Hubspot is changing the world. They have 160 employees all of whom are able to take time off whenever they want. No vacation time limit, as long as the work gets done. It is similar to www.gorowe.com from Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson. However, Hubspot were just awarded the Boston business award beating people like Google.

What do you think that does to their recruitment strategy? Do you reckon they get more direct applicants? Live on the fringes and do likewise, otherwise your company will be left behind.

Recruitment is usually done in three ways. Recently, Randy and David Meerman Scott talked about this in terms of marketing. I’ve added some detail to make it relevant to recruitment.

You can BUY attention. You advertise on jobsites and pay for access to CV database’s

You can BEG for media attention and PR.

You can Bug people, otherwise known as headhunting.

All these methods are yielding diminishing results. You can’t BUY, BEG or BUG Gen Y. The old rules aren’t working. Companies need to change the game.

Instead, companies should BUILD a tribe. Building a tribe costs nothing but time. It means instead of buying attention, you earn attention. You write, video and podcast content that speaks straight to your buyer persona’s. If you’re recruiting scientists you write content for them. If you’re recruiting software engineers do likewise.

The days of bully-boy recruitment are over. Think popular playground kid rather than high school jock. Everyone needs to know who you are, why you exist and what you stand for. Otherwise you’re just another corporation, stuck in the past. Welcome to the wonderful world of recruitment 3.0. It’s here to stay.

Employees should be given the freedom to do thing differently, make mistakes and ask forgiveness rather than permission.  Sometimes they’ll make glaring mistakes, sometimes discoveries, sometimes nothing will happen. Without mistakes we’d never have had Penicillin or best of all me. I’m a walking, talking advert for elderly parents still packing the occasional Durex. Mistakes can be a good thing! Half of Google’s products are mistakes on 20% time.

Managers are too often trying to poka yoke their employees. Poka Yoke your processes not your people. If you’re an employee go and tell your manager you want to Anti Poka Yoke your environment. Firstly, it’ll get him thinking about why he should give you more freedom to express yourself. Secondly, you get to say “Anti Poka Yoke” out loud.

If you’re not inspired, then you have to tough it out. Believe it’ll come back or pray depending on how you feel about the “big dog” in the clouds. Personally I don’t believe in the “big dog” the “bearded man” or the “strong, muscled woman” that feminists seem to have adopted. I believe in me and my team. I’m going to keep turning up, keep searching and fighting. And I’ll try to grow some designer stubble. Maybe that’ll help me look Northern. Perhaps a kebab or a short skirt would be better!

The people I like, I’d hire, I’d put in front of my clients are the people who have “all the questions.” They want to know why and how and what and where. It’s not because they read a textbook in business school or saw it on a bumper sticker. It’s because that’s who they are. They want change, innovation, thrills and setbacks. What they don’t want is the status quo. Question everything and then question it again. That’s how you make breakthroughs, quantum leaps and affect change.

In 2010 employers are still clinging to 9-5. Why can’t people be in charge of when they work, how long for and even what they wear! People are intelligent. They know they need to work, most of them enjoy it so why impose a military approach to timekeeping. It’s outdated, get over it.

Happy workers are more productive. Make your employees happy by letting them live their lives without telling them what to do. Let them ramble into new opportunities and don’t straight-jacket them. It’s the only way to survive in 2010.

So we’ve told you what we don’t believe in. What do we believe in? We believe in helping create remarkable, game changing companies that live on the fringes and sleep in office hammocks. We believe in helping companies build tribes of people interested in what they say and do and think and feel. We believe in creating events and mentor programs and podcasts that make the most of Cambridge’s technicolor of ideas.  We believe that recruiters’ can be more than just fee-takers.

But it’s not about us, it’s about what you. What are you doing to make your company the coolest and brightest, wackiest and happiest? Are you vanilla? We didn’t think so.

Being efficient and being effective are two vastly different things. Being efficient is keeping busy, doing the “right” thing, getting things done. Have you ever questioned if what you do every day is actually changing something? Are you just doing stuff to do stuff? It’s an easy trap to fall into.

Being effective is all about less work more play. Working out what you need to do is half the battle. Every morning ask yourself this: If I only accomplished one thing today, what would it be? Then forget the rest. Those tasks you keep putting off, probably aren’t that important anyway. Be effective, win ugly and shred the paper. Or just shred the paper pushers, that’ll make them feel busy.

Top talent switches for the journey. They switch jobs to be part of something that matters. Are you working for a company that is questing to be remarkable, brilliant, cool or different? Or are you picking up a paycheck? If you’re a CEO, are you quite happy being King in charge of mediocre yes-men?

Decide to destroy the status quo. There’s no other way.

My brother got married last Sunday. The similarity between starting a business or a marriage is hope. The statistics for each suck:  50% of marriages fail and 60% of start ups fail in the first three years. You have to be crazy to start either. Crazy people, like me or my brother, think they can beat the odds. I’m not sure I know the meaning of risk-adverse. In Vegas I put all my money on red: You know what, I won.

In gambling there’s a saying: You can’t lose the chips you don’t put in the middle. But you can’t win much either. How many of you are going “all in?”

Ps- My brother and his bride looked brilliantly happy, and I got drunk. Everyone’s a winner. Or as they say in Vegas “winner, winner, chicken dinner.”