Telecommuting reduces overhead cost (rent, utility, etc) and gas usages but it's still important to maintain rapport with your team. Yay video teleconferencing!
Glad to hear that you've identified another recruiter who will best represent and look out your interests.
Contractors are clients of recruiting firms and the companies to which they are applying. If you don't feel you're receiving the kind of "customer service" you truly deserve feel free to explore other firms or work with other recruiters from the same company. The recruiter who you have the best rapport with will return your inquiries or be proactive in giving you a status update in a timely manner, no matter how busy their schedules become.
The economy in the last several years has presented some hiring circumstances I've never seen before. Some companies have decided to hold off on hiring abruptly or discharged people they recently recruited given incoming news.
Good luck and embrace the times as a learning experience.
Interesting and extraordinary discovery that offers an alternative to verbal communication not just to those who literally cannot vocalize but also to those who at times, for whatever reason, cannot "be on the same page". Whether a gap is generational, cultural, gender, or whatever, mind-reading technology presents a different way for all of us to bridge understanding.
Good workers don't need to be managed but are self-directed by their own desire to do a job well done and commitment they share with the vision of the company.
There is tremendous value in coming in to the office to see your colleagues face to face but sometimes not all work requires it. Perhaps these workers finished their work early as I have often heard that telecommuters are far more productive. If they didn't loop back with their managers then I would question that relationship or the worker. I wouldn't attribute telecommuting as a killer to productivity though.
Alternatively it would be interesting if Identified showed three scores for each factor considered - one score for education tied to national surveys/ rankings, one score for companies worked tied to perhaps employment surveys conducted by HR consulting firms, and another for connections so that viewers would see three numbers side by side. The availability of all this information is of course dependent on how willing facebook users would be to voluntary disclosure, especially their connections. Some important people don't want to be identified as such and the friends of these individuals would want to protect them from others capitalizing on the relationship.
Identified seems to be an effective way to drill down who went to school where, what companies employed who, and who knows who. The number generated from the search engine can be entertaining however when it comes to hiring decisions and real job experience the candidate who is “friends” with the most influential or worked at a certain company won’t exactly turn out to be the most intelligent or at least for a particular position a recruiter is trying to fill (ie, George Bush Jr vs Ronald Reagan). If I was a recruiter now and I have been in the past for various types of organizations (both in the private and public sector), those who benefit the organization most tend to be those who have the personality, the technical skills, the heart for the job, and share the vision of the team which are all determined by a variety of factors bigger than one single score. As labor costs constitute such a huge portion of a company’s budget, I would suggest getting to know exactly who you hire, inside and out, which takes time and effort. Well worth it to avoid a disastrous hiring decision.