The Most Important Technology for a Recruiter EVER!

I know, you were thinking, “voicemail.” You are showing your age. I bet you say “rolodex” once in a while when you mean database. I bet you still dabble in appointment television and buy albums too. Its summer, so I bet you just went to an Aerosmith Farewell tour. Your fourth.

Or maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe you were thinking social media was the most important technology for a recruiter. Good guess, and it has had impact, but LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram, while a great way to pretend you’re working, loses its power in an Intensive Candidate Driven market like this one, where you keep finding the same candidates, who have embellished their backgrounds in the same way, and then bolstered them with “endorsements.” (I have been endorsed twice today by people I don’t know and worse, I’ve endorsed the work of two others that I wouldn’t know if I bumped into them.)

Social media in a good market, providing fast access to bad people. Meh!

The most important technology for a contemporary recruiter EVER and BY FAR. (I wish I could link a drumroll.)

The Keurig machine.

Talk about a game changer. We all know what it was like to try to get the used filter from the old coffee pot over to the waste basket and spill the wet, messy grinds. Sweep for an hour, knock yourself out, and you’re still finding grinds in your socks 2 days later. And how about the times you meant to turn the burner off on the conventional coffee maker and someone in your office finds it charred and about to blow. (Wash that sucker out for 3 days, and you still smell char, it gets so frustrating you look down in disgust and then you see them on the floor. More grinds.) Recruiters are Type A’s through and through and the conventional machine took what seemed like hours to fill up. And is it just me or did you always find someone taking the last cup and leaving you to make a fresh pot?
Before buying a Keurig I tried to solve this problem by 1) giving up caffeine 2) 5 hour energy drinks. I lasted half a day without caffeine and then got my first “caffeine withdrawal” headache. Whoa! I decided I don’t drink, I don’t smoke or take recreational drugs, I have to have a vice and caffeine is mine. Period. The end. So I tried 5 hour energy drinks. This made sense because they are nothing more than 8 cups of coffee in one shot. (They wouldn’t even exist if coffee wasn’t so hot you can’t shoot 8 cups without scalding your throat.) But part of coffee’s allure is the smell of the first cup, the having something to hold in your hand, and a reminder to brush your teeth to avoid coffee smile! So I went with the supreme technological innovation: The Keurig!

Look, it’s not perfect. No technology is. (My GPS lady is often telling me to take a left into a body of water, insisting it is a road. At least I think that is an error! Hmm…) People refuse to discard their used Keurig pods, you have to add water a lot, even the commercial machines have a short life span, and it is amazing how angry you can get when you run out of French Vanilla or Hazelnut and are left with choices like “Vermont Country Blend” and “Wild Mountain Blueberry.” But hey, it’s done in 20 seconds and there is no mess and the K cups are recyclable if you cared about such things which my office doesn’t.

But the Keurig keeps recruiters wired. Recruiters have sleep issues because we have stress issues because, well, we’re recruiters and while we wouldn’t have it any other way, we know we need the energy required to pound the phones and get referred to the great people. And that requires massive amounts of compassion, charisma, and persuasion, and while we have those attributes in abundance, we need something technological to get us revved up in the morning. For the mediocre, that’s something you log in to, for a great recruiter, that’s something you down with a piece of pastry you will work off at the SPIN class you are devising ways to avoid after work.

Thanks Keurig!