Tokyo Head Hunters: Ethics? Gimme a friggin’ break!

First of all, when I say Tokyo Head Hunters, I mean foreigners working in Tokyo as recruiters. These people are not professional human resources agents. They are for the most part former unprofessionals who were presented with an undeserved chance to do something else.

That said, I do know one or two recruiters who are genuinely good at what they do. Most of them operate at a level or two above me, above the $500K/year level.

To be fair, you need a professional recruiter to find a country head, or a CFO. But not to find a local IT compliance officer or a branch security officer, or a project manager. If I were country head and I learned that anyone making less than $200K (without bonus) was hired via a head hunter, I’d have a word with the HR manager about what they thought their work was about.

I forwarded my last two posts to a few head hunters I knew. And I got a good belly laugh from their answers.  They talked about the ethics of guaranteeing me anything. Ethics from a recruiter?! Ha!

Better yet: Pshaw! I say Pshaw!!

And for Monty Python fans, I say:

Your mother was a hamster
Your father smells of elderberries
And I fart in your general direction! 

Ethics from mid-level management recruiter? That’s a laugh and a half!

What can we mid-level management and staff level job seekers do about it? We can demand the following.

First, if a recruiter submits your CV for a role, you must have assurance in writing that they will represent no other candidates for that role except for you. They can have represented other candidates BEFORE that have been turned down. They can represent other candidates AFTER you have been turned down. But they MUST represent only you for any one position at any one time. No compromise on this issue, and you will sue their ass off if they ever screw you on this.

Second, the recruiter must do their utmost to sell YOU, not their firm, YOU. That is your price for letting them submit your resume. After all, your CV in their database is an asset to them. Why give it to them for free?

I do not mean that you should be arrogant. There are plenty of people who are better than I am, but not every company can get the best person, and not every one can get the best job. 

As a job seeker, you cannot expect a recruiter to guarantee you a job. But it IS fair to expect them to guarantee you something.

And that something is their effort to sell you, and the way to measure their effort is by the interviews they get you. If they get you interviews and you don’t get the job, fair enough. They did their bit.

If they can’t get you interviews, why would you need them? What possible use are they to you? If they can’t get you interviews, they are parasites living off your good will and you should spray them with insecticide.

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

New Amazon review: The World Without Us

What would happen to our world if we disappeared?

Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us doesn’t really deserve being a full book, but its ideas and insights should be of interest to civil engineers, factory managers or to any organization where maintenance is critical to its operations. In particular, it can inspire some productive outside-the-box thinking for operational risk managers.

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

New Amazon review: Super Freakonomics

 I just reviewed Super Freakonomics on Amazon. I liked it even better than the original Freakonomics.

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

The Cruelty of Japan

There’s a horrible story going around about a Canadian residing in Japan. When returning home (home in Japan that is) after a short visit abroad, he was detained at Narita Airport, allegedly treated very harshly, and finally forced to return to Canada.

I’m glad the article doesn’t accuse Japan of racism. If the story is true, and having lived here 23 years I suspect it is, it points to a different problem which I believe is pervasive in this country: cruelty.

Japanese people can be extremely cruel to one another.

Compare what happened to the Canadian reporter at Narita Airport to the story depicted in the Japanese movie “I Just Didn’t Do It” by director Masayuki Suo.  In this film, based on a true story, a young man is falsely accused of molesting a high school girl on a crowded train. The young man is arrested and questioned.

While the camera moves through the police station, we witness the questioning of a (presumaby guilty) molester, a suited businessman who caves in and apologizes immediately, signs a confession and pays his young victim 50,000 yen (about 450 dollars in 2007). The entire incident ends by only slightly embarrassing the perpetrator.

On the other hand, the innocent young man is bullied by his interrogators and warned that things will go very badly for him. Yet, he stubbornly refuses to confess to a crime he did not commit. He is no hero, he is not noble, he’s just an ordinary kid who won’t say he did something he knows he did not do. The system eventually finds him guilty.

In the meantime, his treatment in custody is not so different from how the Canadian reporter claims to have been treated at Narita Airport. The young man was interrogated at all hours for 23 days without any legal representation. His first lawyer urged him to confess because he had no idea what lay ahead, guards were incredibly rude and coercive. They were also corrupt charging 1500 yen (12 dollars) for a cup of bad coffee, money which they are allowed to pocket.

If you play along with the system, things won’t go too badly for you. If you don’t follow the rules, including the unspoken rule of playing along, then things can go very badly for you indeed.

When Japanese officials treat a foreigner harshly they are not being racist, they are in fact treating him like a real person. The problem is that Japanese officials can often treat real people very very badly.

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

SOPA: It’s better to have no law than a bad law

President Obama has said he would not support SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act. This is a good thing.

As for all bills, the sponsors of SOPA came up with a name which by itself makes opposition to it unthinkable. How could anyone not want to stop piracy? Mozart died poor because he did not benefit from copyright protection, so how could anyone oppose a bill to stop online piracy of music?

Would Amadeus have approved of SOPA?

It’s very very good that Obama opposed SOPA. Intellectual property law needs serious reform. As it stands lawmakers and the courts still have a poor understanding of what constitutes a cyber crime. Judges know well the difference between shoplifting a loaf of bread and holding up a bank. When a mother gets successfully sued for 1.9 million dollars (after a mistrial!) for downloading 24 songs illegally, we have to wonder if the law is doing what we want in the way we want it done.

Making it easier for large industries to bring expensive litigation against people is the wrong way forward. Making SOPA the law would have given over way too much discretionary power to private interests.

The internet is still a badly understood wild west. Until it is understood, discretionary powers should belong to the courts only and no law should be created that effectively removes those powers from the hands of courts and into the hands of litigants. The mere threat of a spurious lawsuit should never be enough to scare people from behaving reasonably.

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

PS I probably won’t sue if you copy & paste this anywhere .

VP

Avoiding head hunters: the alternative

The alternative to head hunters is to market yourself. If you are a sales person, this is obvious but if you are, like me, an IT hack or a back office cost center staffer then it is not at all obvious.

As Jeffrey Fox writes in his book “How to Land Your Dream Job”,  looking for a job is selling yourself. Selling is a craft and it can be learned.

I’d like to make one thing clear: not all head hunters are parasites. When you are looking for someone to head a division with multi-million dollar turnover, when a two thousand employee company is looking for a new CFO, it makes sense to use a reputable firm to find the right person. The wrong person in a critical position can destroy a company.

But most jobs in a company are not top level critical jobs. It’s important to get the work done of course but many people can fill a slot in any number of ways. Why would you need recruiters operating on a commission for that? And as a hands-on staffer or mid-level manager, why would you entrust your future to parasites?

Worth: Just because you're necessary doesn't mean you're important.

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

Buyer fraud on eBay

The usual warning is “Buyer beware!” but a good case can be made for “Seller beware!” especially for business people selling through eBay, as this article illustrates.

A woman named Erica sold an antique violin for $2500 on eBay with payment made with PayPal. On receiving the violin, the buyer disputed its authenticity.  Instead of returning the violin for a refund, the buyer complained to PayPal who allegedly (hey, I’ve got to protect myself here) suggested the buyer destroy the violin, and send them a picture of the damaged goods. PayPal then reimbursed the buyer from Erica’s account.

Is eBay colluding with fraudulent buyers?

Erica gave away her violin and received no compensation. She was defrauded by an unscrupulous buyer. But the problem doesn’t end there.  If the fraudulent buyer complains about her then her eBay rating goes down and her transaction fees go up.

A friend of mine, let’s call him Stanley to preserve his anonymity, sometimes sells watches on eBay. His chief business is selling watches wholesale to watch stores, but he sometimes makes mistakes and buys something his regular customers aren’t interested in carrying. When that happens, he offers these watches on eBay to recover part of his costs.

Stanley loses about one watch in twenty to eBay buyer fraud, which he accepts as a reasonable cost of doing business.  But fraudulent buyers also often post complaints on eBay and this brings Stanley’s rating down from 100% to 99.7%. Now this doesn’t sound bad at all and any honest buyer would certainly buy from someone with such a high rating.

However, anything less than 100% means Stanley has to pay higher transaction fees, say an extra fifteen dollars for each sale he makes.  Selling 100 watches a year means an extra $1500 a year in transaction costs.  For a one-man business, that’s a lot of money, especially when he is clearing these items at a loss to begin with!

Complaining to eBay doesn’t work, Stanley says. They have a strong incentive to keep the rating just below 100% in order to charge higher fees.  eBay might not be explicitly colluding, but it’s in their short term interest to side with the fraudster. Indeed, seller beware!

Copyright 2012, Vincent Poirier

Bradley Manning as a rogue employee

I’m not sure what to think of the Bradley Manning case.

This confused young man knowingly leaked classified documents. The military mindset demands severe punishment, perhaps even his execution. Given that the U.S. military is now all volunteer, one joins it freely and accepts its code of conduct. There doesn’t seem to be much question that Manning is guilty. But it’s just as clear that he was of unsound mind. Evidence shows he was not psychologically fit for duty.

What surprises me here is that one thing the military are very good at is understanding and managing risk. They don’t rely on mathematical bravado as does Wall Street. Yes, the military gets it wrong and people die, but people do die in war theaters.

So the question is this. Why was Manning allowed access to classified documentation? Were his superiors and supervisors negligent? The US military’s information systems probably need to be externally audited, but how would one go about doing that without compromising them? Tough questions.

At the least, other people besides Manning should be court martialed. Certainly not for treason or aiding the enemy, but perhaps for dereliction of duty. The sentences don’t have to be severe, but they ought to be clear.

Compare this to the case of Jérôme Kerviel. He was convicted by French courts for securities fraud. The rogue trader took financial positions beyond his authorized limits. He took risks, which of course he was allowed to do, but then pretended to hedge the risk by creating fictional transactions.

His defense essentially argued that his bosses knew and approved of what he was doing and because he was making money, because his risks were paying off, they looked the other way. He was found guilty anyway and while I agree there was negligence, even criminal negligence, on the part of his bosses, that just makes Kerviel part of a conspiracy, it does not exonerate him. His managers were quietly dismissed or asked to resign.

Prosecuting negligence in a financial case is much more difficult than prosecuting a dereliction of duty case in the military. By all means, throw the book at Manning (maybe) but I am more concerned with a organization that allowed someone like him access to all that sensitive information.

Copyright 2011, Vincent Poirier

IT head hunters in Tokyo harm job seekers.

IT head hunters in Tokyo are not very useful.

I have friends who are IT head hunters and I apologize to them for being so blunt. But they haven’t gotten me a job, so I won’t feel too bad if their feelings are hurt.

For someone looking for a job, headhunters are harmful. They have made it difficult to apply to companies except through them but because the employer pays the bill, they only want to help the employers, not the unemployed looking for a job.

But we supply the product. Without us, they’d have nothing with which to make a deal. They treat people looking for a job like just another résumé in their database, another item in the catalog they show their clients.

Four years registered with Robert Walters in Tokyo, they have never gotten me a single interview.

Three years registered with Morgan McKinley,  they have never gotten me a single interview.

Hays got me one interview, but then they submitted my name without my approval. I found out after I applied for the job independently. Of course this disqualified me!

BiosJP wanted me to tailor my résumé for each job. But if I could do that, if I were a salesman, would I need them?

Dimension Data (not a head hunter, but an outsourcer) once made me a verbal promise of a job, only to withdraw it at the last minute.

One agency actually has some people talking to candidates and different people  talking to the employers. (I won’t mention them in this post so that no one will confuse them with the companies mentioned above.) At least they treat job seekers like people.

But who wants to be treated like a record in a database? Isn’t someone looking for a job a person, maybe a father or a mother with children to feed? Aren’t they something more than a CV in a pile of CVs?

Not to Tokyo “recruitment consultants” it seems.

Copyright 2011, Vincent Poirier

A new anthem for North Korea!

(With apologies to Disney)

A NEW PEOPLE’S ANTHEM HONORING THE KIM DYNASTY!
(sung to the tune of “The Mickey Mouse Club”)

Who’s the leader of the land
That’s made for you and me,
K-I-M, I and L, S and U-N-G
Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there
You’re as welcome as can be
K-I-M, I and L, S and U-N-G

Kim Il Sung!
Kim Il Sung
(Kim Jong Il too!)

Forever let us hold our banner
High! High! High! High!

Come along and sing a song
Join the Worker’s Party!
K-I-M, I and L, S and U-N-G

In North Korea
We’ll have fun
We’ll be new faces
High! High! High! High!

We’ll do things and
We’ll go places
All around the world
We’ll go marching

Who’s the leader of the land
That’s made for you and me,
K-I-M, I and L, S and U-N-G
Hey! there, Hi! there, Ho! there
You’re as welcome as can be
K-I-M, I and L, S and U-N-G

Kim Il Sung!
Kim Il Sung
(Kim Jong Il too!)

Forever let us hold our banner
High! High! High! High!

Come along and sing a song
Join the Worker’s Party!
K-I-M, I and L, S and U-N-G

Copyright 2011, Vincent Poirier