"Old methods will do harm."

There’s a great article posted today over on ERE by John Wilson of Wilson Recruiting about Generation Y and the basic disconnect between generations. It’s called “Why Generation Y Hates You” and its sub-title boasts “How it happens and how to turn it into an advantage”.

He begins by warning us that our old methods “will do harm”.

He’s absolutely right. He goes on to report on a meeting where a recruiter “sat in” on a speaker-phone meeting between hiring managers and prospective candidates. The recruiter was stunned to hear an interrogatory approach that was interpreted by most candidates as confrontational.

"The managers were asking provoking questions including, "Why do you want to work for us?" and "Tell me why I should not end this interview after 20 minutes?"

I am horrified to think (and I believe it IS happening) that passively sourced candidates are being treated this way. We're beating our brains out here and working our dial fingers to the bone trying to locate these people and some of them are approached like this? I shudder to think.

I think about the disconnect I see between the young lab rat, Greg Sanders, on CSI Las Vegas and his older crime scene co-workers – how sometimes he just looks at them and shakes his head, confident in his own skin and talent in spite of his young years.

It falls on our shoulders to educate our hiring managers about what exactly it is we’re bringing to their thresholds and that these truly passive potential candidates need to be approached in a consistently different manner. If we want this process of sourcing we’re trying so hard to get others to adapt to be adapted we better be prepared to spend some long hours exerting some early influence into the process.

There’s a lot of confidence out there and a lot of prowess in these young lions and we’d better listen up and pay attention to the new marching tune. If we’re going to continue to put these promising young cadets at a distance (on the defense) when we contact them we deserve to fail in our hiring efforts, we deserve to lose out to cultures and companies who “get” the basic tenets of civility.

Any of you have any ideas how we can do this and can you share with us how you would recommend approaching a passive candidate about a new “opportunity”?

Recruiting.com. Talkdigger, Slashdot, Digg, Delicious.

Maureen is coming to San Jose to speak on telephone names sourcing at the April 24 meeting of the Human Resources Consultants Association at the Adobe Park Conference Room in San Jose! Contact Merrill Martin at merrillm at yahoo-inc.com

Maureen is also presenting a ONE DAY Magic in the Method LIVE telephone names sourcing training seminar on April 25 at Adobe Systems FUJI Room in San Jose – for more info contact Bob Sharib at bob at techtrak.com or visit here to register online at Magic in the Method seminar/Silicon Valley.

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Maureen Sharib is a seasoned telephone names sourcer, names sourcing since 1997. She and her husband Bob own the names sourcing firm TechTrak.com and Maureen telephone-names sources daily as well as teaches telephone-names sourcing in her online telephone names sourcing course "The Magic In The Method." She can be reached by email at Maureen at techtrak.com or by phone at (513) 899-9628. Maureen will come on-site to your company to teach telephone names sourcing to your sourcers.