Why can't we open source the recruiting process, too?

Alfresco is hiring for a few positions here in the United States (Enterprise and mid-market sales executives, plus a consultant), and I'm always surprised by how much work it is to find good people for good jobs. We're doing extraordinarily well - people should be beating down the doors to work here.

Or take Ringside Networks. Shaun Connolly and I exchanged emails today about its search for a vice president of Business Development. Cool company with a great team. Why wouldn't people be beating a path to the Ringside door, so that Ringside wouldn't have to waste time hunting for good people?

And yet it requires a ton of work to find and hire good people.

Why? Presumably there is a wide range of people out there looking for good work. Why isn't a simple job posting enough to find them?

It's not hugely different from any consumer purchase. There are things that I want. Why can't I just post what I want and let technology lead buyers to me? Truly, search is in its infancy, both in e-commerce and in recruitment. But perhaps we should stop calling it "search" and focus on the "find" aspect of the equation...?

After all, I don't want to search. I want to find. Who will help me find?

[PACSferret]

Matthew had the answer......... Quick register seekd.com. Damn gone already.

[royrusso]

I have many friends at Alfresco, and they all say wonderful things, so I'm sure you'll find the right folks soon, wherever in the world they may be hiding. As for Shaun & Co., he's in NJ, the best he can hope for is an unemployed plumber to serve as his Sales VP. ;-)

[dneary]

Matt,

The answer seems pretty obvious to me - good people aren't looking for work.

That means you have to look for them, and convince them to change.

Cheers,
Dave.

[dneary]

Oh - having your jobs page updated with the positions might help too.

http://alfresco.com/about/careers/jobs/ shows 3 open positions for me, training manager, Java developers and tech support. No enterprise and mid-market sales executives there...

Cheers,
Dave.

"We're doing extraordinarily well - people should be beating down the doors to work here"

At a guess, because potential employees don't trust any company's claim that it's doing well (pretty much every company claims it's world-beating until the receivers are actually in the building) and are smart enough to realise that corporate success isn't particularly correlated with an enjoyable working environment (a company could be working its staff to death to make its numbers).

The only people whose opinion can be trusted on what it's like to work at a company are the employees. And if they're in clover, why would they let anyone else in on it? It's not sensible if you enjoy your job to go around shouting about how great it is - you only increase the pool of competitors who might try and persuade your boss to give your job to them instead or at best drive down the market rate for doing it.

[Matt Asay]

Good point. Let's put it this way: consistent annual 300%+ growth. A customer list that *any* company on this planet would envy. A work environment that is as healthy as one's family is (since we all work from home). I work hard but also took time out yesterday to watch Spain decimate Russia and met with my kids' principal, too. It's a great place to work. Perfect? No. But the best environment I've had in my career.

[mydogsmooch1]

As someone who is actively looking for employment, I am stunned at the lack of follow up from HR recruiters (or whoever receives replies to the postings). I have over 10 years of online sales & sales management experience, and yet getting someone in HR to actually read my resume has been a huge challenge. Kind of makes me feel like either the posting was a requirement (internal candidate), or the company isn't doing so hot after all.