Do you remember when the job market was simpler? An employer tacked a Help Wanted sign to the window of their shop or business. A curious and potential employee saw the sign in the window, then went inside to introduce themselves and fill out a rudimentary application: background, education, a couple of references. You’re hired. Today, this job shopping process is as antiquated and innocent as something you would find in a picture by Norman Rockwell. If newspaper classified ads killed the Help Wanted sign, then new millennium headhunting rendered both of those old hiring techniques as extinct as the dinosaurs.
Technology and New Hiring Techniques
In the past decade, Internet companies and businesses have exploded at a rampant and ever-increasing rate. When you put the tech zeitgeist under a high-powered microscope, it resembles a vast cell division or an entrepreneurial photosynthesis. Internet businesses are growing, and both the market sector and social media platforms continue to subdivide into numerous offshoots. Even the employee onboarding process has migrated to the digital plain. It only makes sense that Internet companies looking to hire new employees and recruits would turn to the Internet to find them. Using any other means to find tech-savvy and innovative employees would be sacrilegious. Besides, when is the last time you saw a help wanted sign on an office park in Silicon Valley?
New Tools, New Jargon
It was not long ago that Internet companies relied on headhunters to find new employees and recruits. Headhunters are a third party employment agency. For a hefty fee, a company can use a headhunter firm to find skilled and valued employees. In other words, it saves a company’s human resource department from having to meticulously sift through a mountain of less-than-stellar job applications. Headhunters are a filter. They are a built-in screening process. Internet companies relied on them to find both short term and permanent employees. However, anybody who knows a thing or two about capitalism knows that by cutting out the middleman, you can save a ton of money.
As social networking platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter started to take center stage, many Internet companies jumped at the chance to cut out the middleman and start recruiting new hires themselves. While terms like headhunter instantly made the new recruits feel ostracized and excluded, a piece of factory flesh to fill a cubicle and work a computer, this new generation of corporate recruiters decided for a softer touch. Onboarding is like extending a hand to help your new hire aboard your 25 foot yacht, and when the new hire looks around, he sees that everyone onboard is wearing a casual Friday Hawaiian shirt. The new hire is happy. He is part of the team. He just got back from the Caribbean and he too has a parrot-print Hawaiian shirt at home. It is just a metaphor of course, but the job hiring philosophy is the same.
A Mutually Beneficial System
Networking platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter benefit both Internet employers and employees. In other words, there are more options and avenues for everyone. Potential employees can be more creative in their online profiles. This will give them a better chance to establish a selling point that may be attractive to future employers. At the same time, employers will have an easier time finding the recruits that stand out. In the old days, six to 10 people applied for the same job. Today, it is closer to 100. The era of sending out fancy, watermarked paper résumés is beginning to fade. Soon they will be as obsolete as the old Help Wanted sign.
