The World’s First Recruiter

THE ANCIENT ART OF RECRUITING/Image: Michael Moffa

“And the woman said, ‘The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”—Genesis, 3:13

Quick: Who was the world’s first recruiter ? Don’t think, just answer—in terms of a specific real, legendary or mythological individual and/or a specific category. Your fast answer may reveal something about how you see your own profession, about how your cultural history has created recruitment icons and stereotypes and about from what recruitment has evolved. There may even be some useful tips to be gleaned from your personal archaeology of recruiting.

So, quickly jot down the first five guesses that spring to mind….I’ll wait one minute…….. again select a specific individual or a specific category……. ……..Ok. Done? Didn’t peek at the image or the quotation?

My guess is that your guesses included most or at least some of the following:

Satan (in Garden of Eden, recruiting Eve to recruit Adam as co-conspirator in sin)
pimp (who presumably arrived shortly after the allegedly “oldest profession”)
matchmaker (hooking up couples from different caves or clans)
shaman or medicine man (recruiting spirits to help with healing, prognostication, etc.)
temple or clan priest (recruiting beggars, virgins, patrons, protectors)
hunting pack leaders (recruiting others for the hunt, as hunters or as bait—something even West African chimpanzees have been observed doing)
gatherer pack leaders (recruiting others for the gathering of roots and the like)
builder (recruiting others to help build a hut)
dancer (recruiting others to avoid looking stupid dancing alone)
warrior (recruiting other warriors for battle)
slavers/kidnapper/raider/thief (recruiting accomplices in raids to seize neighbors’ food, females, etc.)
tool and weapons makers (recruiting assistants, apprentices, and the equivalent of test-crash dummies)

Whether my guesses about your guesses are right or not, and irrespective of whether these are instead merely my guesses, the list is instructive.

One of the first things to pay attention to is how to categorize these list elements in an insightful way. A cursory look reveals some suggestive commonalities: Only one of these primeval recruiters is an “independent”, representing no client, save himself: Satan.

Lesson to be learned: If you are going to be an independent recruiter, you will be much more vulnerable to direct competition (in this illustrative case, God) than a recruiter working for someone else, be it a client or a recruiting agency. To offset the competition (e.g., God), use incentives (such as apples) that will disqualify candidates in the eyes of your competitors. A modern example would be to recruit an athlete PR figure by offering lucrative sponsorships with a beer company when you are competing for him with Coca Cola Corp recruiters.

The first five, including again Satan, do not have to work collaboratively with others in the same job category. However, four of the five—the pimp, matchmaker, shaman and temple priest—are not “pure independents”, since they all have clients, even if they do not have bosses, e.g., the shaman can claim some key spirit to be pacified as a “client”, on behalf of the clan.

Satan is the only pure independent, recruiting by and for himself.

Lesson to be learned: Since four of the first five demonstrably survive in some form as modern-day recruiters (with evangelicals warning us to not overlook the fifth), it can be inferred that (net)working with other recruiters is not a prerequisite for a continuous and long history of success as a recruiter.

Two of the first five recruiters are “skimmers”, i.e., are intermediaries who get to “wet their beaks” by skimming off a portion of the income generated by recruits. These are the pimp and the temple or clan priest.

Lesson to be learned: Working on a commission basis has always been and continues to be a viable option for a recruiter.

The final six are all “networkers”—recruiters recruiting others with comparable skill sets and shared objectives, viz., the hunter, gatherer, builder, warrior, slaver/kidnapper/raider/thief.

Lesson to be learned: Networking with other recruiters has always been and continues to be a smart option.

Several are “transporters”, viz., gatherers and kidnappers/raiders/thieves. Their role is to collaboratively move “assets” from one distant location to another one that is closer to the end-user.

Lesson to be learned: You can prosper as a recruiter merely by getting recruits to relocate.

Several are “transformers”, in two senses: First, they not only used recruits to create value-added products, such as chisels, bowls, mallets and spears, but also created value-added recruits, whom they trained, e.g., as tools and weapons makers.

Lessons to be learned:

1. Integrating training and recruiting is a time-tested and proven recruiting tradition that is likely to continue thriving into the foreseeable future

2. The goods and services to which recruits add value can and perhaps should be produced by the recruiter, not by a recruiter client. This suggests the durability and wisdom of in-house hiring, as opposed to outsourcing to 3^rd-party recruiters.

At least two on the list recruited recruiters, viz., Satan and priests who sent acolytes out to recruit more acolytes.

Lesson to be learned: The Amway distributor-recruitment model is a time-tested approach with a history dating back to the Garden of Eden.

Some used lies (Satan, probably pimp, some matchmakers), others used persuasion (shaman, matchmaker) and others use force to get the end job done. Historically, persuasion has become the most common, dominant form employed to recruit collaborators and to accomplish the joint mission.

Lesson to be learned: In military recruitment, advertising has proven and probably will continue to prove to work better than a coercive draft, irrespective of whether any specific ad or recruitment presentation is entirely truthful.

At least one ancient recruiter—the pimp—did independent initial and follow-up testing of recruit capabilities.

Lesson to be learned: This suggests that as part of placement services, modern recruiters should consider offering clients an additional vetting service comprising real or simulated pre-/post-hiring performance evaluations, e.g., by running private pilots to be placed through flight simulators prior to and again sometime after hiring. As a minimum, this could involve covering the testing fees for the client.

From time immemorial, the involvement of a matchmaker has increased the odds of a durable marriage—in part because of the vetting methods and networks of the matchmaker, in part because of the involvement of both ot the prospective partners’ families, and in part because of matchmaker’s fees—seen as a lost investment should the marriage fail.

Lessons to be learned:

1. As a recruiter, you should charge both the client and the candidate—and charge them a lot. This will help reduce the odds of firing or quitting.

2. Like the professional matchmaker, you should know your clients and candidates very well. This will minimize the likelihood of setting up a bad match and embarrassing everyone concerned.

3. Involve 4^th parties, much as matchmakers involved parents. These 4^th parties may themselves subsequently either become clients or candidates, or provide leads to them. Such “4^th-party recruitment support” has great potential and can take many forms, e.g., references from a candidate’s colleague or client referrals from an affiliated company.

One notch above and millennia after the slave as a “recruit” is the indentured servant, feudal serf and others who, upon having been recruited, e.g., to join the feudal manor, become “clients” as well as recruits, inasmuch as, like apprentices and some slaves sold to pay off debts, they earn from and owe the same source, their “recruiter”.

Lesson learned: Cross-market to recruits by making them product and service purchasers, as well as job applicants, e.g., by posting jobs on your main products/services website or by marketing job-hunter products and services such as briefcases, ties, cell phones, voice mail and notebook computers on your main job site.

Finally, there’s a lesson to be learned from the example of tribal, clan or village dancers recruiting others for the dance: When recruiting, always make sure you have at least one client, one candidate or one colleague…

…lest you look like the village idiot instead of a village dancer.

By Michael Moffa