An important step in any recruitment process is how to identify and contact relevant candidates for the job you have available. Hopefully you have analyzed the job, success criteria and what capabilities you are looking for, after which you can assess where and how to get into dialogue with candidates who may be relevant for the job.
In this process, there has been a fantastic development in recent years.
Hotels using their own and the entire corporate network, advertising and ‘headhunting’ has been done for many years and it’s still the most used method to get in contact with candidates, but the shape, price, and the gap between the different forms has changed quite a lot.
“Who knows us?”
In the past, the Hotels network was limited to “who we know”. Advertising was reserved for the printed media, which owned the marketplace. If you were actively seeking work, the Sunday edition of a major national newspaper – was the place to look. That in itself is easy for any HR department, but also expensive and unwise, because a print ad of course costs more money than an ad on the Internet.
Today it has become significantly cheaper to get in contact with active job seekers; it requires only one ad in one of the major Internet job sites. The active jobseeker will keep an eye on these sites. You do not need an expensive newspaper ad!
Headhunting
In this area there has been an interesting development. Databases, social networking and ‘headhunting’ are mixed together in one large category – that has changed the terminology in the industry – and made it difficult to distinguish between what is ’search’ and what is ‘headhunting’.
There has typically been a line between “headhunting” and the many other ways to get in contact with relevant candidates. Headhunting has slightly different requirements in terms of ethics and morals.
“I have been headhunted,” says the candidate.
“One of my people has been headhunted”, says the Hotel that lost a good employee.
But is it headhunting if a person has submitted his CV in an accessible database and provided information that he is interested in being contacted regarding hotel jobs in Asia, with a salary of xxxx dollars?
Is it headhunting if candidates using LinkedIn – has made it public – that they are interested in Hospitality jobs?
Is it headhunting, if you call us and say you’re looking for something new and exciting?
No, it’s not!
What impact will it have in the future, that we as a Recruitment Agency in the Hospitality industry – easily can contact hundreds of potential candidates on LinkedIn or other similar websites?
What moral and ethical rules should we follow?
