Famous Recruiters—Really? Who? How?
Before investigating, I decided that if there are no famous recruiters, I’d try to figure out why—and also speculate on what it would take for a recruiter to become as famous as, say, Gandhi.
The Google Evidence
The logical first step was to Google “famous recruiters”. That got me nowhere—except to a WHOIS (Internet directory of registered URLs) entry for www.famousrecruiters.com.
Unfortunately—and as those who like “thinnest book in the world” jokes would predict, there is no active site for that domain name. Perhaps this is another case of great intentions, poor data.
My next attempt was to check for “famous recruiter quotes”—on the assumption that if the quote is famous, the recruiter would be likely to be famous too (either because of the quote, or as the reason for the quote’s fame).
Results–zero, e.g., at www.cloverquotes.com (yes, “clover”, not “clever”—not a typo on my part). Those cited were mostly sports, CIA and military recruiters.
Not one corporate recruiter listed. In fact, not even one quote about corporate recruiting. (In my search, I excluded cultish recruiters like Scientology’s master-recruiter L. Ron Hubbard, since critics would say that the mentally and physically exhausting methods used involve corporal, rather than corporate recruiting.)
Another Chinese First?
The most famous source for one of the best career and recruiting quotes I could find was Confucius, who, I suppose, was a recruiter of sorts, given the legions of disciples he attracted: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” (Because it sounds so un-Chinese, I have to allow that it is a casual translation, somebody’s fortune-cookie fortune or utterly apocryphal.)
A search for “infamous recruiters” fared no better. However, there is the iconic story about Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds dismissal by a Hollywood producer (for what was described as an over-sized Adam’s apple and a lack of talent, respectively). But then, who recalls the name of the executive who booted them?—a case of famous story, obscure person.
Of course, there’s Heinrich Himmler of the S.S., who recruited some of the best of the evil—but again, that’s not corporate recruiting (despite the sordid corporate connections typical of most forms of fascism).
Is the dearth of famous recruiters due to the lack of any criteria of what would count toward making a recruiter famous? Even the great football coach-recruiters whose names come to mind, e.g., the Green Bay Packers’ legendary Vince Lombardi, were more famous as coaches than as (de facto) recruiters.
Apparently, and in general, recruiting someone (who becomes) famous doesn’t make you famous. That’s an axiom that seems to have been well tested and proven by history.–mostly through the virtual historical absence of any examples to the contrary.
How (Not) to Become a Famous Recruiter
So, with that as a first observation toward formulating the criteria for becoming a famous recruiter, let’s proceed with proposing others, positive and negative—but with that negative axiom at the top of the list:
1. Recruiting someone famous won’t make you famous. Experiment: Go ahead, try to name one well-known corporate recruiter who recruited somebody (who became) famous. OK, maybe EMI’s Brian Epstein, who recorded, promoted and immortalized the Beatles; but, then, recruiting was part of, not the essence of his job—however essential such recruiting was.
2. Utilizing an attention-grabbing recruiting method may not be enough to make you famous: For example, a Wuhan, China University posting of a language training center’s ad got some press in 2011 because the ad specified that Scorpios and Virgos need not apply, since they are “too critical and moody”. However, no recruiter name appears in the story.
3. Already being famous for or as something, e.g., Big 10 football coach, can make you famous as a recruiter. This suggests that if you want to become a famous recruiter, try to become famous for something else first. If you’ve got a great recipe for chocolate chip cookies, bake them and hand them out in job interviews. Who knows?—the word may get out about the cookies, and then about you, as a recruiter.
4. Single-handedly recruit so many people that purely in virtue of sheer numbers you will be widely known. In its simplest form, fame is nothing more than being known by and familiar to huge numbers of people.
The additional characteristic of somehow also being admired and envied, captured by our modern concept of “celebrity” is not necessary to be famous in this basic sense: “the state of being well known or much talked about” (Merriam Webster). It is only when that simple concept gets embellished and expanded to include “renown” or “celebrity” that being famous becomes more than just a matter of a head count.
Imagine a town with one recruiter who has recruited everybody who has a job. So, everyone knows his or her name. Bingo! Famous. Why? Because fame in its most basic form is measured by what proportion of a reference population knows who you are, i.e., famous, without being famous for something outstanding or exceptional.
If you’ve seen Woody Allen’s 2012 “To Rome with Love”, you’ll get this point, for in his Fellini-esque multi-sided look at celebrity in the film, he parodies our modern obsession with people famous only for being famous—i.e., people who are famous in the sense of being admired and envied (“celebrities”) just because they are famous in the sense of being widely known (for no good reason, e.g., Paris Hilton and Joe The Plumber—or so some would say).
So, if you want to be a famous recruiter, one way to accomplish that is to move to somewhere with few or no recruiters, but lots of jobs and job seekers. A good place to start is with Google results for “lack of recruiters”.
If that doesn’t work, experiment with chocolate chip cookie mixes.