It’s not Business, it’s Personal!

When I first started out in the recruiting business, I was working on a tough contingency search.  Every Mon, Wed, and Friday we had status meetings to give updates on where we were at with all of our searches.  One time, I had made a commitment to make 3 candidate submittals on a difficult position by Friday (It was Monday).  When my Friday 1X1 came around, I was nervous going into the 1X1 with my manager because I hadn’t delivered on my commitment to him.  He was naturally upset that I hadn’t let him know before the deadline had passed.  My big lesson that I learned that day was that if I wasn’t going to deliver on something, be proactive and let him know about my missed deadline.  Come to the table prepared to talk about what you’ve done so far.  And don’t be scared to ask for help.

With the actual situation aside, it was what he said afterwards that has stuck with me for a while.  He said

“Johnny, I know this is business and all, but I take this stuff personally when you say something….but you don’t follow through on it and don’t bother to let me know”.

In the US, we’re brought up with a “It’s just business, not personal” attitude to everything but I recently learned a great lesson in business.  Some people are very much wired to take things very personally.  And I believe both through my natural tendencies and experiences like this early on in my career, I am one of those people.  I recently attended a Professional Development Training Course and the speaker talked about 4 different personality styles.  There were Thinkers, Doers, Guardians and Talkers.  I was of course a Talker, and Talkers, by definition are very relationship driven and their biggest fear is hurting relationships.  They tend to take things very personally even when things are not intended that way…

The reason I bring this up is that some of my biggest professional mistakes I’ve made have been the direct result of me taking something too personally.  As a recruiter, I’ve let thousands of candidates know that they were not the right fit for the job.  Some of these candidates take rejection well.  Some not so well.  Some of these candidates have come back at me with nasty e-mails, and some have come back with e-mails that simply provoke me.  Looking back, I can now remember multiple instances with candidates and clients where I’ve taken things way too personally and have reacted in an inappropriate manner.  People on the outside might see my over-reaction as me being too emotional, or not having good judgment skills.  That is certainly the case, but if you dig deeper and determined why the way I act the way I do, you’ll realize that it’s because I take my business very personally.  I take my reputation very personally.  Anytime someone attacks me or my decisions, or my work, it hurts and I am naturally very defensive because again, I am very relationship oriented and I hate to see that disharmony that results when someone is disappointed in or angry at me.

I believe people who take business personally, like me need to be especially cognizant of the way business situations and people effect them.  We are prone to getting down easily or getting scared to interact with people whom we think we’ve wronged or have wronged us.  We tend to overreact and are known to write e-mails that seem emotionally charged.  These are the tendencies that people like me need to fight each day.

But the way I see it, I love taking my work and the relationships around me personally.  No person I meet or Project I work on is really just business to me.  People deserve dignity to be treated with a personal touch.  Projects that have my fingerprint on them, I strive to make them the best possible representation of my work ethic and nothing less.  When you take business personally, you deliver to customers what you’d expect to be delivered to you, which is extremely high level of service and results.  My personal connection and investment in my clients and customers drives me to do my best because at the root it’s driven by both my deepest motivator and my deepest fear that if I don’t do my job right, someone’s not going to be happy with me.  For me, that’s what drives me everyday.

Is the moral of the story to take your business personally?  No, not necessarily.  Every person is wired differently.  Each person brings a unique approach to business to the table and just like  you may have your strengths, you will also have your weaknesses that will manifest themselves in different ways.  Everyone has them.  Recognizing what they are in the first place is the key to dealing with them and moving up in your career.  Taking a personality test is a great way to learn more about your tendencies and to look back on your career and analyze the mistakes you made and see if they align with your personality traits.  And if you don’t have the willpower to change yourself or hold back on your negative tendencies, at the very least you can tell your manager what issues you have and the two of you can work collaboratively to address those issues.

Anyone can be a recruiter…

The title of my blog post might make you think that I am suggesting that anyone can make it as a recruiter.  That is definitely not the case.  Rather I’m proposing that no matter what you do, whether you’re in HR, Recruiting, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, etc you can help with your company’s recruiting efforts.  Many of you are already aware of this fact because your company may offer an employee referral bonus.  At my last company, I worked at a Recruiting agency, so there was no rewards, and not much in the way of recognition for great employee referrals.  Was I happy about that?  Not necessarily.  Do I understand the decision?  Absolutely – It’s what you call working in a startup environment.  If you’re looking for pats on the back and being rewarded for everything you do, go look for a larger company.  People contribute to the greater good at startups because they believe in the greater goal.

I worked in an office with 30 other recruiters.  With that much horsepower, it should’ve been relatively easy to attract and recruit great employees right?  Wrong!  Believe it or not, it was just as hard to recruit recruiters as it is to recruit for your most difficult engineering, or sales spots.  But with that said, as a recruiter at a recruiting agency, recruiting was/is our job and finding great recruiters wasn’t something that needed to be rewarded via an employee referral program.  Recruiting great people was expected – It was our job and our livelihood.  Some small companies can’t necessarily afford to pay a referral bonus for great referrals or going beyond the call to help find a great new employee.  Sometimes, you just do it for the great good of the company.  That’s part of the spirit that I loved working at my last company.  You didn’t need to do something because you were asked to do it or because you knew there was a reward.  You did it because you loved your company.

But when someone goes above and beyond the call to recruit a great employee without being asked to do so, shouldn’t there be some recognition?  Common sense says “Yes, absolutely”.  That’s why when there IS a monetary reward available, it’s a no-brainer that you should put on your recruiting cap and become a recruiter.  To date, I have placed 2 of my personal friends here at Lifesize and I have placed a couple others through personal contacts that I’ve maintained through the years.  We offer generous referral fees for all of our open full-time positions ranging from 2-4K but HR/Recruiting Team members are not eligible for those fees because of our ability to influence the hiring decision.  Now, it’s my job to recruit great employees and build up my network but I by myself managed to convince 2 of my “personal” friends to join Lifesize.  How many of you can say that?  I’m by no means boasting about my abilities because I’m sure there are others that have referred more than 2 great employees as well but if you think about it, what if every employees managed to refer 2 great employees to Lifesize per year?  That would result in over 1000 hires per year.  You can quickly see how significant leveraging your base of employees to recruit for you could be.  I’ve heard a previous VP of Sales at a client that I used to work with say the same thing about sales.  Everbody is a potential salesperson for your company.  Now, granted, it’ll be easier to sell, say consumer electronics to your friends than it will be to sell Enterprise Server Equipment.  But my point is, EVERYBODY can be a recruiter.  You have the chance to make some great pocket cash and work alongside your best friends while you’re at it.  Why wouldn’t you want to be your company’s best ambassador.  If you’re not proud to work at your company, perhaps you need to find a new company?  And if you are proud to work at your company, go onto Facebook now, and tell people.

Recruiting Taboo…

As a young recruiter, I was afforded the opportunity to place many candidates in varying jobs.  Amidst the recruiting process, I forged close relationships with many of the candidates that I worked with.  I found them great career opportunities that they were and still are very thankful to have.  I also made some (not all!) clients very happy with the recruiting work I did for them.  Such is the business of recruiting.  Making candidates and clients happy.  It is a very rewarding business and you make a lot of great friends and contacts while you’re at it.

But what happens when the candidate you placed at your client is no longer happy at his job and he comes to you asking you if you can help him find another position?  What should you, as a recruiter do?  Is it OK to pass job leads onto him?  How about to go as far as to submit him to another job that you’re working on?  Is it OK to help him edit his resume?  Is it OK to even pass his resume onto another recruiter?  Well, there are many things to consider here:

• The client has paid you for your service.  It may have been a small retainer, or it might have been a large contingent fee, but either way, the client paid you a sum of some sort to find and place that candidate.  For you to proactively recruit that same candidate away would be a conflict of interest.  Many recruiting agreements have some sort of non-solicit against recruiting candidates away but most of the time it is simply a gentlemen’s agreement to not play dirty.  After all, if they are a paying client – Protecting a valuable relationship like that is in your own best interest anyways.  One’s loyalties are always to the ones who pay your salary right?  It’s 100% clear how one should approach a situation like this right?  Well, not exactly.
• The other side of the argument is a lot more gray.  You see, as I mentioned previously, many of the candidates whom I’ve placed I’ve become great friends with.  They’re friends with me on Facebook, I’ll even invite some of them to my wedding.  I was a trusted advisor to them during their job search.  Some of them were unsure of how they were going to pay their mortgage or provide for themselves and/or their family until I came along.  The relationship is symbiotic in that I am just as grateful that they came along.  I had a critical job opening that I had to fill.  I was under tremendous pressure from my company and my clients to fill that job and you, the candidate came along and allowed me to be the hero to m client, and in the process, I got a nice paycheck as well.  I was afforded a great feeling of accomplishment, pride and joy because of you.  I owe you big.  A recruiter/candidate relationship is a special relationship and one that you don’t just turn my back on.

When I place a candidate in a job, whether as an agency recruiter or a corporate recruiter I feel personally responsible for their happiness and well being.  I may have just placed someone who was desperately looking for a job and willing to take whatever came along.  But by the same token, the candidate I just placed may have been at the same company for the past 10 years, wasn’t looking for a job when I contacted him, and I convinced him to leave that job, and take a risk to jump to a startup gig.  I convinced him to take an unnecessary risk for greater rewards down the line.  It’s situations like this where I feel especially responsible for my candidate’s well being.  Sometimes career moves like this work out great and everyone’s happy.  Sometimes things don’t end so well.  Which brings me to my original question.  What should you (as a recruiter) do if a candidate whom you placed in a job previously, comes back and asks you for help finding a new job?

I put this question out on LinkedIn to see what others would do in the same situation.  Naturally, there was a lot of outrage that I would even ask a question like this.  People called me a coward, said that I lacked intelligence for even asking the question.  Some were suggesting I take the question down because it might raise suspicions from my current employer.  Some simply said “BIG CONFLICT OF INTEREST”.

Now granted, I think a lot of the backlash was simply caused by how I phrased the questionThis got me thinking.  Why is there such a backlash against talking about this topic?  I’m not sure about you, but as a recruiter, I’ve come across this situation more times than I can even count.  As a young recruiter, I oftentimes remembered asking my superiors how they thought I should handle the situation.  I recall someone who’s response was “If you have to ask, the answer is no”.  That was the end of that discussion.  But if you are a recruiting manager, I believe this is a topic that you should be addressing head on with your team.  The solutions for situations like this were not that simple though.  Even when I probed people to go deeper and provide examples and solutions, they found it uncomfortable to share their own experiences and solutions because their own moral code was their own and not be shared or agreed upon by me.  I can appreciate this though, because how they act in a given situation is really their choice.

One interesting solution that was put forth in my survey was to hand that candidate off to another recruiter thereby eliminating any conflict of interest.  I initially thought that was a great idea but after thinking on it a bit more thought that really ignored the whole principal of protecting your client and avoiding a conflict of interest in the first place.  Aren’t you indirectly hurting your client by referring that candidate to another recruiter?

Another solution I got was to work with the candidate and the client to see if you could make the situation amicable.  That’s a nice fairy tail scenario but in reality, candidates don’t come to you when they want to work things out.  They come to you when they WANT out.  Your job as a recruiter is not to be their agent in on-going workplace satisfaction discussions.  Your jobs is to find people their dream jobs, get paid and move onto the next placement.  Candidates realize this as well.  Great recruiters will keep well in touch with their candidates over the years, and be more proactive with staying in touch.  But most of the time, these type of career satisfaction conversations are had reactively.  Our jobs are to recruit.  Counseling employees on their career satisfaction could be a 2nd career in itself!

I think one belief that I held in common with one of the responses was that no matter what the situation, if you’re not a paying client, then it’s game on.  I’ve blogged on this topic before as well.  But even then, there’s no black and white situation.  What if they were a previous client?  How long should you wait?

I think the overarching theme amongst LinkedIn survey responses was that your actions all come down to your own personal code of ethics.  But doesn’t this golden rule approach apply to business and life in general?  There’s no guidebook on how to approach every single business situation because every situation has its own wrinkles.  The recruiting industry, like almost all industries is full of potential conflicts of interest and tough business dilemmas.  I’ve talked about coaching candidates for interviews in past blogs but along the same lines, did you know that many agency recruiters “doctor” candidate resume if they are not up to par?  I’m not here to make a judgment on whether it’s right or wrong.  Again, every situation is different but I’m of the belief that we should encourage proactive, honest and open dialogue with recruiters about these situations.  These taboo recruiting topics are taboo for a reason.  Because sometimes simply figuring out what to do is a difficult conversation in itself.  Perhaps we can just hope and trust that people will handle all of these situations the right way.  But if you’re new to the business, it’s not that simple.  There’s a lot to learn and you can learn from the wisdom of others, or you can learn by making mistakes.  I’m more a product of the latter but would’ve much preferred the former 🙂

The #1 piece of advice I can give if you are new to phone interviewing..

List out the top 10 questions that you anticipate that you will be asked in the phone interview and script out your answers.  Why would you script out your answers?  Because it will not only help you if they happen to ask you that exact question, but it will help you interview in general, giving you valuable content to draw from during your interviews.  It is just a great mental exercise to go through and fine tune your responses so that you are prepared.  Script Scipt Script.  Pracitce your answers in front of a mirror, or ideally someone else.  Ask them to critique your intonation, your inflection, your eye contact, your body language.  Get some feedback on how you can improve on things.  Script your interview answers.  Print them out and have them in front of you as your phone interview.  Also, have your resume in front of you for you to reference.  But bottom line, be prepared.  The more you prepare, the less nervous you will be and the more confident you will be.  Just simply google “most common inteview questions” if you need an idea of where to start.

Everybody makes mistakes!

I remember when I first started in the recruiting business, one day I spoke to someone who I thought was a “Rockstar”.  1) I quickly realized not to use the word “rockstar” too much and 2) The candidate who I thought was a Rockstar….wasn’t.  But the zealous junior recruiter that I was wouldn’t take no for an answer and I demanded that he be submitted to my client.  We know how that story turned out. 

I also remember another time where I was responding to a very important client and he asked a critical question to which I responded (to many important people) “no”.  Suffice it to say, my e-mail could’ve used some context or explanation, but in no certain terms, I was told that my e-mail was not written in a professional manner. 

I remember instances like these with fondness as they have shaped to become who I am today.  I am much more discerning today as a recruiter having realized that not everyone is a rockstar.  I’m also very careful about the political implications of how I respond to important e-mails because of the mistake I made back a ways.  Junior recruiters have many things going for them.  What they lack is in experience they make up for in hunger, drive, persistence, work ethic.  If you do decide to hire junior emlpoyees, challenge them, free them, suppor them and give them some leeway to make mistakes.  They will make you look bad at times.  They will even lose you some money.  But they and you will be better for it in the long run.  I know I am and I hope that those who worked with me early on are thankful for it as well.  I know I’ll keep making mistakes as long as I’m alive, but it’s part of who I am.  Deal with it.  Everyone has faults.  Even the best 🙂

My apology to job seekers everywhere..

It wasn’t until I started looking for a new job that I fully realized how much a recruiter’s job matters.  When you are looking for a new job, every e-mail that comes back regarding your application, every call that you get regarding your status is huge.  It’s almost like dating a new person.  When you first give your number out to someone, you wait nervously for that first call back.  Then you meticulously pick out the perfect wardrobe for that first date, making sure you show up on-time and after the date, if things went well, you eagerly await a call back.  Come to think of it, dating is probably the perfect analogy for job seeking. 

As recruiters, we interact with hundreds of candidates a week and juggle many concurrent internal stakeholders at one time.  It’s easy for recruiters to lose sight of the fact that the candidats they deal with on the other end are real people with real feelings.  In fact, the person, who I just sent an e-mail “Thanks but no thanks” letter to might’ve been someone who’d been looking forward to working at my company for the past 6 months. 

I know as a job seeker, when I am waiting for a phone interview, I am always get to a quiet place 5 minutes early and when the clock hits the appointed time, I am literally standing there waiting nervously for that phone interview.  So many times, I am 5 or 10 minutes late and I don’t give it a second thought, but little do I realize how much little mistakes like that matter. 

I just wanted to take this post out to apologize to everyone that I take for granted.  Candidates are my lifeblood.  Without you, I have no job.  I do my best to be perfectly on-time for every call I make and I always appreciate when you pick up on the other line.  I also do my best to make sure you have a great interviewing experience because I know that if I was on your end, I would demand perfection.  I realize that how I treat you in the interview process is your first taste of how you will be treated as an employee. 

But even with all this knowledge, the busy-ness of the days will still get to me.  I’ll forget to check in sometimes.  I’ll forget to follow up.  I’ll forget to confirm this or that interview.  It’ll happen.  I’m human.  But no matter how insignificant the interview is, even if it’s an informal chat, I realize that for the candidates out there, every conversation they have with a recruiter or a hiring manager might be the biggest call they have that month, that year, or maybe even ever.  I’ll continue to do my best, that you can count on..

Differences between Agency Recruiting and Corporate Recruiting – Part 1

Those of you who know me know that I transitioned from agency recruiting into a corporate setting about 1 year ago.  I thought I’d take a few moments to list out some of the differences between being a recruiter in each environment.  First, let’s clear up some meanings.  In the US, they are typically called agencies or staffing firms.  Let’s go with the term “Agency” for the sake of this article.  Also, there are many different types of recruiting engagements, but again, for the sake of this article, let’s assume that we are hiring Full-Time, Professional Level workers since that is 90% of the hiring that I do.     

Agency Recruiter – This simply means that this person works at a company who’s sole purpose is to recruit for OTHER companies.  Examples of agencies include Adecco, Volt, Robert Halt, Michael Page International, Spherion, Manpower, Accolo, The Right Thing, inc.   

Corporate Recruiter – This means that this person is an employee of 1 company and solely recruits for that 1 company.  An Example of that is me.  I am an employee of Lifesize and all I do is recruit for Lifesize. 

Companies these days leverage many agency relationships, outside of recruiting.  Some examples of this are marketing agencies, PR Agencies, SEO/SEM Agencies, SOX/Audit Agencies.  It simply means that the company is bringing in outside help/expertise to accomplish a business goal. 

 There are many reasons why a company might want to consider using a recruiting agency.  Sometimes agencies are a company’s first resort for filling a job, and other times they are a last resort. 

An agency would be your last resort if the position is fillable but your internal recruiter has not been successful at filling it within an acceptable time period.  The reason that agenceis are typically a last resort is always due to cost.  We’ll define the various types of agencies later and how they charge, but for now, just know that it is typically very expensive to use a recruiting agency. 

An agency would be your first resort if that firm offers some expertise, knowledge, or contacts to the right candidates that you simply do not have.  It is true that given enough time, any position can get filled, but if you recognize off that bat that the time/investment required to hire this candidate is beyond what you have, then hiring an agency may save you and your company a lot of headache from the get go.  Going straight to an agency is very common for Executive Level Searches due to the critical nature of those searches.  Typically they are very time sensitive.  Going without a VP of Sales for 3 months is unacceptable.  Those type of positions require agencies to deliver immediate results and if your recruiter does not have the right relationships, it may make sense to go straight to an agency.     

From my US perspective, I consider it recruitment failure to resort to using an agency to fill my positions.  Think about it.  What I’m saying is essentially, “I am a failure as a recruiter – Please take care of my mess”.  Now, I know how I feel doesn’t necessarily reflect the reality of the situation, but if you are a recruiter, you are also probably competitive and this is just a natural feeling. 

Having worked in an International company for the past year also brings about new perspectives.  In Asia, for example, using Agencies to fill jobs is quite common.  We have a recruiter based in Singapore and she recruits on high level sales positions all across APAC.  Given the cultural, timezone, and language barriers, just to name a few, it has become quite common to use agencies to fill open positions.  So, I’ll leave you with this.  Agencies provide a valuable services to companies worldwide.  Without agencies, many people would be without jobs and many critical positions would languish, unfilled.  Companies would lose billions in lost productivity.  There are many situations where using an agency is the first choice, and other situations where they may have to swoop in, be the hero and clean up a mess.  I was an agency recruiter for 5 years and loved being the hero (and getting paid well for it!).  It was an adrenaline rush and an affirmation of my capabilities.  I succeeded where others had failed.  I accomplished the impossible.  Agency recruiters are some of the best recruiters out there.  Regardless, there are many differences between corporate recruiting and agency recruiting that we’ll get into in the posts to come.

Is there anything new under the sun? (in recruiting?)

My blog post today is a long, complicated topic.  My thoughts are somewhat disorganized, but I did my best to consolidate them into 1 coherent blog.  I will probably elaborate in future blogs, but hopefully this gives you some food for thought until next time.

Is there really anything new under the sun in recruiting?  There’s a famous quote that goes something like this.  “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”  In the blog post to follow, I hypothesize that there is really nothing new under the sun in terms of recruiting.  Yeah, there are some cool new technologies, and software systems that can help recruiters be more productive and effective, but what is really comes down to is PEOPLE.  Who are you working with, how how good of a recruiter are they?

There are many recruiting agencies out there.  Lots of competition with your individual head hunters(Johnny Chang LLC), small staffing agencies,  and your large publicly traded entities (Volt, Adecco, Manpower) all vying for the same business.  In good times, agencies can be selective about the work they take on, but in the words of a mentor of mine, in bad times “we’re gonna kiss some frogs”.  So with so much competition for customers, what should you be looking for when you are considering using a vendor?  In this article, I’m going to reflect on what I consider the key elements when looking at a potential recruiting agency.

So you’re thinking of hiring an agency to help you out with your highly critical positions?  There are many agencies to choose from.  If you ask anyone related to HR, they will easily be able to recommend a brother in law who’s a headhunter/recruiter or a good friend who’s a recruiter at XYQ staffing firm.  They will be more than willing to entertain a sales meeting with you.  The question really becomes, “How do I separate the good recruiters from the great recruiters”?  There might be some way to tell the difference, but what it really comes down to is people.  It’s not about technology, it’s not about some secret database of candidates that the agency has.  It’s not about the screening process that that agency uses.  It’s all about people, the relationships you have with those recruiters, and the trust you place in them.  When you hire a third party recruiter, you want to know that you have the best person possible working for you.
What is the track record of the recruiter who will be working on your position?  Even before considering using a vendor, I would set up a 30 minute session where you (Hiring Manager/HR/Recruiter) would actually interview the recruiter who will be doing the work for you.  If you’re dealing with an “Account Manager” who the recruiter will work through (which is very common in most agencies), insist that he/she bring along the recruiter who will be doing the actual work for you.  In many agencies, an account manager will gather the position requirements, and submit qualified candidates while the recruiter has almost no contact with the client.  I believe this significantly limits the recruiter’s understanding of the position and ultimately it puts the client at a disadvantage.  Find out who’s doing your recruiting work.  Once you are able to get face to face with the recruiter, ask him/her the following questions.

* What do you know about our company?
* Tell me about yourself and how you got into recruiting
* Tell me about a time you placed an <insert position title>.  How did you find the candidate?
* How many <insert position title>’s have you placed in your career?—->If none, or very few, ask “what makes you think you will be successful”?
* What are you going to do differently from other recruiters?
* How will you be keeping yourself accountable?
* What deliverables can I expect?

The list goes on and on, but my point is INTERVIEW THE RECRUITER.

Do NOT be infatuated by the marketing.  Don’t read the agency case studies.  Don’t read about how they’re the best place to work in Austin in 20XX.  Don’t read about the great methodology or process they use to find your candidate or screen through resumes.  Don’t read about how they structure their teams.  Dont’ read about the management team track record.  Don’t read about what association they have with other reputable brands/associations in the recruiting industry.  Don’t read about the wonderful offerings that promise to do what no other recruiting company does.  Do NOT fall in love with any guarantees they may give you.  Do not be impressed with any client recommendations or case studies they may provide for you.  Do not be persuaded by their use of technology and the fact that it makes them more efficient/effective.  And most of all, do not fall for their lame, bland unfounded claims that they are the best and that they can do what no other recruiting agency does out there.  What it comes down to is PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  A great recruiter working at a 3rd tier agency will fill your position more quickly and with a better candidate than a crappy recruiter at a 1st tier agency.  Find out who you are working with and you will learn a lot about the agency that you are thinking about hiring.

The recruiting industry has remain unchanged in the last century.  Yes, that is quite a statement.  Yeah, technology has come along and accelerated the process, but recruiting is still about connecting a candidate with an employer.  Fundamentally, nothing about that process has changed.  Whether it’s a head hunter cold-calling a targeted list, or it’s an agency posting a job on craigslist, it’s still all about how a person can most effectively find, screen, introduce, and close a candidate for a given job.  None of the tactics that the recruiter uses are a secret.  I am reminded about all those  “get XXXXXX quick” schemes.  Get thin quick, Get BIG quick, Get RICH quick.  Simply put, there are no secrets to any of those things.  Usually it is a very simple process followed by a disciplined individual that can get results.  Now this is not to say that just anyone can step into a recruiting role and be successful, but anyone who’s been in a reputable agency recruiting role for 2+ years is likely equipped with the same tools that any other agency recruiter is equipped with.  The question is how successful has he/she been in the past and what can he/she do for you?

I’ve worked with many many companies in my career, from small startup clients to F500 clients.  None of them have ever expressed the desire to hire me to help them screen through resumes, or help them close candidates, or help them on-board candidates, or manage the high volume of candidate flow.  Typically, when a company has reached out to me, it has ALWAYS been about identifying qualified/interested/available candidates.  Let me repeat.  Typical client needs have ALWAYS been about identifying interested/qualified/available candidates.  That means, typically the average company is paying 20% of salary for an agency to IDENTIFY a candidate.  Not screen resumes, or on-boarding, etc…. So if you are hiring that agency to help you recruit, 100% of your energy should be devoted to finding the agency that has the INDIVIDUAL RECRUITER most capable of finding candidates for you.

At my previous company, Novotus I truly believe we had some of the best recruiters in the world working there, which was our true differentiator.  We just hired and employed some of the most awesome, talented recruiters out there.  Now every recruiting agency out there claims to have the best recruiters out there.  And if you want some recommendations for certain positions, I can certainly give recommendations.  But what it will ultimately come down to is sitting down with any given recruiter, asking some tough questions and getting down to business.  Whether that recruiter is paid on a contingency basis (back end fee) or on a retained basis (some/all up front, some at completion), their behavior should be no different.  If they are a contingency recruiter, ask them how many other searches they are working on and again, make sure to clarify deliverables/expectations.  A talented retained recruiter will deliver the same/better results than a contingency recruiter.  Between 2 recruiters with the same skill-set, it essentially comes down to price, where a retained recruiting engagement will always win out as the cheaper deal.  Retained recruiting engagements require trust.  So be prepared to go through a trial run to see how things go.  I’ll write more about how retained recruiting engagements work in a later post though.

The title of my post is that there is nothing new under the sun.  It’s true.  The recruiting world hasn’t changed one bit in the last century.  Pricing models certainly change, which in-term change behavior to some extent.  Technologies change, but are for the most part acknowledged and available to all recruiters.  But underlying processes really have not changed in over a century.  99% of the recruiting outcome is dependent on hiring the right PERSON (not company/recruiting agency) to do the job.  Again, do not fall for the marketing.  Look past the fluff, and interview the recruiter.  Find out who will be doing your recruiting work.  I’m not discounting any individual firms methodologies, technologies, processes, etc.  I’m just saying in the grand scheme, most companies are doing the same things.  It’s about people, track record, and genuine relationship.  If you’ve ever had a great relationship with a recruiting agency, you’ll notice that it’s not necessarily about the recruiting results, but the relationship you have with that recruiter and the trust you place with him/her.  It’s sad, but a mediocre recruiter can have a great relationships with the client and be in perfect standing, whereas on the other hand, a top notch recruiter can have a crappy relationship with the client and be in the dog-house.  Part of what you pay for as a client is to be wined/dined, and made to feel good.  Don’t fall for that trap.  Look at results, recruiter track record.  Look past the facade of what is presented, and prepare yourself to make logical, rational decisions based on facts, not marketing hype.

The point of my post today was all about people.  Look past all the hype and find out what the people are about.  You can have the best NASCAR race car on the track, but if you’ve got a scrub driver behind the wheel, you’re not going anywhere.  Make sure you’ve got the right people working for you and you’ll save yourself a lot of grief and potentially a lot of money too.

Again, a long post, mostly rambling on my part, but hope this helps you or at the very least makes you think.

If you’re not a client, you’re a source..

Just a quick reminder that headhunters are out in full force!  They are calling your employees and sending compelling in-mails to your top engineers to lure them away to better paying jobs.  Some of these are corporate, but chances are these calls are coming from headhunters because for the most part, aggressive tactics like these come from Third Party Recruiters, not Corporate Recruiters.  Sure, some corporate recruiters are more aggressive, but again for the most part, it’s your Third party Recruiter that’s going to be on the other end of a cold call.

In the past, we used to have a saying, “if you’re not a client, you’re a source”.  This is referring to the fact that if you weren’t using us to hire talent for you, then we were using you as a source to pull talent from.  It sounds a bit harsh, but it’s the reality of the war on talent that wages on today.  My recommendation is to find out what agencies are pulling valuable employees from your company and put them on your approved vendor list or even use them if you’re already using third party recruiters anyways.  Once you become their customer, they will never poach from you.  Of course, you can’t expect to head off every attempt by a Third Party Recruiter to recruit your employees away, but this is a temporary measure that might work, if you happen to have been stung a bit too many times by that pesky Third Party Recruiter that seems to have your number.

The best cure is to make your employees poach-proof, though that’s the topic of another blog post in the future 🙂

 

You can tell when a company is desperate (or really motivated) to fill the position when…..

This post is not to ridicule companies that are desperate.  It is simply to give you as a candidate insight into company recruiting psyche so that you can better take advantage of opportunities that may come your way.  Also, these are not steadfast rules, but general observations that can actually be accurate sometimes.

You can tell when a company is desperate to fill the position when…..

• The job’s been open for a long time.  This is an obvious signal, but simply look at when the position was opened, or you can frankly ask the recruiter how long the position has been opened.  The longer the position has been open, the higher the likelihood that you will be the only candidate interviewing and thus the more leverage you will have when it comes to an offer.
• They’ve outsourced the job to a headhunter/agency to recruit on.  If you get a call from a recruiter/headhunter, and your resume is not posted anywhere nor have you applied to any jobs, you know that company is desperate to fill the position.   They’re willing to shell out 20-30% of your salary to find you.  Hear the recruiter out.  If they’ve contacted you, you are in a position to negotiate and gain leverage.  It can never hurt to listen.
• They’ve sponsored a pay-per-click ad on indeed.com or simplyhired.com.  Indeed.com and Simplyhired.com are so effective at garnering applicants nowadays that employment advertising for many positions is free.  For more competitive positions where postings get pushed down quickly to the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th page within hours or days require more aggressive posturing from the employer.  In order to differentiate themselves from other employers and to keep their listing on the 1st page, some employers will sponsor a job on http://www.indeed.com or http://www.simplyhired.com.  This job shows up as a highlighted job posted on the top of the page – usually highlighted in blue or some sort of subtle color.  Any job in this box is a job that an employer is very motivated to fill.  The reasons is that these ads are pay per click.  Everytime a candidate clicks on that job posting, it costs that employer a click.  If the CPC (cost per click) is 50 cents, and 100 candidates click on that job, the employer must pay $50.  You can see how this money can easily add up.  An employer who wasn’t highly motivated to fill a job or desperate for candidates wouldn’t invest this type of money in sponsoring a premium job posting.
• You notice very vague job terms or requirements.  Most times when a company is fairly desperate, they’ll loosen up on requirements.  Instead of requiring 5 years in .NET with heavy back end development experience and exp with XML, Web Service etc etc, they may simply state that they are looking for someone with a strong SW Engineering background and an interest in back end development.  Short job descriptions/requirements are typically a giveaway that an employer is really trying to cast as wide a net as possible to attract as many candidates to apply to the job as possible.
• The interviews are less about interviewing you and more about selling you on the role.  If the phone interview seemed too easy, then they’re probably highly motivated to fill the role.  If you came ready to go through the proverbial interview gauntlet, and instead did some simply hop-skotch to get an offer, they may be just a bit desperate.  Any company that is looking to hire you should be extremely picky no just for their sake, but to ensure that for your sake, you’re a good fit for them as well!

Though this is not a comprehensive list, it does provide some of the green flags for you to be on the lookout for when you are interviewing.  Negotiating an offer is all about leverage.  The more you can get a feel for how desperate the company is to hire you for the role, the better position you will be in to negotiate the offer of your dreams on your terms.