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Courtesy of an anonymous recruiter at ITToolbox.com:

I am going to briefly discuss the major “GRIPES” that I hear from people about recruiters and I encourage readers to also discuss the TOP 3 things that they hate about recruiters as a discussion forum on the topic. Maybe we can later rank them in order as a TOP 10 List to be submitted to Letterman?

10. “Recruiters don’t seem to truly understand the role they are recruiting for or that much detail about the clients needs.”

9. “I am not sure if the post-interview feedback is honest or I don’t get feedback at all.”

8. “Recruiters don’t want to help or talk with me if I am not a perfect fit for their open search assignments.”

7. “Most headhunters don’t return my calls or acknowledge that I applied for a job.”

6. “As a hiring manager, I hate when recruiters sling resumes at me and don’t take the time to understand my needs.”

5. “Dishonesty about a position, company, or the requirements for a role”

4. “Some form of discrimination or even reverse discrimination”

3. “Recruiters seem unethical and will do anything to make a placement; their tactics to recruit or develop accounts are dishonest.”

2. “I feel like job postings are not real jobs some time, the Bait and Switch.”

1. “Recruiters are only working for the company and aren’t looking out for my best interest through the Offer Stage.”

One thing we struggle with on a regular basis is explaining wikis to our clients (particularly potential clients!) If ever there was an application that has an “ah-ha!” moment it’s a wiki. There just seems to be some built-in mental block that we’re either born with or acquire from somewhere that web pages Can’t Musn’t Won’t Be Changed.

Which is ridiculous when you think about it – why should a web page be any different from a document, or a whiteboard, or a spreadsheet? We think nothing of scribbling with a marker, or tweaking the numbers, or editing the words. So why is there this mental block around make a change on a wiki page?

And when people get the concept, I swear you can sit on the other side of the conference table and see the light bulb go on. In fact we’ve ended up referring to ‘Ah-ha!’ meetings – it’s the point in our relationship with the client where wikis suddenly become a potential solution to some of their problems.

We’ve used a variety of language to try and explain our way around this block – mainly using analogies like whiteboards and spreadsheets and documents. With varying success, it has to be said – but one thing we’ve not done so far is tell a story.

This morning I came across this post at Monkey Magic. It’s someone who’s having exactly the same problem as we are – and they got the point across with a story:

The moral of the story (which doesn’t really need saying): its better to start with a load of old crap than aim for an idealised version.

I’ll use this the next time I need to explain a wiki.

Through a roundabout route, I found a post from Renee Blodgett which commented on an item I wrote some weeks back — and her post included one of the more sane and insightful things I’ve read on the subject of blogging for a while.

It’s amazing to me that so many people are trying to “figure blogs out,” instead of realizing that its just another communications vehicle on the web. The big deal is that blogs empower more authors to write and its becoming increasingly easy to do.

This articulated something I’ve been thinking for a while — that as many people are being turned off blogging as are being excited by the possibilities as a result of the “find your voice”-style of introspection about the whole process.

Our position is very, very simple. Blogs are tools. They have certain uses in certain situations, where they could possibly give your business a competitive edge. They can help you reduce information overload and make your working day easier. They can also be tremendous fun, particularly if you enjoy writing.

But they’re not a cure for cancer, and they won’t miraculously rescue a failing project. Nor will they provide some mystical insight into the human condition, unless you consider that exposing yourself to a wide variety of opinions from interesting people to be something that can provide that insight. They’re simply an easy way of getting words onto a web page.

I get frustrated with some of the more extreme navel-gazing that goes on — and it does the technology no service, because I’m convinced that it frightens away more people than it attracts. Face facts, business in general is extremely conservative (with a small ‘c’) and is generally reluctant to try new things for fear of failure and/or ridicule.

So if you position a blog as a tool that can help productivity, there’s a chance that your average pointy-haired boss will consider it as something to try — but ask them to “find their blogging voice” and they will run away. For many people who aren’t professional writers, publishing their words somewhere public — whether that’s inside an organisation or out on the web — is akin to public speaking, and that’s one of the most commonly-held phobias in the business world.

An article which does pretty much what it says on the tin: How to use mind mapping software for project management (from Innovation Tools – a site worth a visit if you’re a technique magpie like me.)

I’m not sure I’d go as far as using a mind map to track milestones, but as a tool to capture, develop and summarise ideas they take some beating.

John Naughton has a well-considered rant about “the copyright industry’s crazed drive towards the propertization of everything” (his words):

Every cultural artefact that our civilisation has valued is the result of an artist’s conscious and unconscious borrowing from the works of others. Lock down the borrowing and you lock down our culture.

And he quotes from Virginia Woolf in support of the idea:

Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

Call me cynical, but I’d be surprised if the average copyright industry executive has heard of Virginia Woolf, let alone read her…

LinkedIn has been around for a while now, as one of the more established social networking services – and they’ve just launched some new functionality to their existing site, LinkedIn Jobs.

On the face of it, it’s not too dissimilar to many other job boards – you see details of the role, the company, and the person who posted the vacancy. There’s the usual search facilities, and a prominent ‘Apply Now’ button to kick-start the application process.

What LinkedIn does is to add some additional details culled from their database of subscribers. As well as the basic job details, you can see the relationship between yourself and the poster – how many degrees you’re removed from them – as well as how many people have endorsed them. You can also see whether there are ‘inside connections’ to the hiring company – someone who’s listed on Linked In and who works (or worked) there.

It’s a simple enough idea – that the closer the relationship you have with the hirer, the more likely you are to be hired. As a concept, it’s backed up by hard evidence that a significant number of people find their next job through contacts and friends-of-friends rather than simply responding to adverts or job listings. What LinkedIn are attempting to do is to meld networking and job listings together.

It could be a neat way of doing this, as well as being a revenue stream for LinkedIn themselves. Unfortunately it falls down when it comes to situations where the recruitment is being handled by an agency, because rather the details of how well-connected you are to the role are based on the agency, rather than the hiring company. As this is the rule rather than the exception in the UK IT sector – and most agencies take a seemingly perverse delight in keeping the identity of their client secret until the last possible moment – it’s not clear whether LinkedIn will be able to add much value in this situation.

Nevertheless, it’s a good attempt to try to aid the networking elements of the job search process. It’ll be interesting to see how the service develops and whether it’s likely to become a threat to the established job boards.