What is the Miami Talent Pipeline?

Some of you may remember me launching a website back in February ’17 called the Miami Talent Pipeline.

The MTP was centered on free job referrals across my personal network.  If someone in my network (or a second degree connection) was looking for a job, my friends and I would connect them to opportunities that came across our radars — all for free with no strings attached.  It was as simple as that.

I did this for three reasons:

1) I was tired of hearing people say, “there’s no good talent” in Miami and wanted to do something about it.

2) I desired to give back to the community on a grassroots level.

3) I enjoyed meeting new people, learning about their career trajectories, and expanding my own network in the process.

Before You Jump to Conclusions

I knew from the beginning the MTP wasn’t “scalable.”

The fact that the MTP wasn’t “scalable” was exactly why I did it.

I wanted to talk to every single person.  I built the MTP to be highly personal and dependent upon relationships and good old-fashioned introductions.

I was—and still am—convinced personal interactions are not only the best way to get a job but are also key to attracting and retaining people in our Miami community.

So What Went Wrong?

Expectations.  The MTP failed because of expectations.

As the time-tested destroyer of relationships, business deals, family dynamics, group projects, and pretty much every other human interaction, misaligned expectations struck once again during my time working on the MTP.

For me, the MTP was a community service project.  I committed my free time to helping people find jobs, largely as a way to say thank you to all of the people who supported me along the way.

Among my close personal network, the MTP worked like a charm.  I lost count of the number of introductions we made and interviews we arranged.  It was exactly what I was hoping for.

However, once the MTP grew outside of my close personal network, it became a complete disaster.

Despite the clear, up-front messaging about “free,” “for friends,” and “not a job board,” the MTP was no longer a community service project.  It became an undervalued recruiting service and yet another way to try and game the system.

I got to a point where it made me sick to read the emails in the MTP inbox.

The personal connection that underscored the entire project disappeared overnight.  The expectation was:  push my resume, or get out of the way.

The Job Search as a Whole

When I went back and looked at the MTP site again this evening, I keyed into one word that shows up on both the homepage and the application:  lazy.

Of all the times in our lives to be lazy, the job search is definitely not the time.

A job search centered on laziness and disingenuous motives is like trying to row a boat with holes across the Atlantic.

I still whole-heartedly believe in the power of personal job referrals and will continue to make introductions on my own, but for now, I’m closing the Miami Talent Pipeline.

It was a fascinating learning experience and a moderately effective community initiative…  Though I’m afraid the model just isn’t right.

Until next time…