We love technology. When you come into our office, you’ll notice that every desk has two giant monitors, that we are using Apple computers, and that we use a good deal of the best software available. As much as we utilize and leverage technology, we are—and intend to remain—a people business.

Efficiency or Effectiveness

Many of the job sites now have algorithms that put open positions in front of the people who are signed up with them based on keywords, even if the individual isn’t remotely right for the job—and also if they aren’t really interested. Many seem to operate on the idea that more resumes are better than fewer, but when it comes to hiring the right people, we prefer fewer, better candidates. More still, we like candidates that are interested in the position.

Resume Harvesting or Building a Database?

A lot of the new technologies are designed around driving resumes into a database. In the way of full disclosure here, we are very intentional and extremely deliberate about building a database. We believe that the more people we know, the better our chances of being able to match the right person to right position—and with high speed. However, a database of people you have never met and know nothing about is the same as not having a database at all.

The Resume Tsunami or Carefully Curated Candidates

We’ve heard from clients that they have minimal trust in the agencies they’ve used in the past. They’ve shared with us that they asked a recruiter to share more information about a candidate, only to discover the recruiter had never met or interviewed the candidate. We are now calling this tactic “the resume tsunami” as a way to describe agencies that flood their client’s inboxes with resumes. We are sticking with visiting with our clients to better understand who is going to fit and why. We’re also sticking with interviewing every candidate to ensure we understand their wants, needs, skills, and intangibles well enough to place them in the right role.

In the end, this is a people business. We can’t imagine why anyone would want to work in a people business without knowing any people.