Some Recruiting Software Really Needs to Grow Up

First impressions count both ways. Too many companies who should know better are using embarrassingly outdated recruiting software. The following features that I encountered multiple times in my last search made each company using the outdated software look both unprofessional and out of touch. In all such cases today, these features are shoddy and do not reflect well on the company using the software.

News Reflection - The Naked Emperors Club

Back when Scott Thompson attended Stonehill College, the school did not offer a Major in Computer Science as his resume to Yahoo! indicated. When I first heard about the controversy surrounding Yahoo!’s new CEO, I had wondered if a quasi-acceptable explanation would be found in his having taken a significant number of Computer Science courses before the school had officially established the Computer Science Major. A few more detailed articles on the subject later, I learned the school had only offered a single class in the subject titled “Introduction to Computer Science” while Mr. Thompson was in attendance.

News Reflection - Dressing Down for Professional Impact

Facebook’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is known for wearing jeans, ostentatiously puffy sneakers, a tight medium grey t-shirt and often-times a darker grey “hoodie” with something Facebook-blue barely revealing itself between the grey t-shirt and the darker grey hoodie. (What is that, Mark: A soccer jersey?) It is not a far cry from Apple’s famous co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs who was known for dressing casually, and in the end exclusively wearing jeans, grey running shoes and a black mock turtleneck.

In most business environments today artists, engineers and other creative people look their professional best when dressed casually. In contrast senior executives and sales professionals have traditionally looked their best in more formal business attire. But cultural normalcy is still undefined in those situations where the creative and high-tech worlds intersect with the sales and senior executive roles. This was underscored recently when Mark Zuckerberg travelled east to meet with potential investors and elected to wear his signature hoodie.