nVerse

New Virus Floating Around

There’s a new email virus floating around today…via email (gone are the days that viruses get passed via floppy disks…)

here’s the characteristics.

- coming from a friend’s yahoo account

- no subject

- just a link in the body

Recruiting the Digital Way - Via Email

Suppose a company is looking to hire someone.  There are a number of routes to go down, and personally, I have found that the low-tech craigslist site is the most effective method.  But another popular choice is to use a recruiter.

So a recruiter forwards on a job opening to friends and contacts via email, with a finders fee promised.  (keep in mind a recruiter’s compensation for filing a job is essentially a finders fee, albeit a big one).  Then, someone who receives the email doesn’t really know a good candidate so he/she forwards on to another person who in turn forwards it on, and so on.

SO - how does one divvy up the fee? Let’s say the request is emailed on to two people before it finally finds someone who knows a suitable candidate…Do they split it up 50-50?  Probably.  But what if it were 3 people deep? Split it into thirds?   How much effort was involved in forwarding it on initially?  Clicking the [fwd] button and sending it off to a few people who may know people outside of your social and professional sphere doesn’t seem like much effort.

To make any of this email forwarding chain of any value, it must ultimately be received by someone who actually knows a candidate. Otherwise, it’s just social spam.  Why do the folks in the middle of the chain forward it on? Because in this digital era, it is nearly effortless to do so, and there maybe a few bucks in it … kinda like opening a Monopoly Sweepstakes ticket from McDonalds…you just might win a free bag of small fries!  all you have to do is peel off the ticket.

But if the finders fee is split up, it begs the question of was there actually equal work & value contributed?  I think the answer lies in why someone actually says, “yes! i know someone.”  9 times out of 10 it is probably because that person knows someone looking for a new gig and wants to help.  A finders fee doesn’t hurt, but the main motivation is really just to help out.  And since we are thinking along those lines, the person who initially forwarded on the email probably did so out of the same pool of altruism - to help their recruiter friend do his/her job.  So yes. Splitting it equally seems right.

So what’s the big hub-bub?  I suppose the point is that emailing is so easy and cheap that methinks that recruiters must be facing some serious downward pricing pressure - especially in these times, where unemployment in California is above 12% and to help someone get a job and to help a company do so cheaply means a lot more than a few dollars.  I would guess that if you reduced the finders fee significantly - say, bring it down to zero - you’d probably still get the same results.  Besides, simply putting the recruiter in touch with a candidate doesn’t guarantee a finders fee - that person needs to be hired first…thus driving down the expected value (statistically speaking) of the finders fee even closer to zero.