The forthcoming EU privacy regulations, known as the General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR for short, are currently instilling doubt and fear amongst the recruiter community and our candidates. Let me offer some clarifications.
In the short run there will be some headaches for data managers, researchers and recruiters. In the long run, however, GDPR will benefit small, nimble executive search teams that already use a personal approach with their directly searched candidates.
This is also very good news for our leadership candidates.
For Leadership Candidates
Getting ready to level up to your next leadership role? You can expect that all of the information you provide to recruiters and directly to companies will soon be handled more carefully than ever before. That’s good news for you, read on.
Gone will be the days when your CV is peddled in a marketplace by faceless algorithms that decide when and where you are best fit without your knowledge of where that CV goes and how it got there.
The GDPR regulations are binding law that clearly spell out how and when the personal information of any person can be shared.
Under the GDPR, even giving your business card to someone at a networking event may not be considered the “explicit consent,” necessary to pass on your personal information. Perhaps this will mean two sets of business cards? Left breast pocket for the cards with consent. Right breast pocket for those without. Imagine the fun “The Office” will have with that!
Under GDPR, your personal data - CV, motivation letter, referee letters, even email - has an expiration date which must be kept to a strict minimum.
Glorious for you! No more worry about that ancient CV in which you over-emphasized your accomplishments in your first junior role.
And glorious for me too! I joined the executive search consulting world precisely because I know that people do not distill down to two pages. Organizations need talented leaders to be able to thrive.
The GDPR for us is simply validation of the kind of care we have always provided for our clients.
While you will enjoy greater personal information security, my colleagues and I at Robertson Associates will enjoy a recruiting and placement landscape that better appreciates the value of our deep personal engagement with a company’s talent search.
To my Fellow Executive Search Colleagues
In many ways, GDPR simply enforces best practices for addressing candidate privacy. Ultimately, recruiters that successfully transition to GDPR compliance will be providing a more personalized experience for their clients buoyed by greater trust and transparency.
Our task as executive search consultants is a serious one.
Our industry is often struggling for legitimacy in the eyes of our clients and our candidates. Let’s tackle this unique opportunity of new Data Privacy Regulations to demonstrate how serious we are about servicing all stakeholders with the highest level of professionalism and ethics.
Regulations go into effect on 25 May 2018. I think that date will be the beginning of a new time for executive search - a time when hiring managers begin to better appreciate the value of the small executive search team. And this, I think, will be good for business.