The Recruiting Nightmare: Sounding the Wake-Up Call

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As I’ve been documenting in my repeated rants the last few weeks, recruiting is a nightmare for many reasons, from the craziness of resume spam to the general hate recruiters get.  To be in recruiting these days is to face great challenges and irrational situations that border on the surreal.  To overcome them . . .

Well, I discussed what we can do to ease the problems recruiters face.  I detailed how we can improve our job searching despite the problems.  I speculated on ways we geeks can change recruiting or at least do some things to help.  It’s my hope all this advice pays off for everyone.

Look, the system is terribly broken, it’s not working, and in a few cases it seems to be working backwards.  We’re gonna have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t affect us, our friends, and the recruiters we know.  No one is going to save us, so we have to save each other.

It’s just not enough, in the end.

The problem isn’t going away I’m afraid.  We can raise some individual islands of sanity, but the mess of crazy hiring rules and the challenges recruiters face still surrounds us and affects our friends and family and the world.

At some point we’re all going to have to wake up from the nightmare.

How we’re going to do that I don’t know, frankly (though Roddenberry knows I’ll be speculating on it here).  I’m not sure how we’re going to fix a very broken system beyond a few minor starting points.  I am very sure that like any nightmare, you need to wake people up and that’s where we start.

Let people know the system is broken, that recruiting is challenging, that hiring really doesn’t work.  Wake them up to the fact that things really, objectively, are lousy.

Let people know the solutions I’ve shared and that you found, so they hear about ways to fix things, at least in the small.  Wake them up to the fact they can solve at least some things.

Let people know we bloody well we’ve got to fix this.   Wake them up to the fact that they’ve got to wake others up.

It’s a start.  We’ve also got to fix a fractured world economy.  But we might as well do something.

Out of the various people we shake some sense into, people we help, we may find ways to make things better.  We may build alliances.  We may awaken that one person who can get things moving to unriddle the mess of recruiting and hiring these days.

Hell, that one person might be you and you just didn’t realize it yet . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.

Smoked Paprika Dressing

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Saw this recipe at All Recipes and wanted to give it a try – with a few tweaks to my taste.  So here’s my one serving version.  I left out the sugar as I saw no reason, somewhat upped the garlic because hey garlic, and dropped the onions since it was a bit too complex a prep and I wasn’t sure what they’d add.

  • 2 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 1/4 tsp honey
  • 1/4 tsp ground mustard
  • 1/4 tsp lime juice
  • 1/8 tsp ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1/8 tsp crushed garlic (about 1/8 a clove or so)
  • 1/8 tsp oregano
  • 2 tsp olive oil.

Pretty much just mixed it up and blended it then served it over baby spinach.  And the result . . .

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The Kindle Fire Ads Kinda Burn

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Sigh.

OK, we’re not surprised that the new Kindle Fires will have ads.  There’s some confusion, but at this time it appears the ads are going to be banging around the retinas of new Kindle Fire users like it or not.  So I’m going to write with the assumption this is the plan.

I’m not happy with it.

Oh, it makes sense.  As I noted earlier I think Amazon is experimenting a bit with what they’re trying to do, so this has the stench of “it seemed like a good idea at the time” wafting off of it.  Though who thought it was a good idea needs to really re-assess their personal dictionary.

I see a number of problems – and problems that are going to affect us progeeks in technology and media.

First, this will quickly eclipse the new announcements.  It’s not a good marketing move.

Technology-wise it’s a bit worrysome because I have to wonder what backchannels, system mods, and other tech had to be grafted into and onto the system.  I also wonder how easy it’d be to hack and abuse . . . you can guess people are lining up to figure it out.  Could backfire on Amazon.

It also brings up questions of ad-supported mobile apps.  If Amazon is going to leverage advertising on the Kindles, then it brings in the question of what ad policies other software may have to follow.  The “ownership” of the platform by Amazon has been clearly stated – what restrictions will they next place.

I’m concerned this may lead to others trying it – which I consider kind of hare-brained.  But hey Amazon is doing it, and one thing I’ve learned in the valley is that “if a successful company does something rock stupid, people will assume it’ll work for them.

I also am concerned that, if Amazon pushes this, they’ll try more and more invasive approaches.  Will they have associated ads with books, turning them into another broadcast stream?  I dunno.

I’m waiting to see reaction to this by people who brew and burn their own systems.  They just got a new reason to do what they do.

Still I think this is the experiment stage, and one I expect to quickly be turned into “here’s an option to turn it off.”

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.fantopro.com/, nerd and geek culture at http://www.nerdcaliber.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.