to return to Lambeth.

And I'm not the only one, in his commendable blog on the poor practices prevailant in the recruitment industry, Toby Marshall highlights Sophie's advice on reverse-marketing candidates......basically say anything required to land a deal.

C'mon Sophie, you shouldn't stick that stuff on record - it is why the industry is viewed so poorly.

Take the rest of the day off and buy a nice frock, here is a self-appointed expert who writes articles on RecruiterDaily who could help you.

someone else who could use a pseudonym

is Dick Gaylord.

Another great reason not to join Social Networks

You can now be subpoenaed and served court documents through Facebook - great. Add that to all the other marvellous forms of discrimination and career-limiting facilities...........it's enough to make you use a stupid pseudonym.

Banging in the deals

A disturbing article in today's Recruiter Daily, somone not called Dreg Cabbage "Autralia's Leading Recruitment Industry Educator and Presenter" offers tactics for shattering candidate's $ expectations. It reassuringly drew a couple of concerned comments. Crapstracts below, note the imaginary conversations.

"When a candidate earning $60k says they expect $75k from their next job,only "loser" consultants accept that figure, he says."

"That is not their salary floor; that is a dream. We're not sellingdreams, we're selling jobs."

"If I was to find you that job; if that job was to come into my office tomorrow morning, you say you're looking for 75, and let's say that jobwas paying 70. I just want to understand, today, before I do anything,that you don't want me to call you about that?" And then shut up.

"Often, he says, the candidate will say, "if it's got all that, then I dowant you to call me". Counter this with: "But you said your minimum's 75. And I'm telling youthe maximum of my client, theoretically, is 70."If the candidate says that for the right job, they'd move for 70k, "

"a great recruiter's not finished there; you'd do it again. the right job with the right this, the right that, and it waspaying 65, 'can I just clarify, once and for all, so we don't waste each other's time, should I call other candidates of mine and not you?'

The reason you do that is so there's a bigger gap, so you can make morematches. That's the business we're in."

GOOD NEWS - Savage's entire presentation is available to purchase on DVD - click here for details.

This should be done gooder

"Headhunting the right trait and personality require a special skills and at Vision we definitely have a flaire of doing just that."

He's just a bit confused, let him off

Qantas wannabe mechanic is a mentalist and is just being sent to the naughty corner for a few minutes, to think about what he's done - naughty boy.

fair enough, it's not like anything bad could have happened.

Stupid names

A new recruitment firm has opened up in Sydney called Aequalis......what a duff name, how do you say that? Ay-eek-wallis? and what the hell does it mean?

While we are on the subject 'Secs in the City' is crap too, but not a patch on ARS Recruitment

Is it just me?

The Recruiting Rabbit

is this real? This guy has written a poem about a rabbit so his kid knows what he does as a recruiter - and you can download it free, from his terrifying website "Recruiting is just a game"

WARNING - if you're having a bad day this could really push you over the edge - a couple of crapstracts below

My son! I closed another one!

I’m so happy I could squeal!

That’s great, my dad his child replied,

But what again is a deal?

Recruiting Rabbit spent that night

Around their little table.

He told them both exciting tales

Of happy recruiting fables.

pfffff

A kindred spirit

It seems a London Industry Rag has an essay writing competition. Recruiters offer a daily breakdown of their busy and successful lives to other recruiters.

This is obviously shameless self-promotion, deserved of the below:

Do you think it would be too much to ask to stop this feature being a window for each recruiter to try and out do the previous one? I think we all know that what they are writing is largely self-adulating, PR driven drivel. Instead of the usual 'arrived at 5am after a 30 minute power-hop to work. Immediately attended a meeting where I won the biggest deal in company history, before reviewing 100 CVs for great consultants who are queuing up to work here. Lunch, I didn't have time. I ate one of my own fingers and slept in the office to catch up on MI. I phoned the wife, told her I wanted a divorce due to Q4 pressure and the need to focus on tomorrow's hectic 1-2-1's'. How about a person that has the guts to be a bit more realistic?Stuart Smith 12 Sep 2008

Stuart, the Don salutes you.

Resume profile - jesus wept

A careful listener who can extract and apply the goodness in any situation. A hard worker who will ensure deadlines and forecasts are met or beaten. An ambitious man who has a lasting need to get it right 'just one more time'. A player rather than a watcher with a constant yearning to get onto the pitch. With a brain now quicker that the legs he has to be satisfied with helping on the touchline and keeping the team fit and fast. Used to winning but can accept defeat if fairly beaten in a good game. Hates to be late and expects others to follow this ethic. Accepts as normal the responsibilities involved in the production and circulation of management accounts. Currently expects to be consulted on all financial matters with duties extending into the Personnel and HR arenas. Budgets and reports are second nature with action and reaction treated without delay. Finally – used to being up the rear (?) where the tasks and function are ad hoc and the results require interpretation.

Never say Die

The Qantas employee busted for faking his references and qualifications which got him a job as an Aircraft Mechanic, has gone even further, and forged his character references to court. Currently having his head read as a potential mentalist.

Sydney plonker lucks out on Facebook

this is old news, another example of social networking media blurring the divide between professional and personal life.

I have no issues with binge-drinking, drug-hoovering Gen Y's skipping work on massive come-downs but since when has it been acceptable to be a young Liberal?

***
Hi Niresh, My leave was due to medical reasons, so you cannot deny leave based on a line manager’s discretion, with no proof, please process leave as requested. Thanks
*
Hi Kyle, I believe the proof that you are after is below

Video resume creates laughing stock of contemptible, narcissistic turnip

Student’s weightlifting, waltzing & bragging video resume has Wall Street howling...

Vayner, an aspiring investment banker, sent a video entitled "Impossible is Nothing" along with an 11-page resume and glamour shot to financial services powerhouse UBS.

Mr. Vayner identifies himself on his resume as a multi-sport professional athlete, the CEO of two companies, and an investment adviser. The video depicts him lifting a 495-pound weight, serving a tennis ball at 140 miles an hour, and ballroom dancing with a scantily clad female.

Finally, Mr. Vayner emerges enrobed in a white karate suit and breaks six bricks in one fell swoop. Between athletic bits, Mr. Vayner takes the opportunity to opine on success. After being described in the opening lines of the video as "a model of personal success and development to everybody," Mr. Vayner says, "Failure cannot be considered an option." He adds: "To achieve success you must first conceive it and believe in it. Remember: impossible is nothing."

Click here to view

Excellent way of paying overdue accounts

Yeeeeeeha

This agency has been stung $160k in court for not performing background checking openly - yeeeeeha!

In summing up, the judge said "the candidate didn't let you speak to their previous supervisor, you didn't tell the client, glossed over everything and sent an invoice" before donning a black-cap and sentencing the consultants to death by firing squad.

A shining example of fee-lust before decency in the recruitment industry - well done.

picture - search, selection & reference checking procedure.

Not a moron at all

Google searching 'robots and spiders' produced this article written by Dr John Sullivan in 1988 in which he makes predictions on 21st Century Recruitment. Most are extremely accurate...well done John, take the rest of the day off and buy a nice frock.

The Donald Badman prediction for the next 10 years is on-line profile convergance and recruitment reversing.....companies searching & bidding for people, creating jobs to match profile preference, skills and availabilities. In the future, the average person will work 3.7* positions simultaneously.

*a completely unfounded & invented statistic.

Celebrating Mormons in the Recruitment Industry

Not precisely morons (questionable) but is deffo recruitment.

If you get the knock and the inclination, you may wish to share the below wisdom;

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why i dismiss yours." Stephen F Roberts.

Mixed messages, new skills, insane beautician

Wow, look at this small nugget of insanity tucked neatly at the end of an interesting article.

Emilee Bowersox Dec 4, 2007 at 10:54 am

Along the line of new skills… I just thought I would add–you can either carry the ‘cross’ (totem pole) from the bottom, or you can carry it from the top. I went into an outside sales position when all my training came from inside. I cannot do both because my framework—the distance from my right hand to my left hand could not span the anchor to the tip. In otherwords the skills used in one position were sort of lost in the other–although retrievable, by reviewing and re-studying the prior.

Headhunter intro.......

Just had an intro from a headhunter, I was pleased to learn that the days of "I'm a tiger grrr" have passed.

This particular individual is:

• a wolf


• a lion killer


• a hunter who needs to kill her lunch


• not a farmer


• not a hunter-gatherer, but she does gather information to hunt with

All direct quotes, give me strength.

Almost enough to build a library room in Cambodia...

Truly, there are few people in the world who we could learn less from than these two turnips, promoting a recruitment business by running across a desert - just leaving time for answering all the big questions while inventing a couple of sayings - comedy gold.

"The brothers claim they aren't runners but 'thinkers'."


What could you learn from a week in the desert?
13 May 2008 6:45am - http://www.recruiterdaily.com.au/

If you're having trouble motivating yourself to make that next call, consider what it takes to run six marathons in a week. Fresh from completing an ultra-marathon in the Sahara, recruiters David and Mark Simon explain how planning, preparation and reflection are crucial aspects of any project. The brothers ran this year's Marathon des Sables, in April, across the Sahara. The temperature was 47 degrees every day, dropping to as low as four degrees at night, while the conditions ranged from rocky terrain and cracked salt flats to steep passes that needed ropes to climb and knee-deep sand on the tall dunes. Some 800 runners - 50 of whom couldn't finish - carried 15-kilogram packs containing their clothing, snakebite kits and food for the week and they drank up to 12 litres of water each day.

For Mark, the second day was the hardest, when he was suffering from Achilles tendonitis and his big toes were blistered, swollen and bleeding. At the time, he says, he doubted could finish the race, let alone achieve one of the top 200 places as was his aim (he ended up 147th). "I finished the day and Dave was waiting for me... I actually had tears streaming down my cheeks out of frustration, and I can't remember crying since I was a kid." The following day, he ran with the tops cut out of his shoes so his toes could move freely. "The next day we just got into it. I decided to run the thing as hard as I could. I caught up to Dave and we actually ran together. From then I got stronger, but that was a dark day for me." For David, the final 17.5-kilometre stage of the race was the toughest and he ran his slowest time (but still finished 107th). "I was spent. I just had put so much into the race, mentally I was exhausted more than physically; I just couldn't push my body. In theory most people are really stomping on the last day. We'd definitely planned to finish together... but I couldn't stay with him. I was getting frustrated and I was thinking 'blow it, I'll just tap along'. My brain was saying 'just walk' but I didn't want to take hours, because I was in a good position, and I didn't want to let Mark down. I got my worst position that day and I felt that I'd really held Mark back to do a good finish. "Coming across the line we sort of put our arms in the air but there was no elation, I was just exhausted. I thought I'd be happy but I actually said to Mark, 'I think I've left a piece of myself out in the desert'."

Plan, implement, debriefThe brothers' 'Project Sahara' taught them some "universal lessons" that they intend to apply in their new recruitment business, TT1 People. "We've seen [through the project] that hard work, discipline, planning and structure can get a result," says David, who has recruited on and off for the past nine years, most recently as the managing director of executive search firm Godfrey Group. "We have a weekly PID (plan, implement, debrief) meeting. [It's] discipline and we believe in having a rhythm to that. "Planning can be short but you've got to do it. Implement - well there's no use planning if you're not going to do what you say you're going to do. But the bit that we believe is totally lacking in people's everyday work is they don't reflect. So our 'plan implement debrief' is sort of military speak for 'reflect on what you do, and capture the lessons and apply them immediately'. "What's the definition of stupidity?" he asks. "If you learn something new and don't apply it." Mark, who is new to the recruitment industry but has previously owned and sold landscaping and personal training businesses, adds that even when you work side-by-side with your team "it's good to share what you're doing and help each other".

MotivationThe brothers claim they aren't runners but 'thinkers'. Their 'Project Sahara' wasn't just about the marathon - "it was about a cause, a book trilogy, and then the race," David says. The cause is Room to Read - a charity that aims to improve education and literacy among children in developing companies. Mark and David raised close to $4000 in sponsorship during the race, which is almost enough to build a library room in Cambodia. (Their new venture will also donate a portion of its revenue to the cause.) "[Literacy] has given us so much," David says. "We have a credos that the person that you want to be is a direct result of the people you associate with and the books you read. It's given us so much to read, [but] ... there's some significant part of the population that don't even have access to books. "Here we are, the race is done, box ticked, but we've still got books to write to share a story with people... that we hope is universal." The book trilogy (the first book, about the brothers' experiences in the lead-up to the race, is available now while the third isn't expected for a few years) aims to get people thinking about their own Project Sahara. "We chased the horizon every day and got there - a lot of people are chasing the horizon their entire life, so it's a book about coming up with an idea and doing it. Don't spend a lifetime thinking about it, get to the next stage," David says.

Know your valuesHaving clarity around your values aids decision making, David says. "We have a saying: 'know your values and business decisions - all decisions - become a lot easier'. "A lot of people in the recruitment industry sacrifice their values to make a dollar," he adds. "We know what our business does, we know what we do well, we know what we can deliver to our clients and what we can't deliver, so therefore it's the ability to say 'no', or 'we can't help you with that so we'll refer you to someone that can', rather than taking on anything and everything. "From a pure business perspective it means you need to have thought your company out. Know when to say no. Know what your values are and don't sacrifice them."
Nothing beats hard workThere are no shortcuts to achieving your goals, David says. "Whether you're running across the desert or you're building a new business or a desk or learning a new profession, if you can't roll your sleeves up, then forget it. Really, don't bother. Go and do something where you earn a salary."
Surround yourself with thinkers"We're big believers in 'if you've got an idea, put it on the table'," Mark says. "Surround yourself with people that can think solutions, rather than problems. Everyone's so quick to say 'that doesn't work, that's no good', but there's a minority of people that go one step further and try and think of a solution. It's so easy to critique. So surround yourself with solution thinkers, or thinkers, full stop."
Invest in yourselfThe brothers' ethos is 'learn, think, evolve', Mark says. "It is a constant process." David says success comes from "hard work, discipline and continual self education". "If you think you know everything, you're dead in the water. And don't wait for someone else to invest in [your education]. Invest in it yourself."

Resume hobbies

I have recently noticed the below listed as hobbies on resumes

witchcraft

light sonar

& my current favourite "throwing my St Bernard in the sea".