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Old Wine, New Label
By Ron | August 8, 2008
“Talent Aquisition, On-Boarding…”
I was teaching Human Resources to my college class and one of my students who was an executive at a large west coast company went off on a rant about his HR department not supporting him. He had some critical open positions that he needed to fill right away and the “Talent Acquisition” group of HR wasn’t referring any qualified candidates to him.
He went on to tell us that he was having to go out on his own to find people, bring them in and convince the Talent Acquisition unit to make offers. He thought it was amusing that the service from this group was exactly the same as when it was called, “Staffing” or “Employment” years ago.
I chuckled, as I remembered what a prior mentor of mine used to say about this type of thing, “Ron, I’ve been around a long time, and there is not much new; just old wine with a new label.”
I must admit that I like spiffy new labels. Talent Aquisition does sound better than Employment. I just think that when we adopt that new label, our service should be ”new and improved.” Now, I know that some old wine is better than the new varieties as long as it hasn’t turned to vinegar. If your recruiters are star headhunters, sending winners to their respective managers, maybe the “wine” doesn’t have to be upgraded, just the label.
What I have learned from all of this, is that when I use new labels, my clients might have higher expectations except for those who were around when I started calling my Employement department “Staffing” and still served the same Chianti.
Topics: HR |