I’ve chided companies for using mundane recruiting methods and salary scales that result in hiring people on the fat part of the bell curve. Management guru Tom Peters suggests recruiting and hiring weirdos — people on the thin, leading edge of the curve; people who will upset the balance at your company and take you in new directions. Those people cost money — lots of money — because they’re (surprise!) on the leading edge of the curve.

Some companies use headhunters to recruit good people — for whatever reason: their HR department can’t do it well; they like to spend money; they like an outsider’s perspective; they like the networks that good headhunters maintain.

But the same bell-curve problem exists when a company hires a headhunter: You hire the best — out on the edge of the curve — or you use a mediocre headhunter to save money (and time, if you’re too lazy to go find the best). The problem is exactly the same: you’re buying mediocrity.

Now you can hire mediocrity more efficiently, using a market-price solution to recruiting: Dayak.com. This is the Priceline of recruiting, where recruiters with time on their hands compete in the free market’s oldest game, How Low Can You Go?

• Good workers don’t work cheap, and you don’t find them on the discount job boards. They Live Like an Exception.
• Good headhunters don’t work cheap, and you won’t find them bidding to give away their fees. They’re too busy recruiting.

Fish at the lowest end of the food chain congregate in huge schools, competing to be your dinner. Watch the bell curve form out in the water… it’s surrounded by boats with big, wide nets fishing for quantity. Likewise, discount shopping is best on the fat part of the performance curve, where the prices are reasonable, the product is plentiful, and the results are mediocre. (Check #1 and #7 in 7 Mistakes Internal Recruiters Make.)

Once again, the Net brings the lowest common denominator to our desktops — Dayak.com and other markets of mediocrity. You get what you pay for. Guaranteed.