Don ’ t dump jobs agencies just yet

E constantly hear about the advantages of cutting out the middleman and going direct and online.

As the world goes digital, are recruitment agencies heading for the same scrapheap as video shops?

Are social media — such as Twitter, Facebook and Google — and business and recruitment search engines such as LinkedIn, CareerJunction and PNet, the new recruitment companies of the digital era?

Well, maybe not, and here’s why.

The real danger with social media is that people can be anyone they want to be. Sex pests hiding behind an anonymous computer pose as 14year-old teenagers, and unemployed shop assistants can pose as retail buyers or marketing managers.

A substantial portion of online curricula vitae has very little to do with reality.

Online search engines contain raw data that must be telephonically screened; subjected to competency-based interviews; referenced with previous employers; and subjected to credit and criminal checks. Identities and educational qualifications must also be verified.

As easy as it is to pose as a teenager, it is just as easy to buy a degree from a fictitious online university or claim to have been the previous human resources manager of Coca-Cola. From engineering degrees to MBAs, it’s all available for a price.

But before even beginning to investigate whether John Smith’s MBA from the Caribbean University of Technology is real, you have to find John Smith’s profile among a million others.

Well, that shouldn’t be hard: simply type in “sales manager” and, hey presto, every sales manager on the market in South Africa appears, right? Wrong!

The majority of candidates hide their profiles. Why? Because HR staff and internal re- cruiters have access to online search engines as well. Employees don’t want their managers to know that they are looking for another job, so they hide their profiles.

They also don’t want calls from hundreds of recruitment consultants who call them up to discuss a fantastic career opportunity selling time share for Exotic Vacations Inc.

Then, of course, sales managers like to call themselves everything but sales managers. They are business development executives or new-business managers or commercial managers or supreme commanders — but never a sales manager!

So when we enter “sales manager ” into the online search engine and wait expec- tantly to view a hundred or two of the best sales managers a salary budget will buy, we can’t believe our eyes when the best the market has to offer is Joe Soap, the sales manager of Exotic Vacations Inc.

So, a week or two later, your new team of in-house recruitment staff have cost you their monthly salaries, office space, secretarial support, telephone and internet costs, subscription fees to every online search engine claiming to have the best candidates ever, and what have you got in return? Joe Soap.

Perhaps the future of traditional recruitment companies is not so bleak after all.

Sher is CEO of recruitment, human resources and employee benefits consultancy The Focus Group