Recruitment & Turkey Plucking – Ripe for Disruption

As I enter into my 17th year of recruitment, sometimes I sit back and marvel at how little things have changed. In essence recruitment is a simple business – we help companies find talent that for whatever reason they can’t find on their own. My first ever job was plucking turkeys in a freezing warehouse in the UK, a job thankfully now done by a machine and it got me to think around some disruptive concepts that I’m sure me and my fellow recruiters would gladly see taken off our plates :

S.E.P (Salary Expectation Predictor)

It would be very useful to have an app to help interpret when “I’m definitely not financially motivated” actually means “I want a 50% pay increase minimum or I ain’t going anywhere” to help avoid awkward conversations at the end of a recruitment process. Similarly it would be extremely useful for the same app to help interpret when “don’t worry about salary just find me the best candidates in the market place” actually means “we will lowball every good candidate you put in front of us” to help save time on all sides.

iTragedy

There is a global phenomenon around the extremely high incidences of personal tragedy the week before starting a new job. Relatives dying, Granny falling sick, sudden injury requiring long term surgery are a common problem that only happen during that week. Thankfully the grieving and recovery periods seem to be very short, typically resulting in the candidate being able to start in a different company within a matter of days. It would be useful to have some kind of monitoring device around this, which in turn would stem the high rates of alcohol and substance dependency found within the recruitment industry.

HensTeeth.com

I am sure there must be a technology out there, that can help companies find candidates who actually don’t exist. This would eliminate about 80% of the salaried Linkedin-gazing recruitment community, allowing the remaining 20% to work on the roles that will actually get filled. It could also help to filter out the vast number of candidates who want to work in ”FinTech” without actually knowing what it is. (Does anyone as a matter of interest)?

Appli-Shock

Studies have shown that overtime, pain applied at key moments can help to alter human behavior and this device would be designed to emit a small electric shock to job seekers who repeatedly apply to jobs for which they have zero relevant experience. Admittedly this could be logistically challenging to implement and may actually be illegal under the Geneva Convention.

Counter Offer-O’Meter

In my mind, this is a spinning, brightly illuminated orb that would help to identify candidates going through an exhaustive recruitment process with a singular objective of remaining in their existing company but on a much higher salary. On the flip side this could tie in with the “Gone Internal Detector” to help prevent conversations such as “Thanks for identifying, headhunting and presenting the CV of this three-eyed, 1st Class Honors from Oxford, quadri-lingual auditor that I requested, but I actually found someone internally 4 weeks ago”.

Cr8-ive Hiring

I would download this App to self-educate clients who are extremely motivated to bring totally different skillsets into the team, provided they meet extremely specific academic and skillset driven criteria. This would help shape the following types of conversation: “I don’t even look at CV’s, I hire based purely on attitude so send me any candidates who are dynamic, motivated, keen to push themselves” when in reality they have never hired anyone who didn’t have a degree in Bio-Molecular Geology and a penchant for Quavers Cheesy Wotzits.

DiverCity

“We’re massively into Diversity” said the panel of 50 year old white men. Undisruptable.

None of these ideas are patented, so for any budding technologists out there, please feel free to take these ideas and go for your lives. In the meantime us recruiters will continue to slug it out in what is a hugely rewarding, competitive, highly frustrating but awesome career of choice for many people around the world. As a plug we are also looking to recruit and expand across all of our geographical locations, so if you’d like to find out more, please drop me a line!