Economic growth marked the beginning of the decade, followed by the Great Recession in 2007 which was the longest recession since WWII, linked to the subprime mortgage crisis. Resumes began flooding the job boards, but the quantity of resumes did not equate to quality applicants. In fact, job requirements were getting longer and more and more specific, in part as new specialized roles emerged, but also because the fact that ‘space’ on the internet was not the same cost as space in the Help-Wanted section of the newspaper. Recruiters quickly got into the habit of simply passing on the internally developed job description expecting prospects to read it all.
Campus recruiting existed in earlier decades, usually in the form of employers or military recruiters setting up booths along hallways and courtyards; but the early 2000’s is when companies started to review and expand their strategies around university relations, networking events, and on-campus interviewing programs for early career workers.
As competition on campus ignited over seniors, paid internships could attract talented and promising underclassmen. The reasons why campus recruiting became such an important strategy are that companies could hire students with potential and mold them into hard to fill positions, as well as market their brand for future roles. In some mid- to large-sized companies, campus recruiting efforts have virtually eliminated the need for companies to advertise and search for entry level hires. A very few even eliminated the need to hire experienced workers as their internal mobility for all but entry-level approached 100%.
At the same time, technology demands outpaced the ability to hire or train workers. More and more companies started to hire IT and software engineering workers, the phrase “war for talent” was coined in 1997 and a book of the same name was published by McKinsey in 2001 (see 1990’s Milestone Reference # 44). The book never did define Talent but it was in such high demand that even more recruitment organizations started to run Superbowl ads.1
The good news is that companies were able to attract and hire workers at a faster rate than ever before. The bad news is that the increased use of technology, stronger demand, and higher stakes led to more impersonal recruitment practices and negative sentiment from candidates increased.
Recruiters even got their own Yahoo HotJobs Super Recruiter action heroes in 2005.
Prior to LinkedIn’s ascent, significant numbers of top managerial jobs were filled primarily by ‘executive search firms’ including large, prestigious firms like Korn Ferry, Russell Reynolds, Heidrick & Struggles and Goodrich & Sherwood along with thousands of independent headhunters. By the turn of the century as the economy, especially as the tech sector exploded during the dot.com boom, these firms rapidly expanded their services from C-level to Director and Managerial levels. Kennedy Publications’ Red Book, a directory of more than 13,000 search firms during this decade was the bible for these organizations, each with databases (consisting of file cabinets full of resumes) built by their researchers. They were the most efficient AND most expensive source of candidates for employers. As gatekeepers, they developed an understanding of candidates’ career goals and generally only approached candidates with an opportunity that was appropriate. On the negative side, employers who used these firms extensively included agreements not to recruit for other companies from their clients- something few candidates realized as they sought to improve their careers.
But it was LinkedIn’s launch in 2002 that eventually would structurally change the recruiting marketplace forever. LinkedIn changed the market by making the information about who-worked-where public. Now employers could recruit for higher level professional positions in-house or with the help of contingent placement agencies willing to negotiate much lower rates. LinkedIn may have been one of hundreds more digital ‘sources’ emerging but it was the most visible and collectively they led to increasing recruiting specialization around analytics, recruitment marketing, sourcing and operations throughout the next two decades.
2000’s Milestones:
- 2000 – Newspaper Income from Help Wanted Ads peaks at 9 Billion dollars in the US.2
- 2000 – The Dotcom ‘Bubble’ bursts.3
- 2000 – ZoomInfo founded.4
- 2000 – ePredix created.5
- 2000 – Search Wizards launched6
- 2001 – 9/11 Terrorist attack on World Trade Center.7
- 2002 – LinkedIn launches.8
- 2003 – Myspace launches.9
- 2003 – Android software released.10
- 2004 – Facebook launches.11
- 2004 – Jobster is launched.12
- 2004 – Hirevue launched.13
- 2004 – Indeed launched.14
- 2004 – Corporate Recruiting Blogs emerge.15
- 2005 – Youtube launched.16
- 2006 – Internet Applicant Rule defined.17
- 2006 – Twitter launches.18
- 2006 – EY pioneers Facebook for interns.19
- 2007 – The first SourceCon was held in Atlanta.20
- 2007 – Sodexo begins using social media to tell candidates about company culture.21
- 2007 – Sourcing Institute Foundation launched.22
- 2008 – Glassdoor launches.23
- 2008 – StackOverflow launches.24
- 2008 – Biometric Information Privacy Act.25
- 2008 – SmartRecruiter launches.26
- 2009: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.27
- 2009 – First HRevolution in Louisville, KY.28
- 2009 – First Social Recruiting Summit ‘Tweetup’ at Google.29
References