In Life, Timing is Everything

Timing can often suck in life.  Timing is far more than about being at the right place at the right time – it is about having every other additional factor involved in the situation lining up exact as well.   Bad timing is often the excuse people give when they look back at their lives and play the what if game.

There is no where this can be expressed more directly (from a work perspective) than through the Job Seeker/Recruiter relationship.

1.  Job Seeker – Contacted a local recruiter because they needed a job.  Recruiter says they would be ideal, but has no openings right now.  Timing Sucks.

2.  Recruiter – Gets contacted by ideal candidate but has no job to offer them.  6 months later ideal job opens up and can’t remember ideal candidate.  Timing Still Sucks.

Just another simple example of how timing can suck in life –  This past week I was in Boston. On Sunday night I missed out on the Blogging4Jobs Webshow because the internet went down in my hotel 1 hour before show time.  On Tuesday I was in meetings from early morning to late at night and I missed out on a webinar that I REALLY wanted to see sponsored by Avature (Recruiting CRM tool) and hosted by the ever brilliant Susan Burns on Talent Pooling.  (Did you miss it too?  Watch it here)

Anyway, IMO,  Talent Pipelining is all about fixing poor timing in life.  Well, at least in recruiting.  It’s something I have been wondering why its use wasn’t more widespread for years.   It never made since to me that companies wouldn’t utilize talent pipelining tools (standalone or built into their existing ATS product) that can help them hire BETTER people FASTER and for LESS MONEY!!!  Seriously, can someone explain to me the downside of this? How?

I have a candidate who wants a job with my company.  I have no job to offer.  I add them into my pipeline/pool/crm/whatever.  I keep them in a folder/file/whatever and send marketing emails keeping them liking my company.  I have a job to offer.  I let candidate know.  They apply.  We hire.  Everyone is happy.

Moral of story:  Bad timing is what creates missed opportunities that will forever make you wonder about the what if’s of life.  We can reduce the number of what-ifs with regard to candidates if we pipeline/CRM/pool them for the future.  The end.

PS. If this all makes since to you and you STILL aren’t ready to do it because it means that you have to be on the early adopter (not really, but I know a lot of you think it is) side of things – go back to 2006 and read this and see what I really think of people/companies afraid to be 1st.

Tags: avature, crm, life lessons, recruiting, recruiting crm, susan burns, talent acqusition, talent pipelining, talentpool, timing