What are some older recruiting techniques that make no sense in the real world?

 I prefer “less sense” over “no sense,” and “today’s world” over “real world.” That said, WRT new entry level hires IMO IME …

1. Assuming everyone wants to be upwardly mobile/Linear instead of recognizing various Career Concepts and hiring proportionately for the corporate need and strategic mix. If everyone is an alpha Linear, it creates a highly political dog-eat-dog culture with questions about who’s doing the work. Strategic proportions of Linears, Experts, Spirals and Transitories (for downtrends) makes more sense.
2. Recruiting primarily at alma maters. Tends to create “old boy” cultures.
3. Limiting gender, ethnic, national and racial diversity tends to create insulated and vulnerable organizational cultures.
4. Socializing new hires to do things our way (only) which dampens creativity and innovation and better ways of doing things.
5. Hiring primarily on salary and benefits negotiations rather than passion, fit with culture, and energy level.
6. Hiring by HRM or Personnel departments rather than by the line team who will use them.
7. Hiring for “warm bodies” in periods of rapid growth rather than strategic planning. See #1.
8. Hiring without careful regard to Critical Core Capabilities and their enhancement. See Kaplan & Norton Strategic Mapping.
9. Hiring for technical skills rather than social/culture fit skills. It’s easier to teach skills than change attitude. See The Aberdeen Experiment.

For higher level recruiting …

1. Poaching talent for more money—money hungry mercenaries will do the same to you.
2. Hiring “successful” executives from another industry who don’t know your industry and the people in it.
3. Hiring people who don’t and didn’t have the ability to create and articulate clear, robust, and inspiring “charters.” See Level Three Leadership and below.
4. Hiring people who haven’t and don’t have respect for and a deep desire to protect rather than abuse the Commons (air, water, soil, flora, fauna, and the underprivileged).
5. Hiring people whose primary VABE is “maximize profits.” IMO a defunct and in today’s world immoral value. Instead, we should adopt “maximize sustainable profits” that acknowledge every person’s and every company’s responsibility to protect not abuse the Commons. The former are “net extractors” while the latter are “net contributors.” Hire people who want to give more than they take. Even investors have the global citizenship responsibility to protect the Commons—we all live in the same world.
6. Hiring people who put VABEs ahead of hard evidence. Most people do. (See Daniel Kahneman’s Nobel Prize for example.) We should hire people who seek out and adapt to hard evidence and science.
7. Hiring people with a high Orientation to Hierarchy (OH). They want to be kings and dictators, and are not interested in the well-being of the “little people.” I divide people in positions of authority into two major categories, Type I and Type II. Type I authoritors (may or may not be leaders) want the perquisites of power—cars, offices, exclusive memberships, etc. Type II leaders have a burning passion to accomplish a vision and don’t care so much about the trappings of power. I trust the latter, not the former.

For starters, off the top.