{"id":75,"date":"2007-05-04T05:54:09","date_gmt":"2007-05-04T12:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/systematic.hrblogs.org\/2007\/05\/04\/are-they-kidding\/"},"modified":"2010-02-18T12:11:09","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T19:11:09","slug":"are-they-kidding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Are they kidding?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a title=\"Taleo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.taleo.com\/talent-management-blog\/2007\/05\/02\/candidate_sourcing_backwards_engineering\">Taleo blog<\/a> reports on a report from <a title=\"Money\" href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/magazines\/moneymag\/bestjobs\/2007\/\">Money Magazine<\/a> on the best jobs in America for people looking for change in their careers. They present 4 meta categories that resemble daytime television programming: <strong>Young &amp; Restless<\/strong>, <strong>Returning Parent<\/strong> (they really mean &#8220;Mom&#8221; but that wouldn&#8217;t be very PC), <strong>From the Military to the private sector<\/strong>, and my favorite &#8211; <strong>Over 50<\/strong>. I have thoughts about the selections, especially (ahem) the Over 50 category but the real issue for me is the coarse-grained categorization. Given the tensions of the journalistic format I can understand the desire to make this snappy.<\/p>\n<p>What really surprises me is that this same broad brush is picked up by Taleo:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;For recruiters, this is a nice piece of research to help target a specific candidate pool. Looking for Sales Reps? Find moms looking to return to the workplace. Need a Field Service Engineer? Identify someone retiring from the military, and so on.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Proactive, targeted candidate sourcing and the use of automated solutions can go a long way towards filling open positions with talented employees who will stay with your organization.&#8221;  <a title=\"Taleo\" href=\"http:\/\/www.taleo.com\/talent-management-blog\/2007\/05\/02\/candidate_sourcing_backwards_engineering\">Link.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s targeting? This is the opposite of what Enterprise 2.0 promises. We shouldn&#8217;t use our tools for incredibly broad generalizations that slot candidates based on generalized demographics. These are important categorizations but by themselves they have no more depth than a sound bite. Being in the over 50 category and coming off my fresh experience in the market I&#8217;m offended when I&#8217;m contacted for positions that have no bearing on my experience or career trajectory but are the result of some sloppy match based on a single data point about me. At least no one suggested (yet) that I should consider teaching, pension administration or medical records coding &#8211; all great choices for an Old Guy, apparently.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Vendorprisey\" href=\"http:\/\/theotherthomasotter.wordpress.com\/2007\/03\/09\/thinking-about-walls-the-cluetrain-and-organisations\/\">Thomas<\/a> should send Taleo his copy of the <a title=\"The Cluetrain Manifesto\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cluetrain.com\/\">Cluetrain Manifesto<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Taleo blog reports on a report from Money Magazine on the best jobs in America for people looking for change in their careers. They present 4 meta categories that resemble daytime television programming: Young &amp; Restless, Returning Parent (they really mean &#8220;Mom&#8221; but that wouldn&#8217;t be very PC), From the Military to the private [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[286,293,290,292,287],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-business-culture","category-hr","category-strategy","category-systematic-viewpoints"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":194,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.andyscherer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}