Comments on: Networking Works Better, Marty http://www.johnsumser.com/2008/04/22/networking-works-better-marty/ What You'll Need To Know Next Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:51:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: ckingsbury http://www.johnsumser.com/2008/04/22/networking-works-better-marty/#comment-17 ckingsbury Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:41:23 +0000 http://www.johnsumser.com/?p=57#comment-17 Oh, and I _love_ cover letters. I actually read them before reading the resume, and we built our ATS to preserve what the candidate sent in for that reason. Oh, and I _love_ cover letters. I actually read them before reading the resume, and we built our ATS to preserve what the candidate sent in for that reason.

]]> By: ckingsbury http://www.johnsumser.com/2008/04/22/networking-works-better-marty/#comment-16 ckingsbury Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:39:51 +0000 http://www.johnsumser.com/?p=57#comment-16 It's funny. I read what you're saying, nod my head in agreement, and yet.... I got what was probably the second most-important job of my career off a job board, and had a couple offers from that experience that were better than anything I found through TPRs or networking, and I had a half-decent network. More recently, I've hired my entire client service team off Craigslist, and have been very happy with the results, and even got a C-level hire out of a job board resume database, the sort of person for whom I'd have happily paid a TPR a hefty fee. Now maybe I'm just the guy who survived the car crash because I *wasn't* wearing the seatbelt--the proper term for which is "dumb luck." But I also get to see thousands of recruiters hire candidates from job boards all the time. I've also spent $300 to post a really exciting, creative job description on an uber-targeted super-popular special-interest site, and got absolutely atrocious results. Do I wish I posted it on Monster or Dice instead? Well, the results couldn't have been much worse, though I suppose a hundred bad candidates are less useful than absolutely none. This was after networking had produced not enough results. Of course, the seven steps you propose are excellent, and probably triply valid for someone trying to ascend within an organization. I do think 6 and 7 though will be opaque to a lot of people. It's sort of like when a chronically-single person asks a friend for advice on how to improve their dating life, and the friend says, "just be yourself!" It’s funny. I read what you’re saying, nod my head in agreement, and yet…. I got what was probably the second most-important job of my career off a job board, and had a couple offers from that experience that were better than anything I found through TPRs or networking, and I had a half-decent network. More recently, I’ve hired my entire client service team off Craigslist, and have been very happy with the results, and even got a C-level hire out of a job board resume database, the sort of person for whom I’d have happily paid a TPR a hefty fee.

Now maybe I’m just the guy who survived the car crash because I *wasn’t* wearing the seatbelt–the proper term for which is “dumb luck.” But I also get to see thousands of recruiters hire candidates from job boards all the time. I’ve also spent $300 to post a really exciting, creative job description on an uber-targeted super-popular special-interest site, and got absolutely atrocious results. Do I wish I posted it on Monster or Dice instead? Well, the results couldn’t have been much worse, though I suppose a hundred bad candidates are less useful than absolutely none. This was after networking had produced not enough results.

Of course, the seven steps you propose are excellent, and probably triply valid for someone trying to ascend within an organization. I do think 6 and 7 though will be opaque to a lot of people. It’s sort of like when a chronically-single person asks a friend for advice on how to improve their dating life, and the friend says, “just be yourself!”

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