from the editor of aseidman.com

Recruiting the Wrong People

Posted by Ariel Seidman | March 31, 2007

A few weeks back WSJ ran an article (paid wall) on the recruiting practices of several companies that still has me shaking my head.  Here is the gist of the article:

Companies are reaching out to parents to woo a generation of college students raised by ever-more-involved parents. Merrill Lynch & Co. invited interns’ parents to visit company offices. Ernst & Young LLP is packaging company information for parents. Vanguard Group Inc. sends letters to recruits’ parents and has advertised on the parents sections of college Web sites. Deloitte & Touche and other big recruiters are weighing similar moves.

And it gets worse

Vanguard in recent years has noticed many calls from parents inquiring about how their children can apply, or trying to negotiate the terms of a child’s offer. Karen Fox, Vanguard’s manager of college relations and recruiting, says she initially wasn’t sure what to make of it. Ultimately, she says, “we started to say, ‘Well, how can we embrace it?’” 

Wow — there are so many issues with this.  Lets break it down and look at each of the players…

Parents: 

• Don’t parents want their kids to start making their own decision — seems to me like you did a good job if your children can and want to make their own decisions.

Companies: 

• Are these companies recruiting the right type of candidates; if candidates require the assistance of their parents to make decisions why would you think they will have the confidence and independence to make important decisions on the job?

Candidates:

• If your parents are interfering in the recruiting process tell your parents to get out of the way (nicely, of course)
• You will feel better about your decision if you are the one making the call. 

I will think twice before buying a Vanguard or Merrill Lynch mutual fund.

 

We are still in the early days of web search

Posted by Ariel Seidman | March 7, 2007

Tom Foremski asks some rhetorical questions regarding the state of web search -here - and while some of his points are inaccurate (e.g. Google is not encouraging your avg. publisher to upload content into Google base) his larger point is a fair one — search engines still need enjoy the help of humans (in this case publishers, webmasters, etc.).

Given how much room for innovation is left combined with the fact that there is still billions of dollars of ad spend that will come online in the next few years these calls and rumors of consolidation of the major players e.g. Microsoft buying Yahoo!, Google buying Yahoo!, Microsoft buying Google, and every other combination you can possibly think of are somewhat silly.

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