How is the Grapevine Impacting Your Recruiting Brand in Business and at Work?

Last week’s Business Opportunities to Success Summit (BOSS) was a wonderful hothouse of great business stories and best practices. If you weren’t able to attend the event in person, definitely make room in your schedule for the next BOSS event. I’m still absorbing and processing the collective wisdom of the 63 other presenters I heard that day.

My ears always perk up when I hear CEOs talk about HR and recruiting issues, and BOSS did not disappoint. During his 5-minute presentation, Brian Corrigan, Managing Partner of MadGlory, raised a key local / national recruiting challenge: hiring software developers.

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“If you’re not able to hire software developers, you can find out pretty fast what the problem is with your company’s hiring reputation by stopping at the bars where developers socialize,” Corrigan said. “Raise your team up. If you can’t hire people, fire the people preventing you from doing so.”

Recruiting truth. Nothing can kill your company’s Recruiting Brand quicker than keeping a manager on your team who is technically capable but who is abusive to not only his employees but to job candidates as well. There is no sane business theory that makes that type of individual an asset to your organization. That type of manager is simply a cancer waiting to be excised.

I’ve dealt with more than one managerial cancer of that type. The manager who I’ll call Teflon was a corporate recruiter’s nightmare.  I can recall at least 3 candidates who declined to work for the organization because of Teflon’s prisoner-of-war interview tactics with them. “Teflon is a lunatic,” one candidate memorably related.  “I like your organization and everyone else on the interview team, but I can’t work for Teflon.” Teflon then complained how we weren’t filling their jobs quickly enough.  I know you’re shocked. Teflon’s reign continued for a while, because they drove sales in the short term. They ended up terminating themselves for various ethics reasons. Not a shocker, either.

How are you monitoring the grapevine to lift up your organization’s Recruiting Brand (and shorten your time-to-hire), in business and at work?