Seeking Extraordinary Talent Acquisition Professionals: Boston, Redwood City, and Beyond

In putting together a job description/ ad for the talent acquisition professionals I’m looking for, I wound up writing a manifesto. Not sure it’s what I’ll run with, but I like it. Kind of a lot. thought it deserved life somewhere, and since I have this handy-little platform available to me, I’m going to take advantage. Please, feel free to pass along, dissect, disavow, dissemble, diagnose… just, don’t duplicate (unless you’re willing to pin the blame on me). Never was a fan of copycats.

In any event: I’m building a team. It’s going to be fun. There’s loads of potential, a great platform, some interesting challenges, and support from the executive team. Don’t expect me to breathe down your neck, but do expect me to help you when you need it. I know I need people in Waltham (near Boston), Redwood City (that’d be near San Francisco), and I’ll probably need somebody in Gainesville.

Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant                                                                                                                               

Ever want to be part of building something extraordinary? Now’s your chance.

Why Join Mobiquity? Why Now? Because it’s Your Best Move, and Now is When it’s Available

There’s a reason why thought-leaders like Andrew Hiser, the pioneer of human-centered software design, have joined Mobiquity. It’s because they see the future becoming the present: Mobile changing everything.

It’s the 5^th Wave. The world in your pocket. Applications that tell doctors how well your medication is working as it passes through your body, to ones that alert a restaurant that you’ve pulled into their lot and are ready for you to walk their take-out to them.

Apps that help drug addicts recover, and apps that will help you retire wealthy.

We’re not talking about flinging birds at pigs anymore (fun as that is). We’re talking about changing how people behave, how business gets done, and how we will shape the future.

Mobiquity is at the leading edge of the wave. Positioned to define the future of mobile, a name that will become as familiar to the world as the names of the biggest successes out of the Internet wave.

Talent Acquisition Makes it All Possible

Without solid talent, organizations stagnate, and fade away. Without the greatest talent, organizations can’t surge, can’t become the key leaders in their space. Our job is to make sure that happens. We seek real recruiters. Budding talent acquisition thought leaders. We get the big It: that it’s always about the people. That A players hire A players, while B’s hire C’s, C’s hire D’s, and well… then you get to F. Failure.

Our role is to find the A’s, engage with them, excite them, and help them through the hiring process. We’re matchmakers to the Nth degree, but we’re also business people. We use marketing, social media, talent pools, innovative sourcing & research, and a degree of sales skills to attract the very best. We never cut corners, we don’t lie, harass, or avoid hard truths: we are the A-players of recruitment.

We Are Looking for You

Join us, if you see recruitment as much of a calling as a profession – if it’s your passion, as much as your paycheck. We’re going to blow some things up. You should find that exciting. You should find process a tool best used lightly. You should be funny. Funny matters, in this role and in life.

If you’re sitting there, thinking “holy crap – I’ve been looking for this!”, you have a next step in your journey to greatness: Find Martin Burns, Director of Talent Acquisition at Mobiqutiy. Work for him, if you want a boss who wants you to teach him some new skills, who wants you to try new approaches and make some mistakes along the way, and who wants to hire people who he can help grow into leaders in our game-changing, rapidly evolving  profession.

Make the Best Move – Join Mobiquity

You can find Martin all sorts of places: mburns@mobiquity.com. 617.851.7277. twitter. linkedin. facebook. etc, etc…. You’re in the game. You get it.

Related articles

• Dr. Changelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Went to Mobiquity (recruiter.wordpress.com)

Dr. Changelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Went to Mobiquity

Funny, how life goes. A few weeks ago, I was buzzing along, running Talent MatchUp & working with a great client called Magenic. I’d been working onsite with them for a little over two years, and it was great. Smart people to work with, a nifty little model that I think may be a significant part of how we do recruitment in the future, and I’d become friends with many of the people there.

All that said… something was missing.

That’s not unusual, of course. You spend a few years doing the same thing, and you can start to feel a bit stale. The work had become fairly routine, I was in a pattern, and… I hate that. I’m not someone who’s good at rinse-cycle-repeat, and that’s where I’d gotten myself. Not that the work didn’t have its fun challenges, but still. I wanted something harder.

Like many entrepreneurs, I don’t know how to say “ahh, this is good – don’t mess it up.” On the contrary. I honestly think I exist to mess things up. A little bit of chaos, of weird, seems to suit me. It’s probably why the Absurdists have always resonated with me. Why I felt so at home the first time I stepped into the ICA. Why I find comfort in The Fairy Fellers Master Stroke.

Safety isn’t exactly in my power alley.

So. Last Tuesday, like I do from time to time (and, you should, too), I reached out to my network. Said something along the lines of “I’m sure you haven’t, but if you’ve heard of my dream job being open, could you let me know?”

See, here’s the thing: sometimes, when you speak into the Void? The Void also speaks back to you.

In this case, it was my friend Steven. He’d heard of something. Something that was Really Cool. Perfect. Insanely great. So, like I’m always telling people they should do, I took the resume I routinely update (you should, too), and shot it to him. He made an intro to their insanely great Chief People Officer. We had coffee. She’s insanely great.

So’s the team that she lined up to meet me on Monday. They’re really great. Winning dream-time kind of people. A smart idea, and first to market. Profitable in their first year. An inspirational founder who has multiple successes under his belt. Big goals, and smart plans on how to achieve them. I really wanted in.

So… yeah. It happened. The big IT. Susan (the Chief People Officer – did I mention, insanely awesome?) asked me to come onboard, and build their recruiting department. I think I hesitated for…. no. Nope, didn’t hesitate. Couldn’t. Took the job.

So, in my rambling way, I’m very (very) happy to announce that I will be joining Mobiquity later this month, as their Director of Talent Acquisition. I’ll be rolling up Talent MatchUp in the meantime, since Mobiquity is going to be scaling hugely, and will need all of my focus (along with the recruitment team I’ll be building). It also means that Magenic will be looking for an experienced talent acquisition specialist for Waltham (know a good one? send ‘em my way, and I’ll treat ‘em right).

Mobiquity is going to be big. They’re a year out of the gate, and already a leader in the mobile space – and, with IT directors now saying that mobile spending will be  growing by 50% in 2013, that’s a good place to be. The executive team is impressive. Well planned expansion underway. They’re – wait, _we’re_  going to be hiring. A lot.

If you – or, someone you know – is looking to get in early with a game-changer, this is it. Find me anyway you can, and let me know who you (or they) are.

Short term (ie, yesterday, if possible), I’m looking to hire several experienced Sales Executives for New York and Philadelphia, as well as a Client Partner for New York. I’m going to have a lot more to share, soon (developers, developer, developers….G&A. Marketing. Recruiters…). Stay tuned.

Also: the career site needs some work. Which I find geekily exciting. Just bear with us for a brief bit.

Career Question on Human Resources Versus Marketing Majors – and, My Twist On the Whole Thing

Got a question from an Egyptian MBA student in Germany  (yup, that’s right – I’ve gone international thanks to Xing – love that site).

Here’s the Q, and then the A.  (Just in context, I’m inclined to view human resources and recruiting as pretty clearly separate – there’s overlap, of course, but more along the lines of the overlap that happens when sales lines up a contract and then hands it off to finance to set the client up in AR, etc).

> Hello M. Burns,
>
> i am an MBA student in germany. I am egyptian, and i am in the
> process of chossing the major within MBA studies.
> I would like to ask you for advice concerning the 2 fields Human
> Resources Management & Marketing. Actually i am interested in Human
> Resources Management field, but i am afraid i can not find an
> internship and job in the near future.
>
> from your experiences what would you advise me to do? and how do you
> see the H.R.M. field in the work areana?
>
> I would like to thank you in advance.
> kind regards,
> maha

Hi Maha – Thanks for the question.  I’m going to post this whole thing to my blog – http://recruiter.wordpress.com, since I think it’s a great inquiry.

Actually, I think it would be interesting if you could define your major so that it bridged marketing and HR, and geared up to become a Recruiter instead of an HR-type (they’re actually very distinct disciplines as we’re discovering on this side of the pond).   Here’s why: the best organizations (ZoomInfo, Google, etc) are very smart about how they attract and retain their talent.  This means they’ve turned traditional HR concepts on their heads, and look at it like this – view your open positions as products you’re trying to “sell”, and the overall culture of the organization as it’s “brand”.  So, you have a marketing message and a product line. You define a marketing campaign geared at driving interest in working at your organization.  You use a Web-based applicant tracking system to capture potential “clients” (job applicants0, and then assess how “hot” the lead is (i. e., how qualified the candidate is).  From there, you bring in the prospect (think of it as a sales call where the potential client comes to you), market the role the them (at the same time, they’re marketing themselves to you – it’s weird, I know).  Make an offer, negotiate terms & contracts (this is where it gets more like biz-dev, because you’re looking at bartering of services and knowledge, with some cash mixed in, and you’re setting up an exclusive partnership), and close the deal.  It’s a classic lead-gen driven sales process, from start to finish.  Frankly, it’s like an entire business cycle, and various steps along the way can be easily related to most aspects of business.  The one area that is touched on the lightest – ironically – is Operations and Finance.  You’ll get involved setting up salary and benefits, and possibly some logistics around IT & office set-up, but not much accounting beyond that.  You’ll spend more time thinking like a marketer and sales person – and yet, until things change, you’ll probably wind up being part of Operations.  Just a hold-over from the traditional habit of shoving Recruiting into HR.

Traditional HR doesn’t think like this, which is a shame – when you look closely at the most successful organizations (the top 5% in any industry), you’ll almost invariably find out that those firms look at recruiting as a sales and marketing driven role, and not a reactive, operational one.  They may not consciously define it this way – or even break it out of HR – but when you look at how they operate you’ll see the diference.  They’ll be strategic, proactive, and creatve in how they drive talent into the organization.