Fast Bad Revisited

I first heard the term "Fast Bad" several years ago during a local EMA event presentation by Michael McNeal, who at the time was running the world's most innovative recruiting organization at Cisco. I wrote about Michael's use of this term in a post titled "I Can't Recruit From My ATS!" last Fall.

There was a quote from yesterday's ERE Forum that I felt was highly relevant, but from a slightly different angle:

While presenting my ATS to a prospective customer, my #1 'favorite' question I've ever been asked by a recruiter is: 'Won't this software put me out of a job? 'My answer was: 'Only if you're a bad recruiter, because it will help you do more of the wrong things, faster. - Sylvia D.

Sometimes, it isn't the technology or the implementation that is the problem, often times the end-user can be equally to blame. I found this quote to be especially relevant as we start to finish up the implementation phase for our new ATS, and will be moving into Recruiter Training starting in two weeks.

I don't believe that we have 'bad recruiters', but to Sylvia's point, misuse of the system doesn't help matters, and can in some cases make things worse. We feel strongly that we selected the right system, the implementation phase is critical to our efforts moving forward, but the ultimate success will be directly correlated to how well our Recruiters adopt and use the system.

Starting next week, all of our Recruiters will be provided two days of intense training on how the system works and how to get the best out of it. I plan on following up with our Recruiters throughout the Fall to ensure they are maximizing the use of this system. We will offer follow-on training and best-practice sharing to ensure that everyone has access to the latest and most relevant information. At the end of the day, the last thing I want our Recruiters to be accused of is "doing more of the wrong things, faster". "Fast Bad" can be worse than "Slow Good" if you know what I mean.