THE EVOLVING WORLD OF RECRUITING

Search, recruiting, human capital management, staffing, talent acquisition, headhunting, and even flesh peddling are all simply words. Each word conveys a different image, but they all are about securing talent (I always wondered if searching for talent was different from recruiting for talent ). Recruiting is, therefore, the profession in which we all participate. Why should the process that one uses or the contractual payment structure of an agreement be used to classify our industry? Are law firms not just law firms, or are they listed by whether they are contingent or retained or represent the plaintiff or the defendant or by the way each lawyer conducts a potential trial? Ultimately, should an approach dictate a classification?

I would submit that, as in all professional services, there are a wide variety of firms in our profession. And while some do retained, others do contingency work, some do permanent, some do temporary, and some do a hybrid of all. Some specialize by function, others by industry, others by level or geography, and some, again, a hybrid of all. In all cases, an employer is paying a firm to secure or “recruit” talent for their organization (the exception is an applicant-paid firm, which is not recruiting but instead helping someone find a job). So, my first contention is that the evolution in our industry is one that began with very rigid lines of demarcation that have since been blurred and will continue blurring until finally our industry will simply be known as the recruiting industry.

At that point, a firm’s classification will no longer be placed into such limiting categories. And while certain divisions, practices, or recruiters may be categorized, the organizations themselves will not be. To create an equal playing field in terms of revenue, contract or temporary firms would have to show their revenue by adding the net margin on their contract or temporary work to their permanent fee revenue to get an accurate comparison. Essentially, the real benefactors of this simple system for classifying firms are client organizations. It is my belief that, to truly be client focused, organizations must be prepared to offer solutions that are appropriate for each specific client and even each specific client need. Why should the level of a search determine whether it should be contingent or retained? Wouldn’t the urgency and the critical nature of the assignment be a better qualifier?

If a construction firm needed to hire a senior executive to replace a retiring executive in the next year or two, might they be better served by utilizing a few recruiters to keep a lookout for potential talent over the next year and present candidates when appropriate? Perhaps, as time evolves, a different approach would be more suitable. Now, if that same firm needed a superintendent to build a new 20-story office building or a hospital to replace an employee who left at a critical time, wouldn’t they be better served by partnering with a firm to hold accountable for identifying, evaluating, attracting, and landing the best possible talent for that urgent and critical need? In that case, it may require a financially committed relationship to achieve that result. With that said, should that same client have to work with many different firms that work only “one” way because a single firm cannot be client-focused enough to offer unique solutions most appropriate for each search? While this industry change will not happen overnight, new words such as container and detergency only provide additional ways of labeling firms by their financial agreements. Many organizations do offer these full-service approaches and try to separate their style of work by utilizing different brands. This is also done to combat “blockage” issues that larger organizations face. This dilemma will continue to be an issue in the future. It will also be an interesting trend to monitor as firms try to grow exponentially.

SO, WHEN DID IT ALL START?

I believe this evolution began in the early 1990s. Prior to this, there were temporary firms that addressed short-term recruiting challenges, contingent firms that worked on positions below a certain level (usually under-six-figure salary levels), and retained firms that worked only above a certain level. Most people had no clue what a recruiter or headhunter was, and many organizations had never used them. Then something changed! Core competencies and outsourcing emerged. Determine and focus on the core competency of the business, and outsource everything else.

This resulted in the staggering growth of our industry, to the tune of several billion dollars through the ’90s! Companies scrambled to take advantage of the trends in the information age and began creating a variety of divisions in response. Some succeeded, but almost all that created approaches and models based on dis-intermediation of the human touch of recruiters failed miserably. The old lines of distinction were blurring. Traditional retained search firms were doing large-scale project staffing business. Temporary firms began building permanent divisions, and vice versa. In the end, many firms moved too quickly – or ineffectively – and failed. Then the same employer-driven market of the early ’90s emerged following the dot-com bubble burst. Ultimately, the industry fell victim to its explosive growth and the length of that particular cycle.

However, in the past few years, the pendulum has swung back to a candidate-driven market and a war for talent. Having learned from the last buildup, clients and recruiting organizations alike are now realizing the importance of certain criteria in recruiting firms, and the fee agreement is but a small part. Effective results based on market knowledge is the mantra of all. The biggest criterion that companies now seek is the specialization of the firm or recruiter in their area. This means that the recruiter knows not only the industry but also the functional area of the search, the level of the position, and the geography of the assignment. Gone are the days of simply selling a generalist mentality of a great search process.

If a hospital needs a new CFO, they don’t just want a recruiter who knows healthcare or one who knows accounting and finance or one who works only on senior leadership positions. They want one who specializes exclusively in healthcare finance, and knows the geographic area and the position level well in their market.

The second criterion that companies are demanding is flexibility. They want firms to work at various levels and want flexibility in their agreements (terms, fees, and guarantees). Many understand the need for an up-front financial commitment and additional progress payments for performance milestones. However, they do not feel that it is always appropriate to potentially pay 100% of the service charge and get no results and have no flexibility in offering other solutions. This time around, they will have not only the needs but also the knowledge of what not to do.

The third major criterion that clients want is a track record of previous success. If a pharmaceutical company needs a vice president of clinical research, they want someone who has successfully completed a similar search and will want to conduct a reference check.

Only when clients conduct their due diligence will they ultimately learn who truly delivers. Perhaps then the classification of firms will be based on specialization, flexibility, and track record. Perhaps, in addition to overall revenue, firms would list the revenue in each industry and/or function as well. If a firm has too much volume in any area, then perhaps they won’t be able to take on more clients, causing other firms to grow their capabilities. Although it is heresy to some, I am sure, I do believe that bigger retained firms could serve their clients better by offering contingent solutions without compromising the “integrity of their brand.” After all, if calling a company and telling them about a talented individual who you truly believe could make a profound impact on the bottom line of their business is an approach that a current or potential client could benefit from, then why not do so? If letting clients know that they would have to pay you only if the candidate is a good fit, and this is an approach clients want (as evidenced by their willingness to do so again and again), then why not offer these options as well? When a client wants to engage a firm to operate in a true management consulting function, in which the firm is 100% paid for the conducting of the search and not results, then search professionals should learn how to respond. However, paying part of a fee for results (like second payment or short list or final payment on hire) is partial contingency and partial retained. Again, the labels do not matter.

What does matter is the ability to educate the client as to the different approaches and guide the client in making a professional recommendation that best suits their needs. We all have so much to learn from one another. I have talked at staffing conferences, retained search conferences, permanent search conferences, and human resources conferences, and will do so at an upcoming human capital conference. There are many differences, but there are also many more opportunities to learn from each other. The dialogue can help our industry only if we always keep the focus on what is best for the client!

In the great words of Dennis Miller, this is just my opinion and then again I could be wrong!!!!

Ironically, this month’s tip from the trenches is titled “Remember: Recruiting Is Selling.” This is another example of words and labels.

Consultants are paid to give advice on a particular course of action. This is what effective salespeople do, too! At times consultants give bad advice and even have bad intentions – and so do salespeople. So, it is the individual or the practices that the individual engages in that matter most. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf, and vice versa!

Shawn Desgrosellier is the author of the following piece. He is a managing director at Kaye/Bassman and shares responsibility for overseeing the firm’s Western Region within the Construction and Real Estate Specialty practice. Shawn began his career with another leading executive search firm and for over eight years directed the CPA and Financial Management Practice as vice president. He joined Kaye/Bassman in 2000. Shawn has been consistently ranked in the top 10 in a national network of 4,000 recruiters. He has a track record of maintaining long-term recruiting partnerships and completing large-scale hiring projects and repeat search engagements with key accounts. He is currently transitioning out of his practice into a full-time leadership role with responsibilities for overall Kaye/Bassman sales leadership and training. He produced $1.6 million in search revenue in 2006. Until next month from me, enjoy this tip from the trenches from Shawn:

Remember: Recruiting Is Selling

As we continue to push forward in a candidate-driven market, there are many challenges we are all faced with in the recruiting business. The first and foremost challenge is the identification of candidates and gaining commitment to consider career moves.

This is a candidate-driven market, and the more candidates you can contact, develop rapport with, and gain commitment to interview, the more placements you will close.

Here are a few ideas that can help you CLOSE MORE SALES:

1. Think Like the Candidate

Your recruiting process should be a mirror image of the way that candidates want to buy from you, rather than a model of how your firm would prefer you to sell. The best sales skills in the world are useless when you are trying to sell the wrong way to the wrong people in the wrong organization. Do you truly understand your customers? Think like the candidate, role-play as if you were being contacted by a recruiter. What do you think you would want to hear or know about before you committed to sharing your information, sending your résumé, or agreeing to interview with a client? Now think what THEY would want to hear about or know as well!

2. Marketing “You”

Develop a program that allows you to keep in regular contact with your candidate base, and I mean now! Have you developed an email campaign to describe current searches and also highlight market trends or compensation issues? If you read news articles about your industry that are relevant to a candidate, do you forward a PDF of the information to those candidates? How often is “your” name in front of the “candidate community,” and what “marketing of you” are you doing to penetrate the candidate market deeper? Develop a two-minute overview of who you are, what you do, and why someone should consider talking to you. Rehearse it – practice generates confidence and confidence generates more SALES.

3. Mission Accomplished

When you are engaged to fill a new search, you must clearly determine your process before you begin. You must work with diligence, expedience, and thoroughness in searching the RIGHT targets, and you must work toward your objective each day until you have at least three candidates presented to the client for the specified position. The number one mistake recruiters make is the lack of preparation, and the second-largest mistake is not recruiting until you have enough qualified candidates before you move on to another assignment. AVOID THESE MISTAKES AND WORK AS LONG AS IT TAKES AND AS HARD AS YOU MUST TO HONOR YOUR COMMITMENTS TO YOUR CLIENTS AND CANDIDATES!

4. Solutions

Are you solution oriented? When you contact a prospect, do you sell features and features only? Do you offer solutions rather than simply vague benefits? Think SOLUTIONS! Features tell and solutions sell!

5. Stop Thinking and Start Selling

Be in the moment, when the phone rings, when a prospect answers the phone – stop thinking and start living in the moment. Allow your training and instincts to act upon the sales call. The more time you spend engaged in selling, the better off you are going to be. A practice player is someone who practices more than they engage in the selling process itself. If you want to be a great recruiter, SELL, SELL, SELL as often as possible. Focus on the desired end objective of every phone call and then conduct your call in support of that objective. Begin with the end in mind!

Nothing is fully learned until it is fully applied. Business is good if you make it good. GO GET IT!

A personal note: I must again thank you all for your overwhelmingly positive emails, phone calls, and rave reviews about our first candidate DVD series. We just filmed seven hours of material for our new client/marketing DVD series, and it is even better than our currently available candidate one! I also look forward to meeting many of you at the upcoming Fordyce Conference, which looks to be one of the best recruiting learning opportunities in recent history. I hope you will derive value from my presentation at the conference. As promised, every article will open with a topic related to enhancing the skills necessary for leading a search firm and close with a topic related to enhancing the skills necessary for running a search practice.

Jeff Kaye is president and CEO of Kaye/Bassman International and Next Level Recruiting Training. This former Management Recruiter National Recruiter of the year has helped build the largest single-site search firm in the country, with annual search revenue in excess of $18 million. His firm has won national awards for philanthropy and workplace flexibility, and has also been named the best company to work for in the state of Texas in 2006 and 2007. Kaye/Bassman has retained over 30 search professionals whose annual production exceeds $400,000. Kaye/Bassman has retained 100% of this group in 2006 and 2007 to date. The same training that helped build this successful firm is now available through Next Level Recruiting Training. To learn how to take your practice and business to the NEXT LEVEL, please visit www.nlrtraining.com to view their product and service offerings. You can also send Jeff an email with a thought or question to jtk@nlrtraining.com.

Several months ago in The Fordyce Letter, a reader wrote with a not-uncommon problem. He owned the finest training products in our industry, but they sat, as he said, “on the shelf,” while his group of experienced search consultants continued to repeat errors and limit their production, showing questionable improvement. He questioned why this was the case.

Reality

Unfortunately the reader, by his very phraseology, appears to be denying reality, and therein is the problem. There are a number of excellent motivational products available, from the book Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill, to Larry Nobles’s three-tape audio series “Success Behavior.” Everyone should be exposed to these outstanding works or their imitators.

Nevertheless, the reality is that most people, in the absence of a truly life-changing event, are not self-motivating beyond a certain point. The fault in this instance lies solely with the manager. To let excellent training products “sit on the shelf,” as he says, and expect the non-self-motivated to improve is about as likely to yield results as purchasing exercise equipment for a non-motivated spouse. Improvement by osmosis is highly unlikely. Does this mean there is no hope? Of course not. But it requires personal involvement and work from the manager.

A Culture of Learning

The manager shapes the organization. He develops the corporate attitudes. He forms the culture. If products simply sit and it is left to each recruiter to utilize them as he or she sees fit, this sends the clear message that continued learning is an individual responsibility, and thus an option. That message is wrong. Professional growth is not an option, and not individual. It is a permanent ongoing responsibility of the entire firm. But it is the manager’s responsibility to develop a plan – and to enforce that plan – to bring it about.

The Key

The plan itself embodies four elements, and they will be discussed in this article. But the key to these elements is group meetings that cannot be interrupted. To allow calls to be taken during meetings addressing skill improvement is to send a message that these meetings are not of the highest priority, and to reduce the quality of the meeting. Eventually, everyone will be filtering in and out of skill-improvement sessions, reducing the focus and concentration of the entire group.

These skill-improvement sessions should be con-ducted twice a week, in the morning, and not on Fridays. A rough estimate of length might be 30 to 45 minutes.

Topics

The difficulty that many managers have is deciding on topics and organizing the material. Without sufficient preparatory work, they simply pick a subject and blindly stumble into it the morning of the meeting, relying on their consultants to bail them out of their lack of structure by making contributions. This is rarely productive – and totally unnecessary.

In fact, there is no need for a manager to flail about wildly seeking subjects or specifics, as the outline of our industry has long been established and codified, and since broadened and refined.

Thirty years ago, a trainer named Phil Ross developed an audio series entitled The 28 Steps to the Placement Process. The superb foundational training book by Larry Nobles Search and Placement! contains 28 chapters. This author’s own book Breakthrough! contains 30 chapters. His two recruiter-based DVDs consist of eighteen 30 to 40-minute modules.

All of these high-content resources, plus selected passages from The Fordyce Letter, are repeatable, reviewable, relevant – and should be the foundation of solid sales meetings to improve skills and production.

For those recruiters who claim to be too advanced to learn, a quotation from an early manager of this writer should draw quick acknowledgment: “No one is smart enough to remember all he knows!”

Role-Playing

The reality, of course, is that people in our business do not get paid for what they know; they get paid for what they do. Improvement is useful only if it translates to increased production. There is only one way to go from knowing to doing, and that is role-playing.

New people should have this as an integral part of all training. But for experienced ones, an analogy will be persuasive. No matter how many millions of dollars a baseball player earns, every day – regardless of income – he does batting practice.

Role-playing is our batting practice, and we do it for the same reasons: to polish skills and correct weak points leading to improved performance.

An extensive article on this subject, titled “From Knowing to Doing! How to Implement,” can be found at the author’s website. It should itself be the subject of an entire meeting to clarify and explain why this is mandatory and how to do it.

The most frequent error made, however, is attempting to role-play face-to-face. To be effective, role-playing must be real; that means on the telephone, not face-to-face.

You can’t consistently hit for a high average if you skip batting practice.

Management Evaluation of Calls

What does this mean? It means that the manager must find out what the consultant is really doing on the phone. How? By listening in to his calls at his desk.

A simple analogy will show the value of this. In outside sales, it is part of a sales manager’s job to travel the territory with the people he supervises. On some calls, he will participate by adding clout on “key account calls,” while on others his job is to listen, evaluate, and then conduct “curbside coaching” with the aim of improving performance.

The technology to do this is readily available, either at any Radio Shack or similar electronics store, or with headsets designed with an extra jack for taping. The easiest way is simply to tape the call with the manager listening in via an earplug.

Speakerphones are not recommended, as they will alter the quality of the recruiter’s voice (reverberations are common), thus reducing the worth of the call.

Poor performers will resist this idea, as it will show them up. Good performers will like being listened to, as they believe it shows them off.

Signs on the Phone

Habit patterns can be broken and poor habits improved only by practice (role-playing) and repeat reminders. The manager should insist that the recruiter put a sign on the phone as a reminder of habit patterns that must be broken. Examples of this may be “slow your pace” or “who else?” for a recruiter who stops at one referral, i.e., lead to new recruits.

Conducting Sales Meetings

Aristotle wrote that “the truest knowledge of an art is achieved only by teaching that art.” As the manager conducts substantive, structured, formal skill-improvement sessions, this will be found to be true. However, this benefit should not be limited only to the manager. The experienced search consultants too will gain markedly by preparing for and conducting such meetings.

In a firm with five or more experienced recruiters, the manager should eventually be conducting no more than 50% of the twice-a-week meetings. Every experienced recruiter has a skill in one or more of the facets of our complex business. Even if it is only playing a tape of a call and critiquing his own performance, he should be in charge of occasional skill-improvement sessions.

The entire firm, but especially the meeting conductor, will be the beneficiary.

Numbers and Ratios

There is no point in repeating what has been said in detail elsewhere (see aforementioned two books), but at some point keeping track of numbers and analyzing ratios is mandatory.

As President Bush said in promoting his successful “No Child Left Behind” education bill, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it!”

Advance Preparation

It cannot be too strongly stressed that “winging it,” i.e., no preparation, yields poor results. And, in fact, there is no need to do so.

The 50+ chapters in the aforementioned two books, the 18 modules in the previously referenced DVDs, and the 24 modules in the Larry Nobles audio series Successful Search and Placement – to cite a few examples – mean that topics and structure are no longer a problem for any manager!

The owner should let his people know at the end of the week in written form what topics will be covered at the two meetings the following week. The recruiters must thus do reading or thinking about these topics, and be ready to discuss them.

For example, if the subject is desk organization, everyone must read the first two chapters of the Larry Nobles book (which address the subject), underline or highlight, and be prepared to discuss these chapters.

Each person must have his own copy of the books that are the foundation of our business in order to give structure to the meetings.

Implementing

The original question in The Fordyce Letter referenced the fact that the finest training products in our industry “sat on the shelf” while the manager left it up to his individual people to implement the material.

This manager is at fault. He is not doing his job, and is thereby cheating his people and himself by not instituting a culture of continued improvement in his organization.

Corporate cultures can be changed, and the steps outlined in this article will accomplish this over time.

Nevertheless, there will be a jolt when changes are made. The manager should conduct an initial meeting outlining these changes. He should commit himself to consistent implementation of these steps in front of his people. He should put a sign on his own office wall to remind him to continue to do so. And he should get a clear commitment from each person to wholehearted participation in these changes.

In explaining this to his staff, there is no reason that a certain amount of fear cannot be utilized with experienced people only (not with new ones). Experienced people have seen recessions. And they know that all markets have ups and downs. Our market is strong and our future is bright. Yet there will be brief downturns in the future.

The reason our entire industry suffers so badly in a slowdown is singular. We “confuse brains with a bull market.” We quit expanding and upgrading our client base. And we quit improving our skills.

Tell your experienced people this. They know it is true. And resolve to do your job. Resolve not to let it happen to them.

The Difficult Consultant

If you suspect that one individual will not participate in these changes, take pre-emptive measures. Bring this person into your office and give advance notice of your meeting. Flatter him. Tell him you’re counting on him. Tell him he’s the leader. Build him up. Repeat this to keep him on track with the program. Ask for his help, and allow him to conduct sales meetings.

If despite all your efforts, this person not only fails to change but also exhibits behavior that slows down the rest, there is only one right answer. Bob Half of the Robert Half organization wrote, “One bad person can spoil an entire office, because bad spirit is more contagious than good spirit.”

A person who consistently exhibits a bad attitude over time and cannot be changed must be terminated, regardless of production.

Consistency

It is critical to realize that building a culture of continued learning into your entire organization is not a matter of “motivation” or of one-shot blasts as in attending a conference, though that may be fine if you can afford the cost in time and money. The focus must be on comprehensive, repeatable, reviewable products that represent a long-term investment.

A culture of continued improvement can be achieved only by a consistent ongoing plan that incorporates the above steps and more. This is the responsibility not entirely of the consultants, but of the manager as well, who must serve as a coach, guide, and shaper of the skill level of his entire firm.

Only in this way can the production of the firm and the individual people be maximized, and the true potential of our glorious industry be achieved.

A 30-year veteran of our industry, Steve Finkel has consulted with hundreds of firms on four continents. He has been described by Personnel Consultant Magazine, produced by NAPS, as possessing “the most in-depth knowledge of search and placement in industry history.” The producer of many excellent training products (www.stevefinkel.com), he is also the author of Breakthrough! How to Explode the Production of Experienced Recruiters, considered to be the definitive work for recruiters on this subject. Highly recommended. He can be contacted at (314) 991-3177.

When to Rescue Yourself from a No-Win Search
By Jon Bartos

“It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”
– Henry Ford

In recruiting, time should be a closely guarded ally, one that is treated respectfully and with care. Because wasting time is more than a productivity issue – it strikes at the very core of what we do. It can put a career in free fall.

We have all found ourselves engaged in uphill battles, attached to a bad job order. We can’t or won’t admit defeat, end the search, and move on to another assignment. This is not simply about our paychecks, because to undervalue this most precious commodity can cost much more than money. It can mean an end to a promising recruiter’s career.

Recently my office concluded a search that took nine months. Looking back, we should have declined the moment we heard the numerous, exacting search requirements, because things only got worse from there. The interview process was arduous and frustrating. The pay was sub-par. And gradually, as our best efforts yielded no viable candidates, we realized we were engaged in a losing battle. There were less than a handful of qualified candidates in the entire northeastern United States.

Since this was a retained search, we were committed to doing whatever it took to make it happen – no matter what. Life or death (and at times it seemed the latter was more likely).

By the end of the search – we did finally place an individual – the casualties were heavy. Two of my recruiters were so frustrated with the search that they resigned. They had earned no money and we had burned 1,000 hours – that’s 125 eight-hour workdays – on one search. For what? A $25,000 fee. I vowed that this was never going to happen on my watch again. As a manager, I let my people down. I didn’t parachute in to save them. The opportunity costs make me cringe just thinking about it. Taking bad search assignments and working too long on bad searches costs our industry hundreds of millions of dollars annually. But as an account executive, manager, or owner, how do you determine the parachute time or when to stop working on a bad search?

I heard the term parachute time from Lil Rushing Roy, a longtime MRI Network vice president who has helped some of the largest recruiting firms in the business reach their potential. Throughout modern history, paratroopers have parachuted in to assist ground forces struggling in battle. They are truly lifesavers. In recruiting, it is up to those in positions of authority to parachute in to rescue other recruiters. As Rushing Roy put it, parachute time is the time it takes a manager to realize that a recruiter is working on a bad search, and the time it then takes for the manager to parachute in to save a recruiter from the search itself. Parachute time is ideally within two to three weeks, but realistically, it is way too often months. Signs it may be parachute time:

- Candidates you submit are already in process.
- The candidate acquisition process is taking an abnormally long time.
- An internal candidate surfaces and is suddenly in process.
- You discover that other recruiters are engaged in the identical search.
- You aren’t working with the hiring manager directly, but HR.
- The interview process is too lengthy.
- Requirements are very specific, tough, and almost impossible to fill.
- Hiring managers are inflexible.
- The client is slow to return calls.
- The job specifications repeatedly change.
- The client experiences repeated fall-offs and turndowns.
- The client rejects candidates for less than sound reasons.
- There’s a change in the hiring manager or hiring process.
- A merger or acquisition is taking place.

These are some potential indicators that it could be time to make a very tough call. Any one of them may mean that you need to quickly stop working on the search and start working on a higher-priority position. Remember: value your time over everything else!

As difficult as it is to cut ties with a client, the costs of clinging to one can be higher. I lost two promising recruiters to my own nine-month IT search. However, I have implemented safeguards to substantially minimize the chances of anything like that happening again.

Have the client sign off on the search profile or search requirements

A good first step in any search is to get job specs in writing. A better step is to put down on paper exactly what the customer is looking for, including background, skill sets, track record of success, and work history. Have the client sign this detailed search profile to verify that both parties understand and agree on what you are looking for. This helps you prevent the scope or specification creep that cripples so many searches. If something changes after the client has signed off on a search profile, it really is a new search and should be treated that way. That means asking for more up-front money because the specs have changed and many times your work has to start all over again.

Test the job order

I like to evaluate the validity of a job order or search assignment right away. Once the customer has given you the job order or search assignment, try something like this: “You know, I think I may have the perfect candidate for you right now. I worked with an individual about a month ago that fits this profile almost perfectly. I don’t know if he/she is available, but I could call and find out quickly. Do you have time to interview this candidate on Thursday or Friday?”

I know of no better way to save time and effort than this simple statement. It quickly determines whether or not the client is truly motivated to hire. It establishes the real interest level and priority placed on the search. What you want to hear after that question is anything that sounds like he wants to expedite getting that candidate in for an interview. Like, “Absolutely! Let me see, let’s book a time right now.” What you don’t want to hear is any type of delays, excuses, or hoops they want you to jump through first.

Set interview dates up front

Getting interview dates on the calendar when you take the job order tells you the hiring manager is interested in moving this process along. She is putting some real skin in the game, and that increases your odds of success.

Agree on expectations at the onset of the search

Don’t allow confusion or misunderstanding to steal your precious time. Always set expectations up front. Agree on communication methods, time frames for returning calls, interview time lines, hiring processes, and the roles you each must play for a successful outcome.

Be real

Ask yourself this all-important question: Based on everything I know, can I successfully complete this search in the next two weeks? This is the average amount of time a typical recruiter should spend on a given search. If you can’t envision yourself, for whatever reason, getting the job done in a reasonable time frame, you may need to consider refusing the search. If you are in the midst of a lengthy search, reassess the situation. Are client constraints causing the delay? If so, perhaps a call to the client for clarification is needed.

Do a time line of recruiting (working backwards) and use it as a commitment

It’s always good to talk to the client about a time line of recruiting. Here is what that sounds like: “You would like the candidate on board by May 15? Let’s see if that follows our recruiting time line. From May 15, the candidate will have to give two weeks’ notice, which works back to May 2. We need to allow a couple days for the offer, which brings us to the end of April. The interview process we agreed on will take two weeks, which brings us to April 12. We need at least two weeks to do a comprehensive search, which brings us to April 1. In order for us to have a candidate start by May 15, we would have had to start on the search a few weeks ago. But we may be able to knock off a couple weeks if we work together on it. Can we agree to go forward in trying to speed up this process on both ends?”

Set a time in the future for a search assignment evaluation

Every office should set up a time in the future to do an evaluation on a new search assignment with a new company. This could be an arbitrary time, say, three weeks in the future. After that initial search period, a formal evaluation gives you a chance to look at the search to see if it makes sense for you to continue. This evaluation should be done with the individual(s) working on the assignment as well as someone who is not in the heat of battle with the search. Often, it takes an outsider to make you realize you are wasting time on a bad search. During that evaluation, the topics should include expectations being met, changes in search, time to close, customer communication, sense of urgency, and realistic forecasted close date. The bottom line question is “Based on what I know today, does it make sense to continue?”

Discuss any issues with a client – to agree on changes

If you begin to have conflict or issues with a client, call them on it. Immediately pick up the phone and address it. New clients are notorious for not telling you any less-than- positive information about a search – just to get you to work on it. They may “forget” to let you know there are other recruiters working on the same search. They may leave out the fact that the offered compensation is 25% below market value. Or you may not learn until too late that the position has remained unfilled for a year and a half.

If there are issues with compensation, hiring time line, unrealistic requirements, and so on, talk to the client about rectifying them. The result is a win-win recruiting situation. When you help a client create a successful hiring culture, you increase client loyalty and your own business. If a client disregards your advice or refuses to budge on an issue, you may need to start looking around for your parachute.

Recruiting can be like a battlefield, where integrity is prized, valor is rewarded, and time is an ally to be guarded. The best way to win in our industry is to value your time by spending it only on search assignments that will yield real placements and put dollars in your wallet.

Jon Bartos is a premier speaker and consultant on all aspects of human capital. As CEO of Jonathan Scott International in Mason, Ohio, he has achieved industry-leading success. He is one of an elite group of executive recruiters who year after year bill over $1 million annually. Jon has also established JSI as a top executive search and contract-staffing firm. The office has won 14 international awards in the MRI franchise system, including International Billing Manager of the Year and Top 10 SC Office. He runs an executive-coaching program called the Magnum Program and also hosts a career-focused talk show on Fox radio, Talent Wins with Jon Bartos, Your Personal Career Coach, every Sunday at 2 p.m. EST. Jon can be reached at (513) 701-5910 or jon@jonathanscott.com or jon@talentwinsonline.com.

The use of a customized “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire” by both you and your client will help ensure that you properly measure the selection criteria, as well as bring consistency and objectivity to the assessment phase of the hiring process.

Now that’s a pretty strong statement, considering the three major problems that impact the objectivity of most selection processes:

1. When hiring new employees, many times emotions and intuition will dominate a manager’s decision-making process.

2. Members of the employer’s selection team may have different understandings of the job needs and, therefore, will measure candidates against variable selection criteria.

3. Candidates’ interviewing skills may not necessarily reflect his or her on-the-job performance.

To achieve consistent results, it’s necessary to mitigate these problems by ensuring that you and the client are using the same tool to measure each candidate’s qualifications for the job. The “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire” can be such a tool. The reason for this is that you and the client’s selection team jointly develop the “Questionnaire.” Each member of the team is required to consider the selection criteria in terms that are job related and then develop questions, the answers to which will validate whether or not the candidate possesses the necessary skills, talents, and experience to perform successfully on the job.

The first step in this process is the validation of the job description (See TFL, 11/06 – “Validating the Job Description”). When completed, this step will provide a priority list of outcomes that must be achieved through the position as well as the specific critical functions that have to be successfully performed in order to achieve those outcomes. This serves as the basis for determining the job-related selection criteria. Only after everyone involved has agreed on valid selection criteria can you proceed with the development of the “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire.”

Depending on the complexity of the position and its impact on the achievement of organizational objectives (division or department), the hiring team could consist of one person (immediate supervisor) and the “Questionnaire” may include only three or four competency-based questions. However, on the other end of the continuum, the hiring team may comprise several senior managers and the “Questionnaire” could consist of several pages of questions.

Remember

The key to success for the “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire” is the active involvement of the hiring team in validating the job description and in developing job-related, competency-based questions. Their buy-in and active participation in the process is absolutely essential.

When properly developed and utilized, a “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire” will help ensure that the selection team receives honest, accurate, and timely information on which to evaluate the candidate’s “can do,” “will do,” and organizational “fit.” To secure this information, the questions should be designed to seek out specific facts, figures, dates, amounts, etc., by asking why, when, with whom, and how. Although it is a request rather than a question, the following is a good example of an item that might be found on a “Questionnaire.”

Draw an organizational chart showing your position and describe how you interfaced on a daily basis with those above and below you on the chart.

Other examples may include:

Tell me about your experience in developing and implementing a lead generation system. Specifically, how did you do it?

And

How did you go about completing a SWOT analysis on the competition?

These questions are behaviorally based, and with all such questions, the real value lies in the careful layering and sequencing of the follow-up questions. For example:

Explain the details of how you approach the development and implementation of a client-development program.

– What were the factors you considered in choosing this approach?
– Were there any other considerations during the development phase?
– What were the greatest challenges you faced in implementing the program?
– How did you handle them?
– Why did you choose this approach to handling the challenges over other options?
– In specific terms, what were the actual results achieved through this program? How was that measured? Did you meet your expectations?

Using role-projection questions should also be considered. The objective of this type of questioning is to determine whether or not the candidates can generalize what they have learned from their previous experience and apply it to the critical functions of the new position. For example:

In this position, you will be responsible for revamping our organization’s entire approach to existing clients and new market development.

– Describe your most comparable experience.
– If we hired you, how would you handle this responsibility?
– What information or resources would you require?
– How would you organize and implement your approach?
– Who else would have to be involved?

With certain search assignments, you may be required to identify, interest, and assess senior managers or executives who, if hired, would be responsible for spear-heading change initiatives in their new organization. An example of the type of question that may be included on the “Questionnaire” under these circumstances might be:

As a senior executive, what would you tell people about change, particularly as it relates to how it would affect them and what they can do to prepare for it?

– Can you give me an example of this from your previous experience?
– How was it received?
– If you had it to do over again, would you change or alter your approach, and if so, in what manner?

The questioning format should be varied and somewhat overlapping as, with most positions, there generally are only three to seven core job-related competencies that have to be evaluated. Once the questions have been developed and agreed on, each member of the hiring team should be assigned an area of questioning to cover with the candidates he or she interviews.

In this manner, you can ensure that all the relevant questions are asked and answered, without the need for each member of the team to review the entire “questionnaire” with each candidate. Since the areas of inquiry overlap, each required competency will be covered by more than one member of the hiring team without the need to repeat specific questions.

In those situations where the hiring team consists of just you and the hiring manager, the two of you need to determine who will ask which questions.

Although the proper use of the “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire” will help ensure a successful hire, interview questions do not have to be limited to those on the “Questionnaire.” Each member of the hiring team, including you, may have other questions they wish to ask. This is fine as long as the questions are JOB RELATED. This still allows for a wide variety of questions and large areas for inquiry, all of which should be documented in the interview notes.

When all the interviews have been completed for each candidate utilizing the “Questionnaire,” the hiring team needs to pool and share the job-related information they have gathered. Only in this manner can an informed judgment be made on each candidate.

Remember

Initially, with most clients, you will need to be the driving force in selling them on the benefits of developing the “Questionnaire.” And since you will be providing the candidates, you will also be the first member of the hiring team to benefit from its use.

In addition to dealing with the three major problems that impact the objectivity of the hiring process, using a well-developed “Competency Based Interviewing Questionnaire” will help ensure that you and your client are on the “same page” and that the job description does not change in mid-process. Most importantly, it will bring greater validity and credibility to the hiring process. The result is that the client has greater confidence in their hiring decision, while you elevate the efficiency and effectiveness of the services you provide as a true professional in this industry.

As usual, if you have questions or comments, just drop me an email or give me a call. It’s always good to hear from you.

Recipient of the 2006 Harold B. Nelson Award, Terry Petra is one of our industry’s leading trainers and consultants. He has successfully conducted in-house programs for hundreds of search, placement, and temporary staffing firms and industry groups across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, England, and South Africa. To learn more about his training products and services, including “PETRA ON CALL”, visit his website at www.tpetra.com. Terry can be reached at (651) 738-8561 or email him at Terry@tpetra.com.

HOW TO CRUSH CONSULTING COMPETITION

“I don’t meet competition. I crush it.”
– Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, Inc.

Revson died trying in 1975. The cosmetics industry lives on.

Crushing, crucifying, and criticizing competition can drive you crazy. Crying will only smear your makeup. Successfully competing requires knowledge of the job market, ability to sell search, and competence in recruiting. That’s how you win the beauty contest.

What say? You’re doing that, but those pesky powderpuff placers won’t pulverize? Maybe your good looks aren’t enough. Especially when you’re on the phone.

You need the answers to these three contest questions:

1. HOW RESTRICTED IS THE HIRING AUTHORITY?

Very! Most recruiters are obsessed with the competition. They even worry about their own staff competing with them! We were like that at first. But when we strutted down the aisle from recruiting to interviewing, we became judges watching an empty stage.

In Give and Take, corporate negotiator Chester Karrass noted:

A seller’s [recruiter's] bargaining leverage is to a considerable extent determined by how much he knows about the buyer’s [employer's] attitude toward the problem [search].

The visibility of every hiring authority is incredibly limited by such things as:

a. Company bias against the placement industry
b. Company bias against all recruiters
c. Company bias against certain recruiters
d. Personal bias against the placement industry
e. Personal bias against all recruiters
f. Personal bias against certain recruiters

You probably aren’t aware of the pervasiveness of these half-dozen negative biases. Still, they’re regular recruiting realities. Every company – every hiring authority – has one or more. Experience teaches them well. A single wrong hire, fee dispute, or raid is a regrettable unforgettable lesson. Thank your competitors. They knock themselves out of the spotlight.

The continuing temptation of contingency-fee search is irresistible, though. Employers have their competition to worry about. And they worry plenty. So you can interpret “We don’t use recruiters” as “We don’t want to use recruiters, so use a few.”

The result is that your number of competitors isn’t in the Yellow Pages, it’s in the limited view of the employer. Even multinational corporations rarely deal with more than five recruiters at the local level at any time.

What about “We’re happy to work with you?” Don’t believe that, either. There are, at most, a handful of eligible contestants. Even a formidable fistful of finalists is a fair fight.

But it becomes unfair competition if the hiring authority follows Karrass’s advice:

Competition between [search] firms is but one source of power. The seller [recruiter] with no competitors may be exposed to other sources of buyer [employer] power.

. . . Never let the seller know or think that he is the only source unless you have to. The seller who thinks he has competition, has competition.

If you hear “We want to see how the ad pulls,” be grateful. A month later, it also translates into “We don’t want to use recruiters, so use a few.”

Herb Cohen shared his secret beauty formula in You Can Negotiate Anything:

A dose of irreverence, plus a dash of innocence, when combined with polite persistence and the asking of questions, will often change the attitude and behavior of the so-called expert [hiring authority].

He’s very restricted. Don’t let him convince you otherwise. You have almost no competition to crush.

2. DO YOU HAVE A SPONSOR?

The difference between “competition” and competitors is who’s a finalist in the contest. When you’re a winner, everyone else is a loser. You win with a sponsor.

Robert Kelley suggested that you find one immediately in Consulting:

[A sponsor] pushes for you and keeps you in the running . . .

Competitors also have sponsors. Their sponsors usually differ from yours . . . When you calculate your power network vs. your competitors’ power networks, who has the project [search] wired?

You can discover their approach in several ways. Ask your sponsor. Quiz your business associates and your personal contacts network. Question other consultants who have proposed against these competitors.

These things should be obvious, but most recruiters perform too much industrial espionage on their competitors and not enough on the employers their competitors serve. As a result, they either stop at the human resources manager or end-run around him before their path is even blocked. You might ask the human resourcer to assist you, but recognize that there’s only a 10% chance he can actively sponsor you. This number is understandable when you consider that he:

a. May not have a thorough understanding of the target job
b. May not have the power to control the political maneuvering (empire building, bids by present employees, etc.) that accompanies any job opening
c. May not have the authority to influence the hiring decision

Do you find out by asking him? Not if you value the truth.

Karrass:
Long-run relationships suffer if a company encourages its people to play with authority. Yet, many companies have no compunctions about long-run relationships. They operate on the basis that “In the long run there may be no long run.” So [you have] only one choice and that is to be on guard. It isn’t enough just to ask the question “Have you got the authority to make a deal?” More is necessary.

Among his suggestions in Give and Take are:

1. Know the history of the company and the person with whom you are dealing. If people have a long history of fooling around with authority, you can expect a problem.

2. Have the courage to ask the other person to describe his authority as clearly as possible. Do not accept partial or evasive answers.

3. Get the other person’s boss to tell you if any authority limits exist.

4. Find out in advance how long it takes to get an approval cleared.

5. Find out if those needed for approval are available.

6. Get a clear idea of all documents required for approval.

The Prentice-Hall Miracle Sales Guide added:

[B]ecause most large companies clear [placement fees] through [human resources] even though the actual decision to buy may be made by another member of the management team, it always pays to see him first.

To get business, [sometimes the human resources manager] must be outflanked. A demand for [your recruiting] must be created behind him.

Nevertheless, when you get an order through the back door, it is still a good practice to let the [human resources manager] know you appreciate his cooperation.

If you attempt to pass over the [human resources manager] and go directly to someone else, you are likely to incur his anger and make him an opponent rather than an ally.

Then once you find that sponsoring supervisor (the first-line supervisor’s boss 50% of the time), form a psychological contract with him. This is a series of expectations that control your dealings. They go much deeper than the job order and fee confirmation. They’re at the level of filling a [real or perceived] need. They’re based on trust. No search can result in a placement without it. Many placements are made with little else.

What should you discuss?

a. Why you’re being considered to do the search.

It’s not because:
i. The job needs to be filled.
ii. You happened to call at the right time.
iii. You’re so effective in your approach.

There’s something deeper, and it’s probably related to direct dissatisfaction with a competitor.
When the supervisor starts trusting, he’ll tell you. That’s when he starts becoming a supersponsor.

b. The differences between you and the competitor.

Once you know why your competitors aren’t on the inside track, you can explain either:
i. Why you are different.

The issue here is rarely price; it’s service. That means recruiting the “right candidate” quickly, and guaranteeing he’ll stay.

Notice we didn’t say “professionally.” That’s because someone who’s hiring defines “professionalism” much differently from someone who’s placing. If a supervisor knocks a competitor by saying he’s “unprofessional,” make sure you find out the real reason. It usually has nothing to do with recruiting techniques or fees – only with some misunderstanding over placement speed or guarantee performance.

If you don’t find out, your contest speech about professionalism will sound like you’re afraid to use every trick in the book to hunt the right head.

Clients don’t call a lawyer because he’s “professional.” That’s the lawyer’s perception. Great for society, but not marketable in the competitive world. Stressing your association’s Code of Ethics can make you many friends, but foreclose many sponsors.

ii. What you will do differently.

That’s how you initiate making a psychological contract with a sponsor. Don’t make the same mistake as your competitor, and above all follow the Miracle Sales Guide’s advice:

Be careful to avoid misunderstandings . . . If he finds or even believes that you have misled him, he will very likely suspect everything you tell him. But when treated squarely, such prospects usually turn into [sponsors].

There’s always room for another beautiful contestant. Always another search to be done, another ribbon to win.

3. HAVE YOU DEVELOPED A SPECIALTY?

Maybe you need a little image enhancement – a makeover. Specializing can work wonders for you.

The more you specialize, the less you compete. Of course, the narrower the audience, too. Do you really care? You shouldn’t. You can’t please everyone. Being a runner-up is no fun in the placement race.

In Creative Aggression, George Bach and Herb Goldberg cautioned:

One prevailing, emotionally destructive by-product of living in a [competitive] society is the tendency to compare oneself to the norms and standards set forth by others . . .

A vital step . . . is learning to say, “Nobody else in this world is like me.” Once this point has been reached, there develops a sense of self-acceptance rather than an endless, crazy-making striving to conform to the patterns of those mythical “others.”

In addition to channeling aggression from crushing to creativity, specializing automatically starts to enhance your reputation in the industry you serve. Your visibility is increased. People start asking you to work with them, instead of the other way around. This gives you the negotiating leverage to determine how you’ll do business.

Are you really that effective? Will you develop a bad reputation? Not likely. The placement numbers and fees don’t lie.

Kelley noted:
“[T]he more you do something, the better, faster and cheaper you do it.

. . . Changing markets, clients and competitors are a fact of life in the consulting business. Within this swirling context, you must find a niche if you are to profit and grow. Establishing a distinctive competence that differentiates you from your competitors is now mandatory. This is the only way you can gain dominance within a niche.

To do so, you need to understand the framework for establishing your reputation. Clients must view you as being the most expert person in their area.”

We discussed how easy it is to specialize in Chapter 8 of The Placement Strategy Handbook, entitled “Zap! You’re an Industry Specialist.” Whether it’s “vertical specialization” (all levels within an industry) or “horizontal specialization” (for specific disciplines), the results can put the “fun” back into “funds.”

That’s how to crush consulting competition. You’ll have a contest-winner’s smile!

Jeffrey G. Allen, JD, CPC, turned a decade of recruiting and human resources management into the legal specialty of placement law. For over 32 years, Jeff has collected more placement fees, litigated more trade-secrets cases, and assisted more search and placement practitioners than anyone else. From individuals to multinational corporations in every phase of staffing, his name is synonymous with competent legal representation. Jeff holds four certifications in placement and is the author of many best-selling books in the career field. He can be reached at: Law Offices of Jeffrey G. Allen, 10401 Venice Blvd., Suite 106, Los Angeles, CA 90034; (310) 559-6000; jeff@placementlaw.com. The Placement Strategy Handbook and other books on search and placement can be purchased at: www.searchresearchinstitute.com.

A recent (and ongoing) debate about third-party recruiter ethics in various forums, blogs, and discussion groups has been long, tedious, and judgmental in the extreme. Lots of preening, finger-wagging, and tsk-tsking from both ends of the spectrum, with calls from the usual cast of characters for more governmental regulation to curb the very few miscreants who tarnish every industry, not just ours.

Most of the horror stories involve segments of the business other than the direct-placement sector, and although some are truly despicable, reminiscent of the days when workers were shanghaied and put to work in the fields and sweatshops, they are few and far between.

But swatting flies with sledgehammers doesn’t solve the transgressions of the minuscule number of problem practitioners; it just complicates the efforts of the righteous. We, as an industry, fought the regulation rumba many years ago, and trying to regulate a business-to-business relationship such as ours is just plain silly and counterproductive. California tried a self-regulation scheme in the 1980s, taxing our business to set up a state-sponsored regulatory effort in a vain attempt to clean up perceived problems. They appointed a chief regulator who, shortly into her reign of terror, embezzled the regulatory agency’s funds and flew the coop to the Virgin Islands. She was finally caught and prosecuted, but the whole thing was a laugh-out-loud uproar where the cure was worse than the disease.

Creating regulatory chemotherapy for what is no more than a common cold, just because a few in our business ride around on their white horses looking for a cause, is just wrong in so many ways. We’ve got enough roadblocks in our business. Another bureaucracy? Yea, right! Just what we need – to be saddled with more government nonsense administered by those who have no clue about what we do.

Jeff Allen’s March 2007 column on the Department of Justice fishing expedition (witch hunt?) into many in our business is but a small example of the harm any bureaucracy can do to a business just because they can – and just because they have to continually justify their pitiful existence. You don’t need to be clairvoyant to figure out that I loathe governmental intervention. History has proven that bureaucratic functionaries just don’t do very much well, despite what the industry nannies and busybodies might think. The recent travesty perpetrated against the Duke University students in the phony rape case is just a small example of government gone goofy. There are countless others. Scooter Libby, anyone?

Are there occasional malefactors in the permanent-placement profession? Of course. But the market almost always sanitizes them out of the business long before any governmental bureaucracy could react. Besides, there are thousands of laws that already address any problems that may occur. The last thing we need is an industry-specific governmental watchdog group with little or no authentic understanding about our business.

Many complaints about our business arise out of some sharpshooter from the human resources side of our transactions, trying to save face by not paying a well-earned fee for someone they mistakenly hired or thinking that they’ll become a company hero by stiffing a recruiter out of a well-earned fee because of some trivial technicality. How about some governmental regulation of those guys, too?

One reader analogized happily dancing with the most handsome guy in the room, only to have Mr. Ugly tap his shoulder to cut in. That’s how she compares the intrusion of HR into a process that is going swimmingly unfettered by the HR corporate bureaucrats.

That’s a Hoo Boy with which we heartily concur.

Here are half a dozen ethical dilemmas sent to us by readers. As you read them, try to envision how they could be better solved by some state or federal bureaucrat:

1. I belonged to a cooperative placement network for many years. During that time I accumulated a file cabinet full of résumés through other network members. Several months ago, I quit the network. On a recent search, I called one of the people I acquired from a network member, and although he didn’t qualify for the position, he suggested a coworker who was and who ultimately accepted the job offer.

No one in the network is aware of the situation and I didn’t end up placing a candidate from the network, but I would never have found the person without information acquired from the ex-affiliate’s original referral. Do I owe a split? If so, should it be a 5O/5O split or some lesser amount. What do you think?

2. One of my consultants has been involved in a several-month-long romantic relationship with the second in command of the HR department of our biggest client (33 placements so far this year). This individual controls all the hiring activity through the country. They just ended their relationship rather acrimoniously, and since then we have gotten the cold shoulder from the client. How do I reestablish our position with the company in view of the fact that they have already hinted that I should fire the consultant as a prerequisite to patching up the business relationship? He’s my best producer, even without this firm’s business. Any ideas?

3. The employment manager of a firm just approached me with a kickback scheme. He has offered to put our name on application blanks of walk-ins and ad-response candidates as the referral source. In return for these “gift fees,” he wants one-third of the fees (in cash). He says that there will be approximately $300,000 involved (with $100,000 to him). If we don’t play ball, he’ll take the deal to a more responsive recruiter and we’ll probably lose the legitimate business we do with the firm. How would you handle this?

4. We recruited a person for a first-time client and received our fee promptly. Once the placed candidate was on the payroll, the company reneged on promises made to her during the courting stage. She objected to her boss about the deceptive hiring promises, but her protests have done no good at all. We have attempted to mediate for the two months she’s been on the job, but to no avail. We have another client for whom she would be the perfect candidate. Can we ethically make this new connection for her?

5. After a very lengthy and difficult search that resulted in only one qualified and acceptable finalist and after extensive reference checking by both our client and ourselves (with excellent results), we learned through an accidental encounter that the candidate had been charged with a major embezzlement at a former employer (three employers ago) and that the reference which put him “over the top” as the winning candidate was, in fact, a co-conspirator in the embezzlement. Neither was prosecuted because restitution was made, and we have been unable to confirm this hearsay information through a second source. His record seems to have been clean since the episode of several years previous. Do we alert our client? How would you handle this?

6. A recruiter working for ABC Search is asked to fill an opening. The recruiter has the perfect candidate and tells ABC’s secretary, after describing the candidate to the company, to email the résumé to the client. ABC’s secretary screws up and emails the candidate’s résumé to the candidate’s current employer. The candidate, upset at this blunder, backs off and tells the recruiter to take a hike, and he calls the company and withdraws the candidate from contention. A note to that effect remains with the candidate file.

The recruiter leaves ABC Search and makes a deal with XYZ Recruiting to re-submit the candidate (who was mad at ABC but is willing to work through XYZ) and split the fee with XYZ.

The company wants to hire the candidate but doesn’t want to be liable for two fees. By the way, the company has a policy that pays the first recruiter who registers the candidate rather than the more enlightened policy of rewarding the recruiter who makes the placement come together.

Where are the equities here? How would you advise the company and why?

I’d be interested in your solutions to these situations. And while you’re thinking about it, you might want to ponder how any type of regulatory oversight or governmental involvement could actually solve them. I look forward to hearing from you, and we’ll publish your answers.

The industry is all abuzz over the upcoming Fordyce Forum 2007 in New Orleans from June 12 to 14. While there is still some room available, I recommend that you register today at www.fordyceforum.com if you wish to attend. You’ll be getting advanced tips, techniques, and strategies from an all-star faculty of big billers, many of whom regularly bill more than $1 million a year. I hope to see you there.

Blurring the ethics line or just good networking practice?

The employment market is candidate driven these days, and it appears to be a long-term trend. Several of this month’s contributors have addressed the topic and made suggestions as to how to counteract or combat it. Around the fringes, however, there are the kickbacks, bribes, and other inducements to persuade candidates to do what they might otherwise be disinclined to do – namely, to accept the job for which you recruited them instead of another they might have found on their own or through other resources, or to accept a dreaded counteroffer.

We have addressed this topic before because it rears its head on a rather cyclical basis, depending on the economy and the current demographics in the marketplace.

Recently, we heard from a practitioner who, after a long and arduous search for a second-rate client, found a candidate willing to accept the client’s offer – almost. The offer was for $100,000. The candidate had told them that he required either $105,000 or a signing bonus for the $5,000 differential to compensate him for money he was leaving on the table at his old employer. The client was willing to pay the $30,000 fee to the recruiter but was adamantly opposed to paying a signing bonus.

By the time we learned of the deal, the recruiter had already paid the $5,000 to the candidate out of his fee and wondered whether he had done something illegal. “I spent far more time than this deal was worth and was about to see the whole mess flushed over the $5,000 differential. I just figured that if the $5,000 would salvage a bad deal, why not do it?” If companies can pay sign-on bonuses, why shouldn’t recruiters/placers do the same, especially when a few thousand bucks is all that stands between a deal and a disaster?

Although not the most pristine placement practice nor one we advocate, it turns out to be perfectly legal. While it’s not a praiseworthy practice, attorney Robert Style, writing on this topic several years ago in the Inter-City Personnel Associates (IPA) Insta-Com, said, “There is no legal prohibition against recruiters paying a sign-on bonus, or any other incentive payment, to candidates who take a position through the auspices of the recruiter. I do recommend, how-ever, that the fact of this payment be disclosed to the employer if the recruiter has any reason to believe that the fact of payment of the bonus would affect the employer’s hiring decision.”

If you think that some of these tactics are a bit tawdry, just hop on the Internet Express and you’ll find every kind of employment ploy you can imagine. Candidate auctions, referral schemes, bounties, and you name it. It’s no wonder that employers get confused about their obligations and commitments to the real professional talent scouts – us.

Although there is usually more than one way to skin a cat, in today’s economy, we wonder why so many skinners agree to be skinned. Payment for the placement process is a simple proposition, at least for frequent search/placement firm users, and when these situations arise, it is often because the company reneged on something about which they previously agreed. To allow them to change the terms after the placement has taken place (or as it is about to happen) is folly. Every deal should be locked in with a signed fee agreement. We are regularly amazed at how many practitioners don’t take this prudent step. Failure to do this often leads to buyer’s remorse, end-stage negotiations, and “Yeh, buts” and “Oh, by the ways.”

On the flip side of the coin is the candidate who attempts to extort a kickback from a recruiter in return for saying yes to a job offer. This is, as we’ve noted, a candidate-driven market, and what we charge companies for our service is as well known to most candidates as to the industry itself. Many start to think, “Why should this recruiter make a five-figure fee for my placement without sharing some of it with me?” Many seem to know that almost everything today is negotiable, so why not shake somebody down for a little extra? One reader told us about a candidate who had three offers through three different recruiters and told all of them that he would accept the job where the recruiter kicked back the most money.

The main reason we shouldn’t participate in these shakedowns is that we are professionals. Would you ask your family physician for a kickback of part of the referral fee he receives from sending you to a certain cardiac surgeon? Of course not! Nor should we accede to such requests from prima donna candidates who generally have no idea what goes into the process. Our principal relationship is with the hiring company, and the candidate is really only the subject of the transaction – a necessary by-product, to be sure, but also a replaceable one. The benefits to the candidate should be a new and better career opportunity with a new company, and not a reason to put another notch in their financial belt at your expense. If you get to a stage in the process where it even becomes an issue, you never had the necessary influence over the candidate you should have had.

Nor is it unusual these days, when asking sources about others they might know to fill your assignment, to hear, “What’s in it for me?” The establishment of employee-referral bounties by companies has caused people to realize that their knowledge of others is worth money to them. Also, the referral-bounty concept has been institutionalized by a number of Internet firms. Others are coming along every week with a different twist. What’s to keep some enterprising human resourcer from making a little extra on the side by finding out who’s looking for what, then harvesting those types of people from their own company’s database?

One reader told a source that he would be willing to pay $2,500 for the name of any person they referred after they were placed. The source then put himself in contention, ended up getting the job with a significant increase in title, salary, and opportunity, plus a hefty sign-on bonus – then had the temerity to ask the recruiter for the $2,500. The recruiter paid it but vowed that would be the last such transaction. But is this really much different than asking for the same type of help from a network contact? Or paying big bucks for Internet access to this kind of information? Or hiring a freelance sourcer? Would it be more palatable if you had a formalized program to pay for such information? If, in the above example, you said no thanks to the proposal, could the extra research effort to find another suitable candidate have cost you even more than the $2,500?

There’s no denying that this type of thing happens all the time in some offices, but doesn’t it cheapen or demean the profession? Or is it, as some claim, just a cost of doing business in this hurry-up, talent-starved economy?

One solo practitioner uses a network of such referral sources – strategically placed people working for a variety of target employers – to whom he pays from $2,000 to $4,000 for the names of likely candidates. Since these bird dogs don’t get paid until and unless he places their referrals, he tells us, these recommendations are top-of-the-heap A-type candidates. “I call them for almost every assignment I get, and they come through for me at least 75% of the time. One such source who works for a major electronics firm earned over $30,000 from me last year, and he’ll top that this year. He referred 13 people to me and I placed 10 of them. That’s a whole lot less than I would have spent starting each research project from scratch. Paying for information on potential candidates is no worse for our industry than cops paying snitches to solve crimes.”

Do these practices blur or compromise ethical boundaries, or are they just pragmatic solutions to recurring problems? That, we suppose, is up to each individual. How would it look on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper? A church in our neighborhood has a sign on its lawn saying, “What about ‘Thou shalt not . . .’ don’t you understand?” In view of today’s hodgepodge of methodologies and the fact that many of these somewhat odiferous practices have become specialty businesses in their own right, we wonder where it will stop. Lines are no longer being drawn in the sand; they are being drawn in water. Detrimental to our professional image? Of course! Expedient? Productive? You bet!

We looked at the codes of ethics and professional practice guidelines for the Association of Executive Search Consultants, National Association of Personnel Services, National Association of Executive Recruiters, and the International Association for Corporate & Professional Recruitment. We found them silent on this point except for such gossamer and gauzy words as “professionalism” and “integrity.” The only clause that even comes close is one in the NAER’s Code of Ethics that states, “Members shall refrain from using sourcing techniques which involve pretext or falsehood.”

We asked attorney Jeff Allen about the legalities of paying a candidate to take a job and he also said it is generally legal. In the days when our business was regulated under employment agency statutes, several states barred the splitting of a fee with anyone other than another licensed employment agency, similar to the prohibitions that exist in the real estate industry. Today we are largely unregulated.

We also asked if an agreement could be constructed whereby the candidate has to pay the recruiter back if he leaves the job before the guarantee period expires. Probably not enforceable, according to Jeff, because it could be interpreted as a consumer loan under the FCRA.

He said the guiding principle for these types of transactions is “Volenti non fit injuria,” which is Latin for “One who consents cannot be injured.”

On a slightly peripheral tributary, many of you have reported on the growing number of internal and/or contract recruiters who are cutting deals with pet search firms to kick back a portion of the fee on hires that may or may not have their genesis with the search firms. Hires through job boards, corporate websites, over-the-transom résumé submissions, and walk-ins that would normally not have a fee attached to them are suddenly designated as referrals from their buddies. The fee is paid by the company and then split between the search firm and the internal recruiter.

Another reader has a brother in the HR department of a major company. He is his brother’s clandestine research department, always able to funnel great résumés to our reader for any assignments he has. They split the fees 75/25. Our reader admits that sometimes these résumés were originally sent to his brother’s employer by other recruiters – a good reason for sending coded résumés. But he cold-calls them in such a way that they never know how much information he already has about them or where the information originated.

Without casting aspersions on the corporate recruiting community, this dodge is as old as the hills and was a common practice in the 1960s and early ’70s, when the aerospace and defense industries were desperate for bodies and would hire almost anyone with a pulse. Not surprisingly, it’s b-a-a-c-k!

We don’t approve of these shenanigans and know that they are infrequent, but as one reader told us, “I belong to a split network which has increased my revenues tremendously. When I take this networking activity down to the bare bones, I don’t find this legitimate methodology to be that far afield from some of the shadier practices among those who don’t have these formal relationships. A bird dog is a bird dog!”