Platinum Recruiter
by infoGIST

This month, I am happy to review the newly released Platinum Recruiter from infoGIST. With the big job boards not paying off like they used to, many recruiters are taking a harder look at the passive candidate pool in doing whatever they need to do to fill their requirements. This is a great product that goes a long way toward making our job of locating résumés of passive (and active) candidates for our open assignments a lot easier and more productive. This product offers a simple interface that easily accepts keywords and other criteria of your choice and searches literally hundreds of sites for résumés.

As of this writing, this product searches over 230 free résumé banks, 150-plus Web search engines, 10 of the largest Web communities/ISPs, and more than 90 colleges and universities. It can also search over 230 pay résumé sites if you have an account with them. All you do is set it up once and just include that search type in your project. A neat feature that most competitors don’t offer is the ability to use the software to search your local PC files as well. You can search any documents contained in résumé or other directories on your hard drive. There is also the ability to interface with a number of the leading ATS vendor pro-ducts to search your own candidate database at the same time. Another nice feature allows you to perform a “flip search” or link search for résumés using several search engines.

InfoGIST also offers a great component for research and competitive intelligence. It has another area where you can search for corporate/company information, patent and trade-mark databases, and other business-related archives for keywords, something I have not seen in many competitors’ offerings.

Their Search Manager allows you to create and save searches that you run regularly and re-run them at night so the new results are there when you get into work in the morning. Their Contact Wizard enables you to easily write custom messages to any potential candidate you desire. You can create any number of custom emails and send them to multiple recipients with one click.

Their user interface couldn’t be simpler: a very simple screen with a menu up top, a results screen below, and a résumé view at the bottom. You simply pick what type of search you want to run from the menu, type in the keywords of your choice (Boolean acceptable), select a date range if you like (a great feature, as we all know that Internet résumés can sometimes be a bit dated), and also pick a state if necessary.

I ran a broad search for Human Resources Manager, using All Resume Sources. I got back an astounding 3,989 results, which is actually too many. But from here I could have added additional keywords, a date range, or geographic restrictors to give me a more manageable number of results.

A welcome feature is the relevancy ranking that infoGIST assigns to each result. This is a score for each r̩sum̩ that tells you how closely it matches your need. You can then use this ranking to screen further for better results. Not familiar with search strings or Boolean? No problem Рthey also have a built-in string builder that helps you write a good search string. Once you run your search, you just click on a result and the r̩sum̩ shows up in the viewer on the screen. If you like that person, there are a couple of ways to deal with the r̩sum̩, but you can also simply check the box next to the result and send that person an email right from the software.

I could go on and on. This is a solid product that any recruiter or sourcer/researcher would love to have. The standard pricing on this product is a very reasonable and competitive $2,500 per year. InfoGIST is happy to offer prospective customers a free trial of this wonderful service. You can visit the infoGIST website at www.infogist.com for more information. Take a look.

Eclipse by Broadlook Technologies

I had reviewed this product once before for The Fordyce Letter subscribers, but not in quite some time, and there have been many updates since then. Eclipse, by Broadlook Technologies, is one of their more popular products and one that can be indispensable for any Internet sourcer and/or re-searcher that deals often with volumes of lists and table-type data. Eclipse takes data capture to a new level by capturing data directly from links and formatted tables, and spidering hyperlinks to capture data on the linked page without opening it. As useful as this product might be to a recruiter, marketer, or researcher, it is a very simple program. The top half is an Internet browser and the bottom half is for your captured results. Some of the new features allow the user to manage multiple Web pages in the same project, resulting in an improved workflow, and other advanced data-management features.

One of the main features is “Get Links.” Many times when you are looking at a list of hyperlinks, the actual website URL may or may not be visible (except by looking at your status bar at the bottom of your browser). You simply use the integrated browser to go to the Web page that has the links you need, and by highlighting your target links and clicking the Get Links button, Eclipse extracts all the URLs in a table format for you. You have many options here to clean and edit your data, including splitting columns, merging columns, renaming column headings, state code usage, etc. Once cleaned up a bit, this data can be exported to a spreadsheet or fed into another Internet research tool, including the Broadlook Profiler.

Another main feature is “Get Table.” Tables are often difficult for data-capture tools, but Eclipse makes it look easy. Select your table, click Get Table, and you are returned a column for each field in the table you captured. You have the same sophisticated data-cleansing tools and export ability with this feature as well.

Many lists of hyperlinks in either a table or link are not linked to a homepage but to another page with related data. Eclipse can spider a list of links or table entries and create “capsules” of information related to a specific link. This capsuling feature is definitely one of the highlights of this program.

Capsules are bits of data captured from behind a link, not available directly from the page you are spidering. You can pick up contact names, addresses, and phone numbers from these links and then merge them with your original results queue. In the old days, you would have to click on each target link one by one, parse the data, go back to the main list, and click on another one, over and over. This technology is a serious benefit and time saver for any researcher. Once you have the data you need for your assignment, Eclipse connects directly to programs such as Excel, Outlook, ACT!, Goldmine, and over 50 different CRM and ATS systems in order to export your results to the program of your choice.

Can’t close out without at least mentioning the training, which for many recruiters is just as important as the product itself. Broadlook offers the same first-class training for Eclipse as it does for all other products. I attended an Eclipse training class in preparation for this article, and it is performed via a live Web conference with a Broadlook trainer. Unlike many training scenarios, Broadlook offers all of its training under an “open-drop-in” concept; training is done within a group, and users can sign up for multiple training sessions at no additional charge.

In addition, all Eclipse users have access to on-demand train-ing and a series of interactive tutorials that allow recruiters to familiarize themselves and learn at their own pace. The training and support exceeds expectations, and their innovative model is starting to catch on with other vendors.

For pricing information, visit the customized Fordyce Letter subscriber landing page on the Broadlook website at www.broad look.com/fordyce.

I want to thank Andy Theimer, director of operations, for his help with this article. For more information you can visit the Broad-look Technologies home-page at www.broadlook.com and view an Eclipse demo. Anyone with any questions or comments can also reach Andy at (262) 754-8080 or via email at atheimer@broad look.com.

MedCareerLab.com

I recently received an email announcing a physician-centric network that looked like it would be worth a look for any health-care recruiter seeking those hard-to-find docs. This board claims over a million hits per month across its multi-board network. They also claim that over 45,000 job seekers per month are on their site, along with thousands of physician job seekers available for contact.

It looks like they have specialty career sites for pathology, psychiatry, radiology, ob/gyn, family practice, and dozens of other physician specialties. They also advertise specialty boards for nursing and medical office personnel.

They have a limited-time 30% discount for first-time users. I have not tried this service and do not know anything about it except for the ad I saw, but anyone who is interested can find out more at their website at www.medcareerlab.com.

Tip – *@ Search

This search has at least a couple of solid uses. One might be when you are looking for an email address when targeting a particular employer. In the search engine of your choice, type in:

*@oracle.com oracle
design java

Substitute whatever company you would like to target in place of oracle.com and also replace my keywords with those more useful for your search. This technique is also helpful if you want to locate the home email addresses of passive candidates. Messages to these addresses are unlikely to be held up or deleted in a corporate spam or junk-mail filter. Basically the same, but use:

(*@gmail.com OR *@aol.com OR *@comcast.net) oracle design java

Or you can use any common email address you can think of. Others might include yahoo, or hotmail, or any of the other email address providers. Give it a try.

Mark E. Berger, CPC, AIRS CIR, has been in recruiting since 1979. He is currently a partner in Ramsey Fox, Inc., an IT services firm, and has been there and at its predecessor, M.E. Berger & Associates, since 1986. He has been heavily involved in Internet recruiting and is an expert on recruiting and sourcing products, services available on the Internet, and how these products add to the bottom line. Mark’s interests include successfully integrating both computer and Internet recruiting technology into a traditional recruiting environment. He has taken AIRS I and II training and has obtained the AIRS CIR designation. Mark is also on the board of directors for the Missouri Association of Personnel Services. He can be reached at mark@ramsey fox.com. His website is www.swatrecruiting.com and we recommend that you visit it to see archives of his articles and information offerings exclusively for recruiters.

One year or so out from the beginning of the biggest retirement surge in history, the United States could be about to experience a titanic shift that could turn Anytown USA into a quality-of-life locale and any home or small office into a workplace.

As the first wave of baby boomers start to leave organizations, labor experts are predicting that the workplace will be defined as whatever an individual can afford and desires as a lifestyle. And as the 76 million boomers, representing half the workforce, start to leave conventional jobs, they could create a worker shortage of unprecedented magnitude. Economists are predicting a buyer’s market for the Gen X and Yers, particularly those trained in technology, engineering, and the life sciences, along with opportunities for boomers and others to establish a consulting arrangement with their former bosses. They’ll work wherever they want.

Lots of factors are coming into play at once, spelling huge changes in the notion of how to define the workplace. For one, there’s the near ubiquity across the United States of Inter-net/Web use for communication, which is freeing employees to work anywhere they want if they choose to run a business. Publications like Network World, and many others, are citing the rise in telecommuting, which allows employees to work on flexible schedules from the home or the office. Energy costs are reportedly driving this trend. Although the data is still sketchy in terms of actual millions of participants, officials at the Small Business Administration believe there’s a boom in home-based companies that generate upwards of $102 billion annually for the U.S. economy.

The exorbitant costs of healthcare and corporate pensions are apparently making American business leaders re-think traditional work styles, as well. In the fall of 2006, Fortune magazine quoted managers complaining that baby boomers were staying on the job way past traditional retirement age, clogging the works for Gen X and Yers. Add to this reports from NPR and other sources, and it appears that corporate America is finding it more cost-effective to move baby boomers into consultant roles, cutting benefits and saving on energy, healthcare, and pension costs.

These trends match boomers’ desires to keep working, but autonomously, and spell a huge upsurge in the numbers of virtual companies created in the next decade. Sources as diverse as Newsweek’s “Boomer Files” and surveys published in Boston-based Commonwealth magazine have reported that as many as 70 percent of boomers want to build their own enterprises, according to a recent Yahoo poll. And the 2005 MassINC survey (“A Generation in Transition: A Survey of Bay State Boomers”) reported that almost two-thirds of adults aged 40 to 58 expect to keep working after they reach the traditional retirement age of 65, but only 6% plan to keep a full-time work schedule.

They’ll work wherever they want, and often that’s from home.

Welcome to the world of the virtual business owner, a trend on the rise that this author has been actively tracking for the last five years. Virtual businesses can be large or very small in terms of revenue, but what they have in common is a stripped-down operating style that, thanks to advanced technology, allows one or two principals to drive everything from manufacturing to design work in a small-office setting. Backup support comes from alliance partners, subcontractors, and sometimes employees, many of whom are scattered across the globe, working in whatever setting they prefer.

Although these are business owners, they depend on project work to make up their revenue flow. Many are not looking for job placement. Some are lifestyle entrepreneurs seeking to create an income commensurate to what they would earn on the job. Others are “Bill Gates” entrepreneurs seeking to create large-scale companies. This branch of the virtual workforce will be seeking employees, but people who want to work virtually.

Various industries are already responding to the rise of the virtual workplace. For example, the home building industry is reporting rising demand for separate office space in new homes. “The workforce is already changing. The question is how fast. Ten years from now, the workplace will look very different,” says Stephen Melman, director of economic services for the National Association of Home Builders, based in Washington, D.C.

Quoting the last NAHB American Housing survey, conducted in 2005, Melman cites a “significant increase” in the number of rooms used for business-only purposes, up from 8.1 million in 2001 to 9.4 million in 2005. Adding all the rooms in a home used at least partially for business, then the numbers jump to 14.5 million as of 2005.

The last NAHB Consumer Preference Survey, conducted in 2004, reported that 46% of respondents considered a home office desirable and 19% said a home office was a “must-have” item, according to Melman. That’s 65% of respondents who would put a home office on a preference list when either buying or building a home.

Melman says the NAHB’s last survey showed just over 5 million people running home-based offices. His members are starting to respond by building new homes with distinct offices, but he has no numbers at this time.

The Challenge for Recruiters

What this perfect storm of trends means for recruiters, not to mention their corporate America clients, is still uncertain. What is known is that developed countries like the United States stand on the cusp of enormous change.

Demographers and authors such as Joel Kotkin believe that the virtual-company population will grow with the baby boomer retirement, but Kotkin points out that “baby boomers are not likely to retire like previous generations. They may be consultants or part-time employees, but they’re seeking an environment where their friends and business contacts are. They’re likely to move to either a small town like Lincoln, Nebraska, or a suburban village environment like Bethesda, Maryland, or Fullerton, California – wherever it’s walkable and funky.”

Michael Teitz, professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley on city and regional planning, agrees with Kotkin. He says the lines between endogenous (growth from within) and exogenous (attracting from without) growth are blurring as baby boomers redefine the notion of retirement and, in doing so, “change the economic base of communities all over the place. We’re seeing whole chunks of the regions and subregions becoming lifestyle regions.” Teitz knows a colleague, for example, who has “retired” to a solar-powered straw-bale house in Grass Valley, California, where he is “deeply involved in new energy technology development.”

A longtime backer of endogenous growth, Teitz says it’s easy to dismiss the virtual-company trend “as pretty small and not amounting to much, but when you look at the vanishing of the conventional manufacturing economy and what that implies for site selectors, then [attraction] isn’t a very promising strategy. There will continue to be a lot of onshore new manufacturing of one kind or another, but the world has changed. It’s just not the way it was.”

“This is an exploding market-place filled with opportunities, and recruiters aren’t geared mentally, emotionally, tactically, and strategically to mine this marketplace. It first requires a mind shift and then a technology shift,” says Bill Vick, CEO of Vick and Associates, Plano, Texas. Vick has worked out of his back bedroom for 20 years and built four successful companies virtually. “Once you have the mindset of reaching out and touching someone electronically, it doesn’t matter where there is at. The bridge that’s happening is that companies are getting past the hesitation to hire a virtual worker and a lot of people are learning they don’t have to sit in an office and work,” he says.

Vick believes that, right now, 10% of American corporations are grasping this trend, another 10% never will, and 80% are “starting to wake up and realize we’re in a true global economy. There are still a lot of old-school managers who feel that they need to touch and see employees and employees who need the structure, but the electronic walls are becoming broader, bigger, and better.”

He says corporate America hasn’t entirely awakened to the fact that it’s facing a talent shortage as the boomers move from traditional work. But the question is how to capitalize on the boomer brains and willing-ness to work flexibly, and for some boomers, there will be a struggle to learn to work in a new fashion.

Vick says the sectors that are most attuned to the world of virtual work – and where this can be conducted most successfully – are anything “involving information and communication. Think sales, marketing/PR, and IT. The things that are more touchy/feely (that require more hands-on attention) are more difficult to outsource,” he explains.

Although there are many people who still crave face-to-face encounters, he says, there are plenty of recruiters waking up to the potential of the virtual economy, hence the success of Linked UP, elance, and other virtual recruiting networks. Vick envisions many recruiters leaving large recruiting firms and setting up shop for themselves, or offering the human touch to the large online networks, which he says “could be an evolving field.”

Already, the segment of the recruiting/placement market devoted to permanent placement “is shrinking rapidly because clients recognize they can do a lot of things themselves through online networks like LinkedIn and Jobster,” says Vick. “Companies are recognizing that many recruiters fall into sourcing and are turning to them to simply generate candidates rather than manage the process.” He says the online networks, or job boards, now represent about 15% of the market.

So far, the upper tier of the market – executive search, where knowledge of a candidate must be thoroughly researched – isn’t being affected by this rise of the virtual worker, says Vick, who finds this tier “viable and dynamic, growing and retaining itself.”

He predicts that “lots of talented people will exit the recruiting field and become virtual recruiters. And we’ll see corporations hiring the virtual recruiters in droves, which will compress the middle market.” It stands to reason, Vick says, that corporations will move more to outsourcers than full-service businesses once they see the cost benefits. It may be too soon to know how the rise of the virtual workplace – and the predicted boost from baby boomer retirements – will affect the entire recruiting/staffing industry, where 70% of all hires are still accomplished by word of mouth and referencing, Vick says. And boomers aren’t as attuned to the online world as the 20-something set.

One approach that has worked in pilot involves a small network named Hidden-Tech that this author created in Western Massachusetts to serve the virtual workplace. It combines online networking with live meetings to provide a variety of ways for people to both seek help and post project needs. There’s something for those who would rather seek work in person and those who prefer to work the angles from a computer.

For those recruiters seeking territories to maximize their outreach, there are guideposts to this new world of work in the making. Think affordable housing, abundant technology jobs, and employers that are flexible about hiring either teleworkers or consultants operating their own virtual companies, and you will get an inkling of how the notion of the virtual workplace is affecting not only how people work but also where.

Amy Zuckerman is an award-winning author of several books, columnist, and consultant specializing in the mechanics of international trade, including electronic commerce, supply chain management, international standards, and global communication. Zuckerman maintains an international strategic market research and information packaging business in Amherst, Massachusetts – A-Z International Associates. She develops events, programs, seminars, and classes that relate to business topics. See www.hidden-tech.net and look at programs. Also see www.a-zinternational.com (Marketing section) for listings of national programs she has developed or participated in. She is the first-ever recipient of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) President’s Award for Journalism (2001); winner of the 2004 Dakin Award in the Professional Category from the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce; and the SBA’s 2005 Home-Based Business Champion for Massachusetts/New England.

What financial arrangements do you have for “fee splits” within your office? If the total fee is $10,000, and consultant A obtains the Search and consultant B obtains the Candidate, how is credit for that $10,000 fee divided?

50-50, right? Five grand credit each, at whatever commission structure you might have? That’s the way (virtually) everyone does it! But here are two intriguing questions for you. Why? And if you changed it, what would happen?

The answer to the question “Why?” is obvious: “We’ve always done it that way.” What does “always” mean? It means always – and that means since the days of APF (Applicant Paid Fee)! Surprisingly, today there are many in our business who do not realize that while our business has certainly evolved, we come from a historical background of APF. Until the early 1950s, 100% of our industry was APF. And as recently as the late 1960s, the majority of our industry con-ducted business in this manner. What has this got to do with you? It is the reason you have always been taught that a 50-50 fee split is correct!

Consider the fairness of that structure in an APF environment. The company does the hiring; the applicant pays the fee. Their worth to the consultant is equal. In that market, a 50-50 split makes a lot of sense.

But times change. Today there is, practically speaking, no APF business. Why? Well, decades of good salespeople selling EPF (Employer Paid Fee) to corporate hiring authorities have had profound consequences. Then, too, the rise of recruiting as a source of higher-quality candidates than could be obtained through newspaper ads and job boards/trolling the Internet has resulted in a superior product to sell. The sale has been made. It is an EPF business.

And how do we split our fees today, if consultant A has the candidate and consultant B has the client? 50-50, the same way we’ve always done it!

Let’s take a look at an option, a different way of dividing credit for the fee (at the usual commission rates), and see what the results might be.

Fairness

It is generally agreed that when consultant A has the client and re-activates or is given a candidate from consultant B, then consultant A (who has the search assignment) should put the deal together. The loss of effectiveness in communication would be significant were it otherwise. Peter Drucker’s Information Theory, that “every additional relay doubles the noise and cuts the message in half,” absolutely applies in this instance. Critical information would surely be lost were it done otherwise.

Accordingly, the consultant who has the client should present the opportunity to the candidate, present the candidate to the client, follow up with candidate and client, close, everything. The consultant who has the client does the work.

All of it? No.
Most of it? Yes.

It is only fair that the one who does the work gets the fee. All of it? No, because another
consultant recruited the candidate. Most of it? Yes. How much? Try 75% to the consultant who puts the assignment together, 25% to whoever recruited the candidate.

Why? Because it is fair.
The Best Results for the Client

The problem with the old “50-50″ split is that it makes one candidate worth twice as much as another! If you submit a candidate of your own and another originally recruited by someone else, your candidate yields a full fee to you if hired; the other candidate yields only half a fee for you.

Under these circumstances, many consultants will try to subtly shift the emphasis to their own candidate. This does a disservice to the client, who should evaluate candidates free from bias on the part of the consultant. Yet if a fee will be $20,000 to the recruiter if candidate A is hired and only $10,000 to him if candidate B is hired, the tendency is strong to attempt to influence the hiring decision.

But what if the search consultant would get 75% of credit for the fee if candidate B were hired? Would he then risk the entire placement for 25%? Probably not!

The client thus receives what they should – an unbiased presentation and follow-up on all qualified candidates.

Increased Utilization of Candidate Inventory

What manager of an existing firm has not been frustrated by consultant reluctance to “work the files”? It is an often-stated maxim that “there is more money in those files than you will earn in the next five years.” This is quite probably a true statement. Yet is the back inventory of candidates utilized to its fullest extent? Nope.

The purveyors of computer software products will claim that time- and money-absorbing computerization of files will correct this. They are wrong. The problem lies not in paper vs. computer screens; the problem is that when a search consultant places a candidate recruited by someone else, he is working at half price! And yet the same manager who would laugh at a client who offered half a fee expects a recruiter to willingly accept it!

What’s the answer? Seventy-five percent for the person who puts the deal together! Do you want your back files worked? Fine! But don’t expect a 50-50 split to accomplish it.

Increased Number of Clients

There is one thing that will allow a firm to increase production and avoid inconsistent performance and slumps better than all else – having lots of quality clients, which are continually upgraded as a result of a greater quantity from which to choose.

Yet a weak consultant who does not possess the skill or the tenacity to obtain or develop clients can get by financially in a strong market by only recruiting – if there is an old-style 50-50 split.

The problem with doing so is that a weak consultant will never develop clients on his own. He becomes a “feeder” of more competent people. This may be a good starting point for new people at some firms. Un-fortunately, however, two things will happen. First, the manager will keep the inept “feeder” on board too long while emphasizing too late the need to develop clients. Sorry. The “feeder” consultant will eventually fail after going heavily into his draw and costing the firm money. That’s because he’ll always have a strong tendency to recruit to the exclusion of client development. Second, the clients that could have been developed had the consultant been economically forced to do so will have gone to other firms.

If the cost of candidates had been only 25%, the consultant could not have “got by” by doing less than half the job. He would have become a real consultant, and the firm would have enjoyed additional clients and revenues. Try it and see.

Correct Marketing Emphasis

Peter Drucker once wrote that “the purpose of business is to develop a customer.” Certainly there is no intent to commit the heresy of criticizing Dr. Drucker. (When a professional business consultant refers to “St. Peter,” he is referring to Peter Drucker.) However, in our business, we might expand that statement a bit: The purpose of our business is to develop a repeat customer.
Read that sentence again. The strongest bulwark against difficult times and the best asset to maximize business in good times is a solid and continually expanding quantity of serious, high-quality repeat client companies! We all recognize this. Yet, if you are a manager, remember the first rule of motivation – you must reward correct conduct!

If you’ve been having trouble motivating your people to expand and upgrade their client base, if your firm could use more serious repeat clients, then you should ask yourself a fundamental question: What kind of behavior have I been rewarding?

How do you get more and better clients? Pay your people for developing them by sending a clear signal! What kind of signal? How about 75% of the fee for obtaining the search assignment and putting the deal together?

That is how you increase production – in good times or bad!

So let’s see what might happen within the office if a 75%-25% split for the candidate were instituted.

The Benefits

First, it would be fair. After all, the consultant who puts together the placement surely does at least 75% of the work. That person should get 75% of the fee.

Second, it yields for the client an objective presentation of all candidates and increased quality of work by the recruiter through-out the hiring process. Why? Because the search consultant is dealing with candidates of roughly equivalent worth, rather than candidates at both half the commission (the “split” candidate) and full commission (his or her own recruit).

Third, the entire office would utilize the back database inventory of candidates far more. Why? Because they are not being asked to work at half price when they do so!

Fourth, the firm would see additional clients brought in by those “feeder” consultants who only recruit for others. An appropriate split-fee arrangement means they would no longer be able to survive financially by doing so. Thus, they would have to go out and develop some clients – or get out of the way for more competent people.

Finally, a 75%-25% split sends a clear signal to your staff: that long-term business success is achieved by accumulating many repeat customers; that you want your people out there marketing your firm and developing accounts; that they need to put together completed searches; and that you will pay them for doing so!

Once upon a time, a 50-50 split was right for our industry. The applicant paid the fee! That was why they were worth 50%! But do you still work an APF market? No. So why do we still have a 50% split? Because we’ve always done it that way!

Come on. We can do better. Try it and see.

Steve Finkel has been described by Recruitment International, Europe’s largest industry publication, as “the world’s premier trainer in search and recruiting.” The producer of a full line of excellent training products in DVD, audio, and book format, he has conducted hundreds of in-house training programs on five continents, with 85% repeat business. For complete information, phone (314) 991-3177. Website: www.stevefinkel.com.

“Recruiting is the fun part of our business,” Phil Ross used to say.

Here’s the script I use for recruiting. Feel free to use it.

I call it the Guaranteed Recruit Script because it works every time. Well, nearly every time. Phil Ross used to say with a smile, “Nothing is absolute, and that’s an absolute!”

Hi __________?

Hi __________, Joe Pelayo, CEO at Joseph Michaels, Inc. I assume you know who I am? Seriously, you’ve never heard of me? I keep thinking I’m more famous than that! :

Well seriously __________, 21 years ago I began working with the CEOs and the CFOs around here (or in their industry), helping them to build their teams and find all-star financial executives like you.

Normally when I come to someone out of the blue, as I have you, they’re in one of two situations. First, of course, is save your breath, Joe, I’m not going anywhere. Second, of course, is: Thank God you called, Joe. Get me out of this place! :

Seriously, most guys I meet fall somewhere in between (I pause and say the “in between” Very Slowly), and I guess what I wanted to find out from you, ________, is where you might fit in (do not pause here!). How long have you been with XYZ company (Now pause), __________? And your current title or capacity there? Where did you work before? Have you had any interviews in the last six months?

Now you’ve got them talking, and I know you know how to handle it from here. Maybe something like:

Do you have an updated résumé you could email me, _______?

If I get interrupted with “I’m not looking” or “I’m pretty happy where I am,” I always ask this:

“Golden handcuffs?”

Those two beautiful words always seem to shake them up just enough and get their attention. I just let my two words sit there and do the work for me till the potential recruit says something. The something is usually “Well, I don’t know about that . . .” and then I’m back in business.

Joe Pelayo is a true self-made man. He began in the recruiting business in 1986 at the ripe old age of 17, when he says he “found every way to fail in the recruiting business.” After finally finding success with two recruiting firms, he started his own in 1990. As CEO of Joseph Michaels, Inc., Joe works an active desk recruiting CFOs and related financial and accounting executives. He is a longtime member of the Pinnacle Society, an organization consisting of 75 of the top recruiters in the United States.

Joe is also author of the new book Work Your Network! which has received excellent reviews from Les Brown, Brian Tracy, and industry leaders, speakers, and trainers, including Terry Petra, Bill Radin, Paul Hawkinson, and others. He writes a monthly newsletter, “The Network,” sent to 50,000 executives and is the author of several motivational DVD training programs, including the soon-to-be-released training system, 21 Ways to Increase Your Billings!

Joe is past president of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization, a group of million-dollar-business owners under age 40. Joe is available for speaking and training and can be reached through email at Joe@jpspeaking.com. His website is www.jpspeaking.com.

As recruiters, we pride our-selves on our ability to under-stand our clients’ talent needs. We partner with them to find, attract, and hire the hidden A players in any industry. But today, we – recruiters everywhere – are facing a new challenge. What happens when the playing field shifts in favor of the talent?

Executive recruiters and our clients are feeling the pinch of the low-supply, high-demand candidate market. We’ve experienced market shifts before, but this one is going to bring dramatic change to our profession. It’s a candidate’s world out there. And it’s only going to get worse.

Over the next five to seven years, 73 million baby boomers will retire. That’s a huge chunk of movers and shakers, people who’ve traditionally set the rules, hired the talent, and defined success. The playing field to which we’ve all grown accustomed will never be the same again. As professional recruiters, we must have a game plan in place today to face tomorrow’s talent shortage. If you thought recruiting was tough in previous candidate-driven markets, I’ve got bad news. You ain’t seen nothing yet! In the very near future, there is simply not going to be enough talent in the marketplace to satisfy the demand. A players are going to be harder to find, and they will be able to choose their teams as well as write their own contracts. Now more than ever, it’s critical that recruiters develop a strategy to win in this market.

Don’t just fill jobs; bring top talent to the table

As the time-to-fill metric continues to lengthen because of demographic shifts, placing candidates will become tougher and tougher. The most successful recruiters will have anticipated this and be prepared to deal with it proactively. They will spend more time bringing the impact player or most placeable candidate (MPC) to clients. In this tightening market, recruiters will find themselves with more job orders than they can handle. However, the placements will come more frequently from the MPC marketing call. Your mission is still to find that exceptional A player. But now you must spend the time necessary to truly market them to targeted companies. It is hard work that will pay big dividends.

Find all available opportunities for top talent

Once you’ve found top talent, be prepared to wow them. Don’t be content to simply take an A player to the market. Be as thorough as possible, finding all available opportunities for him or her. In a sense, you’re selling yourself to the candidates to get exclusivity. You can bring an extremely strong value proposition as a recruiter when you can say to your industry’s top talent, “I’m going to go out there and market you to all the prospective companies that make sense. I will bring to you all the available opportunities that fit your background. I can help you decide what is best for you and your career.”

Stop relying on job boards: employ alternate networking tools

Like last year’s favorite birthday gift, the job boards have lost their novelty. You are not going to find the A players on the job boards anymore. The top 10% of the talent pool are gain-fully employed and knocking the cover off the ball for their employers and not looking for another job. Job boards today are populated with B and C players who are looking to make a change. Every recruiter across the country has access to the job boards and thus to these candidates. You aren’t going to find anything special there. The last words of a recruiter about to go out of business are “But that is the way we’ve always done it.”

The truth is, A players are invisible to the job boards. They don’t have their résumés posted and they don’t look at job postings. You’ve got to come up with new ways to find them. The best recruiters are direct recruiting and using the alternate networking tools. I like LinkedIn, Xing, Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, and university alumni associations. These kinds of alternate tools will replace the job boards in effectiveness very quickly in this shifting market. Conveniently, some of them are free, with additional feature upgrades available for a nominal fee.

Coach your team of A players

Once you have identified the A players in your industry, you need to become a trusted career coach to your talent. Like a great coach who talks with and mentors his athletes every day, you need to touch your most valuable talent on a monthly basis. Keep yourself in front of them so they are reminded of your value. Keep them abreast of market trends. Don’t let them forget for a moment who you are and the value you bring. Always inform your talent inventory about great opportunities and make it a point to provide information that will help them in their careers. In the end, the game will be won by the recruiter with the best talent pool. Develop yours, communicate with them monthly, illustrate your value, and you will have clients knocking down your door to get at your talent.

Only work with clients who want a close partner

We’ve all heard it. “I need you to search for this position, but we will have our internal recruiting or HR staff working on the job as well.” While we may have been willing to work under these conditions in a client-friendly market, these are the clients we need to lose in a candidate-driven one. Winning recruiters should make it a firm rule to only work with clients who are 100% committed to you and your efforts on their behalf. Recruiting should never be a race against a client’s internal HR department or against another recruiter they have engaged. That is a losing proposition. A team approach where the client and a sole recruiter work together will deliver the best results for everyone involved: an efficient hiring process and a successful hire.

Work with clients on multiple openings

Recruiters in this market need to be choosy. If a client will only give you one job to fill while handing others to their internal staff or competing recruiters, you may want to discontinue the relationship. The clients we want are the ones that give us multiple openings of the same kind of search, allowing us to benefit from the synergy that comes naturally from the similar opportunities.

Set expectations up front

Part of being a good recruiter is being a great communicator. Set expectations up front with clients and candidates. Explain your strategy clearly; it will be crucial to your success. Discuss with hiring managers how you work, your role in the search, your responsibilities, and your hiring time frame. Make sure you define right now the types of situations and clients you will work with tomorrow and those you will not.

When dealing with candidates, it’s even more important to establish ground rules immediately. Explain your approach, agree on communication methods and expectations, and make sure they understand your role and their own role in the search. Stress open and honest feedback. Always keep your eye on the prize: the exclusivity to work with them on multiple opportunities.

It’s a New Playing Field

We’ve all faced challenges in our professional lives. The impending demographic change will redefine our workplace. This highly competitive climate can defeat us or energize us to new success. Whether you’re a baby boomer who has seen our industry evolve from head-hunters to professional talent consultants, or a 22-year-old recruiter for whom the profession is bursting with potential, now is the time to develop a game plan for a new playing field. Recruiters who are agile and prepared will continue to build winning teams – one player at a time – and to achieve prosperity in a rewarding career.

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 have billed 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. Jon runs an executive-coaching program called “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 at jon@jonathanscott.com as well as at jon@talentwinsonline.com.

My business coach once told me that a leader’s responsibility is to make people feel un-comfortable at a rate at which they can absorb. In other words, it is a leader’s responsibility to help people achieve their potential by encouraging and challenging them to let go of the things that are holding them back and embrace the things that will propel them forward. This is no different than the personal trainer whose responsibility it is to help you improve your fitness level and who does so by putting your body through torturous exercises! Ultimately, the leader’s challenge is to determine what the absorption rate is for each person and identify what helped them grow in the past that may now be the very thing holding them back.

My experience tells me that people, like plants, are either growing by looking toward the future or decaying by focusing on the past. It is from this vantage point that I share this month’s “Next Level” perspective.

There are various stages or levels that a recruiter passes through in his or her career, and each of them presents a crossroad. Should I stay at my current level or move to the next one? If I stay, how long will it be before I start regressing? If I go, what will it cost me? Interestingly, these questions apply not only to our professional life but also to our spiritual, physical, cognitive, social, and ethical lives. Consider the following levels as examples:

Level One – You are a solo producer. Do the benefits of growing the practice, adding new skills, and concentrating on the most rewarding functions, and long-term potential financial, mental, and professional re-wards outweigh the risks and challenges? How do I feel about empowering others with fewer competencies that must be compensated in part before results are ultimately achieved? How many must I hire and who will train them? What direct and indirect costs will there be? There are dozens of questions just like this at each level!

Level Two – You’ve hired one to two researchers/project coordinators and increased your revenue as a result.

Level Three – You’ve developed the researchers/project coordinators into project managers and directors who, in turn, have become responsible for hiring and managing additional re-searchers/project coordinators.

Level Four – You’ve removed yourself from most of the placement-process activities in your team/core area and have begun focusing on building a new practice area/division/ business unit either by you with a team of project staff or with other search consultants.

Level Five – You’ve built an entire practice area/division/ business unit that can function without you. At this level, you begin playing a much bigger game as it relates to your personal and professional growth.

When recruiters lack a vision for themselves or the inspiration, motivation, or support to achieve it, there is a devastating side effect that occurs – BURNOUT! Perhaps you became disgruntled with your previous office because “they” did not give you the support you wanted to get to where you were going (even if you did not know where that was). Perhaps you hired people who you felt great about and they left you (I wonder if any of them are reading this article). The retention rate in the search industry is terrible. So many people experience burnout with one office and leave for another or to start their own. Some blame the ease of entry into the search business. Others blame it on greed. I submit to you that it is a lack of vision, strategy, and tactics by the recruiter/ manager/owner.

The leader/manager/coach must help each recruiter navigate his or her way through these various stages, or otherwise be faced with questions such as:

“What value are you providing me for the percentage I am giving up to you?”

“I am bored doing the same things over and over again, like a hamster on a wheel, and I want to do something different.”

“Why don’t you give me more _____ or pay for more of my _____ or provide me with _____?”

“Is this all there is for me?”

“How do I get to the next level?” (forgive me for the shameless plug)

On the surface, these questions can be seen as negative or subversive. Or they can be seen as gateways to a different future. Pain or frustration is a powerful stimulus to creating positive change!

Since the problem (or opportunity) is multifaceted, so too must be the solution. Maybe changes need to be made in the environment or culture that will promote innovation and growth. Maybe systems, processes, and procedures need to change. Maybe new resources, tools, or training are needed. Maybe the economics have to change to include the sacred cow of equity. Only by creating a vision, outlining the strategic objectives and tactics, and then executing them can true growth occur.

It is neither complicated nor easy. If it were, we would see hundreds of search firms generating revenues in excess of $5M/$10M/$50M/$100M+. Kaye/Bassman was recently list-ed by Hunt-Scanlon as the 10th-largest retained search firm and the #1 largest single site search firm in the United States. In 2006, we generated $18 million in revenues with just over 100 associates. What number ac-counting or law firm would that be? Every recruiter/ manager/owner/firm should periodically evaluate what level they are on and make a conscious decision to either remain or grow.

So, what are you going to do? If not now, when? If not you, who? Do you want one or multiple desks/practices, or do you want to build a business of substance that has real value in financial and psychic terms and create a legacy that one day you can reminisce about and reflect back on?

A wise Buddhist once said that at times one should just live in the question itself and “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Otherwise, as Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, “Alice came to a fork in the road. “Which road do I take?” she asked. “Where do you want to go?” responded the Cheshire cat. “I don’t know,” Alice answered. “Then,” said the cat, “it doesn’t matter.”

On a more tactical practice level, this month’s top producer tip comes from Eric Dickerson, who has been at Kaye/Bassman since 1997. He became a managing director in 2006 after generating over $1 million in revenue that year. He also co-created the soon-to-be-released best PC Recruiter training ever produced!

“THERE ARE NO OFFERS, ONLY ACCEPTANCES!”

Often recruiters are so hungry for the “deal” that they rush past the little details that can bite them in the end. In particular, there are the financial and benefit details related to the offer. I regularly walk the candidate and client through each and every piece of the offer: base, bonus, vacation time, relocation (if needed), sign-on bonus, stock options or equity portions, and long-term growth potential. With the client, I also highlight how the candidate fits into the hiring authority’s “sweet spot” and how they may fall outside that area early on in the presentation process. The phrase I use is “Please look at this candidate with a $______ price tag. If they still look good, then let’s proceed and if not then let’s discuss.”

I cover this with the candidate early in the process to create a “baseline” where the candidate is currently and where he or she would ideally like to be. This helps me “match” the candidate to the position and allows for discussions about the benefits of the new opportunity and the candidate’s willingness to bend in certain areas.

The next time I cover this is between the telephone and face-to-face interviews. This is a shorter discussion, but it allows me to ask the question “So has anything changed practically or conceptually in your compensation and benefits requirements based on what you have heard and where you are currently?” By doing this now, I continue to solidify the value of the opportunity in the candidate’s mind and make sure that nothing has changed in his or her mind.

The final discussion happens prior to the actual offer being extended. This is one of those big areas where the “rubber meets the road” and where you earn your client’s respect and appreciation. I walk the candidate through all the details, high-lighting what has been agreed to previously and ensuring that we are still in agreement. When red flags pop up (and they will), I walk the candidate through the logic of why the request might not be acceptable. Additionally, I revisit their “hot buttons” to highlight the intrinsic reasons why they are interested in making a change. Once I have the variances identified, I speak with my hiring authority and verify what can and cannot be changed. In areas where nothing can be done, I strategize with the hiring manager on what could be adjusted in exchange for the candidate accepting something less.

Once I have the alternatives highlighted, I go back to the candidate and gain agreement with the adjustments using his or her “hot buttons” and value-added opportunities within the new organization. Ultimately, the number of issues will be minimal if I have covered these items with the candidate and the hiring authority early and often.

Finally, I rarely have my client extend an offer and instead simply allow them to extend their congratulations. By covering the little things related to money and benefits, as well as others, you will ensure a smooth acceptance in the process.

Jeff Kaye is president and CEO of Kaye/ Bassman International and Next Level Recruit-ing 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 work-place flexibility and also was 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. 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 email Jeff a thought or question at jtk@nlrtraining.com.