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Straight Talk for the Recruiting Profession


The Business of Recruiting

How-To, The Business of Recruiting

From Concept to ROI: How a Recruiter Training Program Paid for Itself

by on Jan. 23, 2012


keith newport

As a physician recruiting agency, we have the usual challenge of any recruiting firm—serving our two different constituencies — candidates and clients — and the challenge of working in a specialized industry, healthcare, which has detailed credentialing requirements that vary based on the state, private versus government, and client to client. Additionally, our agency recruits for six high-demand specialties, each with its own set of expertise and requirements.

To help serve our two customer segments, we divided our account executives into two roles: marketers, who deal directly with clients at healthcare facilities, and recruiters, who work with physicians. Also, each of our recruiters and marketers staffs for a single medical specialty.

About seven years ago, we developed our Research Consulting group, a training program for account executives, to accommodate our unique organizational structure. I took over the RC group about five years ago. I started at the company as an account executive, and I had a passion for sales training. When the opportunity to manage and develop my own sales team presented itself, I was very enthusiastic about it. I am an example of the various career-path options that are available to all associates within our organization. This process guides associates through different stages of their career in a very organic manner by giving them the support and training they need along the way.

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The Business of Recruiting

Recruiter Chronicles: Three Resolutions for 2012

by on Jan. 6, 2012


Happy-New-Year-2012

What is it about the promise of a new year that generates hope? To me, it’s always seemed a bit ridiculous to send these promises to the god of resolutions, somewhere out there in the starry firmament. Nevertheless, it is hard to doubt the cultural or historical significance of this custom.

New year’s resolutions date back to 153 BC, where the mythical King Janus of Rome was placed at the head of the calendar with two faces. One looking forward, and one looking back. Janus became an ancient symbol of resolutions and is the namesake of our first month of the year. More than two thousand years later, health clubs and fad exercise DVD’s across the world pay homage at the altar of Janus every winter as they count their money. At least they should be.

But even if you are as cynical as I am about New Year’s resolutions, we all should make them in the sprit of being better recruiters. At the Aureus Group we call it our Accountability Plan. For lack of a better way to describe it, it’s what we each resolve to do that will make us better. It is a comprehensive action plan that details every action we will take to reach our goals.

In making my plan this year, I realized that there were three themes of self improvement I intend to make in 2012. I hope they speak to you too and help you to reach your max potential in 2012.

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Business, For Managers, The Business of Recruiting

The Importance of Drama in Your Business

by on Dec. 19, 2011


drama-masks

I attended the NAPS conference back in September. I left angry and frustrated after listening to Don Schmincke defiantly explain that success in our companies is not about mastering processes, metrics, goals, or strategic analysis. Hadn’t I just filled three exercise books with notes on exactly that, ready to fly home to Japan to change the face of recruiting?

Wasn’t the NAPS conference all about the processes of recruiting, content, metrics, scripts, function, industry specialization, and location?  Not to Schmincke — he indicated that these are important but are not the main drivers of our businesses.

I now had more questions than answers. Why had I started my own firm eight months earlier? What was our mission at our new company, Morunda KK? What was our dream, our purpose? Was I crazy?

Schmincke spoke of Viktor Frankl from his book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor, observed human behavior as a prisoner in Nazi Germany’s concentration camps. He discovered that it was those people that had a dream, purpose, and passion that survived the concentration camps, and those that didn’t perished.

Don Schmincke had rekindled the desire that had led me to recruiting ten years earlier. I started to dream and imagine in a way I had not done for a long time. The words of Og Mandino (The Greatest Salesman in the World) sprang to mind, “I’ll greet this day with love in my heart for this is the greatest secret of success.”  Passion and love drive profits, not processes.  Our attitude determines our achievements in life and in business. Passion always triumphs.

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The Business of Recruiting

The Attitude of Gratitude and How It Can Lead You to Prosperity!

by on Nov. 23, 2011


gratitude

One thing you should be truly excited about is the possibilities for having an outstanding business in 2012. The recruiting firm owners I have coached this year have seen increases in their business from 20% to 118% so far. Most owners I speak with are seeing a NICE surge in business. It even appears the recovery (for us as recruiters) is stronger now than coming out of the last recession in 2002.

I know you are reading this around Thanksgiving and we should all be grateful we survived and are poised for another large increase in our businesses the next few years. You see, gratitude is an attitude that attracts abundance.

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The Business of Recruiting

Recruiting for Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Companies

by on Nov. 22, 2011


754962309_2dce031cd6

My firm, Clark Executive Search, recruits exclusively for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Since I have a background in science, we further specialize in recruiting only senior-level scientists with PhD degrees and medical doctors in the industries’ research and development departments. I recruit these individuals because they are fascinating, dedicated to saving lives, and are at the peak of the pharmaceutical ladder. Discovering drugs and then testing them with people is a highly technical field requiring advanced degrees. In addition, in order to be in management or lead a laboratory at these companies, a higher degree is a requirement.

The pharmaceutical industry presents unique challenges to executive search firms concentrating in the area. There is a huge learning curve for recruiters working a desk in this niche, and a scientific background is a must. This once-safe industry for recruiters has become much less so as pharmaceutical companies desperately try to solve their drug discovery problems through mega-mergers, buyouts, and outsourcing.

I chose this niche for a reason: I believe recruiting for this area is different from other areas, and I certainly won’t back down from a challenge!

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The Business of Recruiting

The Recruiter Chronicles: “The Million Dollar Interview”

by on Nov. 15, 2011


money_bags

The main reason I love writing “The Recruiter Chronicles” is that I do not write from the perspective of being a “big biller” (yet). Consider me somewhere between consistent solid performer and top performer, but definitely not “big biller.” I am an “everyman” type of recruiter and I, like most of you, am scratching and clawing towards “big biller” status. I do feel like I’m on the way though, and this series that I write is a testimonial to the misadventures that have and will happen along the way.

I have two teammates here at The Aureus Group in Omaha, Nebraska that certainly qualify as “big billers,” having both eclipsed the Million Dollar annual production threshold recently and trending to do the same in 2011. Recently, I sat down with both of them and asked for their perspective on what it has taken to arrive at this hallowed ground of agency recruiter production. For the sake of anonymity we will call them, lovingly of course, “Big Biller A” and “Big Biller H.”

Big Biller A has been in the recruiting/staffing business since 1987 holding many different roles, including one as a recruiting franchise owner. Currently, Big Biller A is a Senior IT Recruiter with Aureus Group and also manages a team of three recruiters.

Big Biller H was recruited into our industry right out of college, and has been going strong now for nearly twelve years. Currently, Big Biller H is a Senior Account Manager working directly with clientele of the Aureus Group, and she has been with us for more than four years.

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Industry News, The Business of Recruiting

“The Headhuntress” Airs Tonight on Bravo

by on Nov. 14, 2011


the-headhuntress

Bravo is airing a one-hour special tonight that may do for executive headhunting what Simon Cowell did for talent shows.

In the space of 60 minutes (commercials included), Wendy Doulton dispenses such bits of advice to her six-figure job candidates as “You need to lose the cleavage,” and “You make me feel like taking a nap.”

Born in the U.S., educated in London, Doulton’s blunt, unvarnished advice is delivered, in a clipped British accent. “A résumé should be like a skirt,” she declares. “Long enough to cover the basics, but short enough to keep them interested.”

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The Business of Recruiting

In Memoriam: Robert P. Style, Esq.

by on Nov. 8, 2011


Robert P Style

September 13, 1943 – July 18, 2011

Editor’s Note: Bob Style’s passing was a loss to our community and we were saddened to hear the news earlier this summer. This tribute is from Bob’s professional colleague, Jeff Allen, as a memoriam to a valued member of the agency recruiting family. Out of respect for Bob and as a small tribute, we have added information on his passing to his online bio on The Fordyce Letter.

The passing of Bob Style happened quietly. As a result, I’m receiving calls from clients and friends – many of whom didn’t even know he died. Not fun to tell them.

Bob’s family has asked me to say a few words about him. I’m honored to do that, but a few words won’t do Bob justice. So I’ll say three words, and try in vain to convey what they mean.

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The Business of Recruiting

Personal Discipline – The Path to Personal Freedom and Success in Search

by on Nov. 1, 2011


pathway

Personal discipline. This is a daily challenge for me. We live in a world full of distractions, unhealthy choices, and pressure to do a myriad of things that are not in our true self-interest. Modern culture has created an increasingly noisy, busy, artificial, short-term focused, pleasure-seeking world. The human temptation to slip into the path of least resistance, to seek out safety and comfort, and to avoid risk and hard work is ever present.

I’m writing about this subject in relation to success in the search profession, as I believe that the ability to be incredibly self-disciplined is one of the most important requirements for success in this business. We all know that without doing “the work,” sustainable success as a recruiter will not happen. For the great majority of us, our work is done alone, either as solo practitioners, or in offices or cubicles, as part of a search firm. We each decide, in the “privacy of our own privacy,” what we will do with the hours we are blessed with each day.

Recruiting success, simply put, requires excellent productivity. Since our work as recruiters is primarily made up of our personal actions (phone calls, emails, meetings, letters, research, writing, listening, etc.), the productivity that I am talking about is “personal productivity,” as opposed to equipment, office, or other measures. Sustained personal productivity, or the amount of value-added work done per personal unit of time, over the long run, is one of the most significant indicators or predictors of success in this great business.

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The Business of Recruiting

“The Phone Rang…” Lessons from Robocruiter, Part 1

by on Oct. 28, 2011


Robocruiter logo

The Total Account Executive

The phone rang.  I answered and boy was I surprised.  At the other end of the line was someone I hadn’t spoken to in quite a long time and yet someone who had such a dramatic influence on my recruiting life.  It was, in my opinion, the best recruiter who has ever lived, bar none.  So good at our craft, in fact, that years ago I nicknamed him ‘Robocruiter’ (half man; half recruiter) after the 1987 futuristic movie Robocop.  I also wanted to give him a nickname so that I could teach his techniques without disclosing his identity.  I didn’t want him to be bothered by curious recruiters and I knew that would happen if I divulged his name.  After all, we recruiters are not a shy lot.

Robocruiter called because he had committed to a speaking engagement and, since he knows that I do an awful lot of training and standup presentations, wanted to ask me some technical public speaking questions.  We talked about speaking and then our conversation moved into the recruitment training arena.  I told him that his concept of The Total Account Executive (AE) was one of my favorite topics.  I also said that over the years, I have taught so much of what I learned from him that I couldn’t tell where he left off and I began.  He thanked me and we went our separate ways.

For those of you who haven’t been exposed to Robocruiter before, buckle your seatbelts.  I am going to take you on a brief flight through some of his more memorable (to me) recruitment technique snippets.  By the end of our journey, you will be able to appreciate his complete mastery of our profession.

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