David Kippen, Ph.D.'s Blog

The problem lies in the failure of participants to use the medium to its full advantage. More than any other medium short of a conversation at the corner bar, blogs have the ability to present a sense of transparency to the reader. The typical company website, press release, and job listing batter the reader with a faceless and unrelenting positivity not unlike the ever-increasing wheat harvests of a Soviet five-year plan. A blog post, especially with comments enabled, presents an opportunity to engage the reader in a different kind of conversation.

From the perspective of a corporate client or candidate, third-party recruiters are complete unknowns. As a client I would love to read about the diamond-in-the-rough that you placed to fill an impossible job order. As a candidate I want to hear from other candidates you’ve placed who benefited greatly from your advice. But what do I see on recruiting blogs? Mostly shop talk directed at other recruiters. It may be valuable and educational, but it is not sales or marketing. Why don’t more TPR-bloggers talk about what they do, as opposed to how or why they do it?

Transparency is difficult and painful at times. Ask Gretchen Ledgard, who as a Microsoft recruiter blogged about hiring managers acting like, well, hiring managers. Her post fit Michael Kinsley’s classic definition of a gaffe as “when a politician accidentally tells the truth.” The question is, did Microsoft benefit? We have only Gretchen’s statements to go on, but the answer would appear to be “yes,” right up to the point where the experience helped convince her to leave the company. Like those Soviet central planners, companies can choose to publish only carefully-designed good news about themselves, but they can’t put real bread on the shelves unless the wheat was actually harvested. The Internet is increasingly making highly-detailed information about companies accessible to the general public for the cost of typing a few words into a search engine. You may not let your recruiters say anything remotely challenging about your interview process, but the people you interview and don’t hire are not under any such restrictions. And we all know the story about how a bad experience will reach ten times the people a good one will. With blogs, that one bad story can reach a thousand. Today transparency is a choice, tomorrow it may be a fact.