<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=windows-1252"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Nov 21, 2014, at 1:13 AM, Douglas Onyango <<a href="mailto:ondouglas@gmail.com" class="">ondouglas@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">All,<br class="">
While internal knowledge of the community is key, I think it may confines our search team to only the community, which may or may not deliver the very best candidate. <br class=""></p></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div>Depending on how you are intending to define the community, I would argue that recruiting outside of the community would be very unlikely to yield an ideal result.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Permit me to elaborate…</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If you define the community broadly (all internet users within the AfriNIC region), then surely the best candidate must be within the community as I do not believe that someone coming from outside of the community would have the necessary understanding of the unique challenges within the region.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If you define the community more narrowly as only those who participate in this mailing list or some other limited subset of the internet-using community within the region, then you may be right that such a definition could well exclude an ideal candidate.<br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">
Couple this with admin & and logistical requirements needed to look for executive candidates in a short period of time and think involving an agency would be more efficient.</p></div></blockquote>For all the reasons that Woody mentioned, and based on my experience, I don’t think it would. I think it would be a great way to waste time and resources looking at a number of candidates that fit some generic profile, but are not necessarily well suited to the task at hand.</div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">My suggestion is to engage a competent agency which can take care of the logistics and initial vetting of candidates, they can then forward the cream to an internal team for a final round of interviews. </p></div></blockquote>In my experience, down this path lies madness as I have yet to encounter a “competent agency” which does an initial vetting which proves useful. YMMV.</div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">This path gives us the best of both worlds with the shortest turn around time.</p></div></blockquote>This is one of those examples where we see a clear demonstration of the difference between theory and practice.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>(The difference being that “In theory, there is no difference.”)</div><div><br class=""></div><div>In theory, you are absolutely correct and this looks like a great idea on paper. However, experience has shown that this is not necessarily the case because it turns out that there are a number of more subtle difficulties that come into play:</div><div><br class=""></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>1.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Finding a competent agency is hard.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>2.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Getting the competent agency to truly understand the job requirements is even harder.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>3.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>Finding qualified candidates for such a unique role is quite hard.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>4.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>There is no downside to an agency to shotgun the position and send you the N candidates they think are closest.</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>The worst that can happen is that you don’t hire one of their candidates. They have no skin in the game and they</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>will do whatever they do within the confines of the deadline you give them rather than really searching for the</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>truly right candidate. If you don’t give them a deadline, they will send you every remotely qualified candidate</div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>as soon as they can to minimize risk of not getting the contract.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>As such, I think that using a recruiter is likely to be a waste. I think you might have better success using a community survey where you ask people to nominate a candidate they think would do the job well and then solicit resumes from the names that get entered most often. (write-in only and one-name per respondent only.) This may not work, either, but I think it’s likely to be at least as effective as using a recruiter.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>Owen</div><div><br class=""></div><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><p dir="ltr" class="">Regards,<br class="">
On 20 Nov 2014 11:46, "Mark Tinka" <<a href="mailto:mark.tinka@seacom.mu" class="">mark.tinka@seacom.mu</a>> wrote:<br class="">
><br class="">
> On Thursday, November 20, 2014 09:44:57 AM Bill Woodcock<br class="">
> wrote:<br class="">
><br class="">
> > Speaking from my own experience on the ARIN board when we<br class="">
> > had a similar transition to make, I’d say that<br class="">
> > “recruitment professionals” are an unmitigated disaster.<br class="">
> > They’ll find you a set of generic and mediocre<br class="">
> > candidates, none particularly prepared for the task.<br class="">
> > After two false starts using “recruitment professionals”<br class="">
> > we gave up on them and hired someone we knew was capable<br class="">
> > of handling the job, and who wouldn’t flake out. And<br class="">
> > that’s worked out really well for us.<br class="">
><br class="">
> I'd tend to agree, in this case.<br class="">
><br class="">
> We know the community, and that's an advantage worth<br class="">
> exploiting.<br class="">
><br class="">
> Mark.<br class="">
><br class="">
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