As Malcolm Gladwell points out is his bestseller The Tipping Point, little things can make a big difference. The same is true when it comes to finding, recruiting, and hiring passive candidates. One big thing recruiters can do is tame their hiring manager clients. Taming your hiring managers is an essential first step if you want to recruit passive candidates.

As was pointed out in a major study we did last year with LinkedIn, 82% of LinkedIn’s fully employed members characterize themselves as passive candidates. While they’d be open to talk with a recruiter, they are not interested in a lateral transfer, applying through your ATS, or working for a company that doesn’t know how to hire and develop talent. To find and hire these people, especially the best of the group, recruiters need to not only tame their hiring managers, but also employ the 6 Cs for recruiting passive candidates. These represents the key tipping points involved in any passive candidate search effort.

Over many (many) years, I’ve worked on search assignments with more than 500 different hiring managers on positions ranging from staff accountants and senior engineers to functional VPs, COOs, and CEOs of all stripes and sizes. From these experiences I’ve discovered a bunch of challenges that need to be addressed before you start looking for candidates.

Collectively they represent reasons why you must tame your hiring managers as part of any search assignment — at least if you want to fill the position with some top-notch in a reasonable period of time. Here are some basic rules for taming your hiring managers. (More)

Basic Rules for Taming Hiring Managers

1. Make sure the manager understands real job needs. Ask the hiring manager what the person must accomplish over the course of the first year that would indicate why the person is a top performer. I refer to this list of performance objectives as performance profiles. The idea behind this: if the person can demonstrate they’ve done comparable work, they obviously have the requisite skills.
2. Make sure the hiring manager “owns” the employee value proposition. Before you start hunting, make sure you ask the hiring manager why a top person with a lot of upside potential would want your job. Forget the apple pie and motherhood. This EVP must be specific and related to the actual job. As you’ll see below, this forms the core of the candidate’s intrinsic motivator for looking.
3. Insist that the hiring manager be open to talking with candidates on an exploratory basis. The best people are looking for career moves, not lateral transfers. Passive candidates aren’t even looking. By giving these prospects a chance to talk with a hiring manager on a peer-to-peer level to see if your opening represents a possible career move, you’ll add a lot of strong candidates into the top of your funnel.

Of course there are more taming rules aside from these, but this is a good start. As you’ll discover though, they’re not enough. In this case — especially if you want to find and hire the best passive candidates — the 6 Cs come into play. Here’s a quick take on what they are and why they’re critical.

The Key Tipping Points for Recruiting Passive Candidates — a.k.a. “The 6Cs”

1. Compelling: you must be able to capture the candidate’s intrinsic motivator in your job posting, voice mail, or email. It’s what will get your hot prospect to pay attention to the message. For a staff engineer it might be pushing the envelope on a new technology. For an executive it might be a chance to turn around a troubled business. For a flight nurse it’s probably something related to the daily rush involved in helping save someone’s life.
2. Control: make sure your opening questions requires the prospect to tell you about him or herself before you tell the person about the job. The things that a candidate asks about when first contacted by a recruiter (pay, title, company, location) are not the same when deciding which offer to take (opportunity, growth, challenge). Control allows the recruiter to position the conversation at the beginning to ensure that the best prospects don’t opt out for the wrong reasons.
3. Career: during your first call you must be able to convert your open position into a career opportunity on the fly. If the candidate describes her job in some detail first (see point two above), the recruiter will have the opportunity to determine if your current opening offers the candidate a true career move. Part of this could be adjusting the scope of the job up or down to better meet the candidate’s career needs.
4. Connect: Even if your prospect isn’t perfect, he or she is probably only one degree of separation from someone who is. Once you decide the person isn’t ideal, start networking. One way is to connect on LinkedIn and start looking at the person’s connections and ask about specific people. Get their qualifications and then start calling.
5. Conviction: Persistence is key. You must understand your job opening, and why it offers a career opportunity — and you must not take “no” for an answer. If you’re not convinced of what you have to offer is great, neither will your candidate.
6. Close: You’ll never have enough money in the budget to pay the best prospects what they want. You can minimize the blow here by selling and closing on the career opportunity your position offers, not the compensation it pays. If you miss this critical “C” the others won’t matter.

Whether the candidate is passive or not, if you want to hire top-notch talent you’ll need to employ the 6Cs on every assignment. They’re all critical tipping points in your hunt for the best people around. The biggest tipping point of them all though, is to make sure you’ve tamed your hiring manager client. Without this person onboard and committed to hire the best, all of your good efforts will have little payoff.

One of the most common questions I get asked by recruiting firm owners is, “What should I look for when I want to hire a researcher?” Since so many of you appear to be looking for good sourcing talent these days, I would like to go through some details of what I believe to be good qualities an excellent researcher might have so that you can select the right one for you. This will not be a complete list, however I think that as you conduct your search, you will find that your most qualified candidates will possess several of these particular skills.

Before I get into this, I would like to first give you a couple of examples of the kind of value that can be derived from hiring a researcher for your office:

• Many recruiting offices have accounted for between $200,000 – $800,000 in placements in a given year from candidates sourced through research
• Researchers I have spoken with have told me that their total billing dollars made up between 20% – 60% of their total office billings.

When I worked for Jon Bartos from 2002-2006, I myself was responsible for finding the candidates whose placements totaled  over $400,000 in billings for my office in 2005, which at the time was about 33% of our total office billings, so you can see the value that can be brought to your office by having a full time researcher. Keep in mind these numbers do not even reflect the billings that come about from 2^nd and 3^rd degree candidates which could account for millions more. Please keep this in mind as you’re considering bringing on a full time, dedicated researcher.

On to the meat and potatoes: What should you look for when screening potential sourcers? Everyone has their own opinion on what makes a good researcher; these are simply what I have seen as common qualities in the good researchers whom I know.

1. Paralegal or Library Science background. I have found that some of the best researchers have these kind of backgrounds – why is that? Well a colleague of mine is a graduate of Dominican University’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. I looked at some of the courses offered in this program, and they include such things as ‘Organization of Knowledge’, ‘Reference and Online Services’, ‘Subject Analysis’, ‘Online Information Systems’, ‘Searching Electronic Databases’, ‘Collection Management’, ‘Research Methods’, and the list goes on and on. In my opinion, anyone who has studied the Organization of Knowledge at the collegiate level would probably make a good researcher. From a paralegal perspective, you’ve got to know how to research and be thorough to be a good paralegal; both qualities carry over into becoming a good recruiting researcher.
2. Speed reader. I don’t necessarily think that ‘speed reading’ is the important factor here, but someone who can scan and summarize an article quickly would make a great researcher. What I do all day long is….read. So in order to maximize my efficiency, I must read quickly without missing important information. Bottom line – a good researcher scans quickly but knows what buzzwords to look for.
3. Addicted to information. Almost all good researchers whom I’ve talked to have RSS feeds that they read on a daily basis. Someone who loves to learn and loves information will certainly excel as a researcher. RSS feeds have made it easy for us addicts to get our daily fix without spending all day looking at blogs, news releases, and article reviews. A person who likes to read books in their spare time would also be included in this category. I’m not talking about Danielle Steele novels here – I’m talking about industry-related reading, success principles, history, technology, etc. Constantly in the learning mode. One of my favorite quotes is “If you’re not green and growing, then you are red and rotting.”
4. Can “connect the dots.” I also like to call this ‘following the White Rabbit.’ Sometimes as a researcher you will be given incomplete information. A good researcher will be able to take the bits and pieces they have been given and create a complete picture from it.
5. “Outside of the box” thinker. Yes, incredibly cliché, I know. But, when you consider that researchers will have to rely sometimes on crumbs of clues to find the perfect candidate, they must have creative minds in order to find what they need. Let’s take a look at the definition of “outside the box”: according to Webster’s New Millennium™ Dictionary of English, the definition is ‘beyond conventional thought or practice; creative and unorthodox in thought or practice.’ We are an odd bunch, aren’t we? But that’s what makes us excellent at what we do – we can look at a resource and see things that others cannot.
6. Familiarity with current technology, especially technology pertinent to recruiting and/or sourcing. Good recruiting research candidates will not look at you like a cow looking at a new gate if you mention the words LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, etc. Let’s face it, everyone is familiar with Google, so if you ask anyone if they know how to ‘Google,’ they will say yes. They will tell you that they typed in a word in Google once and ‘conducted research.’ WRONG!! I made the mistake of asking this in an interview once, and after the lady got hired I had to show her how to bring up Google in a web browser. Needless to say, she did not last long and I learned a valuable lesson.
7. Well networked. Good researchers know everybody. They have a friend who mountain bikes with this guy who works at a company that manufactures XYZ and he reports to…you get the picture. Not only do they know everybody, but those they don’t know, they know where to look to find them. Using public records, white pages, Zoom Info and similar resources, or simply going to Bing/Google/Yahoo, they can find the unfindable people. These folks will typically have over 200 people in their cell phone as well.
8. Good data entry skills. I look forward to the day when misinterpretation of research responsibilities is squashed forever. Even though I don’t believe that it is the sole responsibility of a researcher to do data entry, this is a skill that needs to be present. It would behoove a researcher to have better keyboarding skills than the classic “hunt and peck” method.
9. Prior experience in recruiting OR human resources. Not at the top of my list, but I think a potential candidate should get a couple brownie points for having prior experience. This was not the case for me of course: the job I held right before I began researching, believe it or not, was waiting tables. I always considered the ‘must have experience’ clause in a job description to be a bit of a Catch-22 – how am I supposed to gain experience if no one will give me the opportunity to earn it? But if your candidate has been in a recruiting environment or has worked in human resources before, they at least know how the operation works.
10. Basic phone skills. Yes — researchers do need to be able to get on the phone sometimes to dial into companies and do some competitive intelligence gathering. Granted — this does not mean you need to ‘turn them into a recruiter’ or that they could someday be ‘promoted’ to recruiter status. Not all researchers desire to be recruiters — take me, for instance. I have been a career researcher and never had the desire to become a recruiter. But having basic phone skills could predispose someone to being a good researcher if those skills are applied appropriately to information gathering.
11. Specific certifications and/or training. AIRS has a plethora of sourcing and recruiting certifications, including the ‘Certified Internet Recruiter’ designation. Anyone who has taken this certification course should have a good beginning foundation for becoming a recruiting researcher (however, I always believe that experience speaks louder than a certification!).

A lot of you at this point are thinking “Well this is all great stuff, but how do you find out in an interview if a candidate possesses these skills?” Here are a couple of quick suggestions I can offer for some good screening techniques:

1. Ask for specific examples of information they stay current with – what interests them, what they enjoy reading (if they like to read, that is!), etc.
2. In talking with a fellow researcher while writing this, we came up with a great test to give potential research candidates: give an article, maybe two pages in length, and set a time limit in which it must be read, and then ask the candidate to summarize. The catch in this exercise would be to put a vital piece of information buried in the middle, and perhaps another at the very end, so that someone who could scan quickly yet pick up important details would see it.
3. Give them a simple search task. Either ask them to verbally walk you through their course of action, or give it to them to complete while they are there, or as a ‘homework assignment.’
4. Give them a list of 3-4 companies to call into to identify someone with a specific title. Bonus: see what else they are able to come up with while searching for that individual…
5. Ask them what they think would be the most interesting aspect of conducting Internet research.
6. Find out what the breadth of their social media presence is – what networks are they part of and how active are they in online communities.
7. A fun screening technique: our sister site, SourceCon, runs Challenges to stretch the minds of the recruiting research community. Anyone who has participated in these Challenges would most likely do well as your researcher. Note: they don’t have to win the Challenge to prove their research prowess — participation is a key indicator!

I speak from experience here: finding the right candidate to be a researcher can be a daunting task. I’ve had to interview potential research candidates in the past and there’s no one “cookie cutter” type of candidate you can look for. These listed skills however should help you in looking for the right mix of skill and experience that will work within your office. Just keep in mind that as researchers, we don’t really carry a ‘book of business’ or have a set educational path or really even a universal job description, so it may be tough to gauge from just one interview if your candidate would work. You may even consider asking someone you know who already employs a researcher if you could borrow that person for a telephone interview.

Regardless, for those of you out there who have been teetering on the fence about whether or not to hire a researcher, I hope you will consider it more now. A dedicated researcher can bring a lot of revenue to your office – you just have to know what to look for!

image source: Evan Bench

Whether or not you want to admit it, we all use some paid resources for our recruiting efforts. This could include any of the following products: job boards, resume databases, information gathering resources (like Jigsaw or ZoomInfo), ATSs, the list goes on and on. Yes – I am talking to you! I know you post jobs on Monster, CareerBuilder, or at least some niche sites from time to time. I know you have purchased an applicant tracking system (that most likely is simply used as a repository for resumes with very little, if any, data organization). If we are spending money on these resources, why, then, do we so adamantly preach and train against using them when conducting candidate searches? If we’re paying for them, then why not justify the cost of using them by actually using them? And if we are not using them, then why continue to pay for them???

Even though I am a researcher and I do not recruit, I learned great “Target Recruiting” in my early days of working in the world of recruiting by studying and talking with my recruiting peers. The idea of the candidate sourcing bull’s-eye is to guide sourcers as well as recruiters in the process of using resources to find candidates. I have revised my own target over the years and am excited to share it with you on The Fordyce Letter.

The bull’s-eye is the first place to start when sourcing: referrals from present and past candidates. And how would you determine whom to connect with for referrals? By utilizing your internal database – your ATS. A paid resource.

The next ring outside of the center for conducting search is the internal database itself. Why? Because these are all folks who have been contacted at some point in time (hopefully) by someone in your company and who have notes attached to their record (again, hopefully) as to their most recent job status. Again, putting a paid resource to good use. Ask yourself this: are you tagging your candidates when you enter them into your ATS? Are you entering candidates into the database in the first place? If you’re not doing this, then you are throwing dollars down the drain by underutilizing a very valuable recruiting and sourcing resource.

Here’s where some people may differ: in my target, the next ring is the paid resources. Why? Because they’ve been paid for. If you’re going to purchase access to a resume database, then you should use it. If you’re of the belief that Monster or CareerBuilder candidates are “garbage” or “already picked through,” then you’re missing the point. About 25% of candidates hired into new roles come from resume databases. Not impressed? According to the most recent Source of Hire survey conducted by CareerXroads, job boards/resume databases were the second highest source of hire…behind referrals. And if that still doesn’t make a dent in your opinion, then think about the fact that you can dig deeply into the resumes in the database to gather competitive intelligence — people list referral contact information on their resumes; and you can also track the companies at which they’ve previously worked, and to which professional organizations they belong. Resume databases can be used as so much more of a resource than just finding active candidates, if you’re opposed to that.

The last places you should be spending time searching for candidates are Internet and free resources — these include social networks, web searches, and so forth. Why? Think of the Pareto Principle — also known as the 80/20 Rule — which postulates that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Translate this into recruit-speak, and say that 80% of your hires come from 20% of your resources. So, by focusing on the other 80% of your resources, i.e. mostly the free resources, you’ll be paying attention to only about 20% of your potential hiring activity. Free resources are great, but unless you have a very well-defined and well-oiled search process in place for them — or an excellent, efficient, dedicated researcher to conduct free resource searches for you — then you’re spending a lot of time with resources that will yield you less results than the ones for which you pay.

The lesson to be learned here is this: optimize the resources for which you pay. Spend the time organizing your ATS. Learn how to get the most out of your paid resources, which include your resume databases and search technology tools. Train your recruiters on how to use them properly. Do these things and you will justify the cost of purchasing them.

My method, of course, is not the end-all and I welcome your thoughts and opinions on this matter. But perhaps thinking about your reason for purchasing your resources — hopefully to streamline your recruiting process and create a more efficient business — will help you to look at your candidate sourcing from a slightly different perspective.

This article is from the May 2011 print Fordyce Letter. To subscribe and receive a monthly print issue, please go to our Subscription Services page.

At no cost, recruiters can post openings for $100,000 jobs and get access to My Pipeline, The Ladders’ private social network, and to the CRM. Sure, there are some caveats. You only get to post one job at a time, and you can’t search resumes. But what a deal, even if you never post a single job.

Just My Pipeline alone is a great offer for any recruiter who hires for jobs in the six-figure category. It lets you build a social pipeline of candidates interested in your company, your jobs, or you (as a recruiter specializing in their field). When you have a job, you have a ready audience of candidates.

What makes My Pipeline different from Facebook and other social networks is that the job seekers are all $100k earners. They’ve gone through an initial screening process when they joined; the monthly fee to be a member deters most of the unqualified wannabes.

The free job posting is icing on the cake, and rather necessary, since that’s what you send to your pipeline. The CRM lets you sort, store, and communicate with the candidates who respond to your job posting.

Alexandre Douzet, president and co-founder of The Ladders, described Passport as “an entry-level product.” I suppose that’s primarily because, as a freebie, it’s lacking the all-important resume searching and some other bells and whistles.

However, that may not be as critical on The Ladders as on other job boards. Since job seekers have to pay to see jobs, it’s a fair bet that most of the members are active, and are likely to find you.

Passport service also doesn’t include FitFinder, The Ladders’ RPO lite. FitFinder is a human-powered service that matches candidates to jobs sending three or four names for each job posted.

As for the single posting limit, that’s per recruiter. So a company with multiple recruiters can have one job posted for each recruiter registered on The Ladders, Douzet said.

The free posting harkens back to The Ladders’ roots. For the first few years after its founding in 2003, the company offered unlimited free postings. Revenue came from the membership fees paid by job seekers. In 2007, The Ladders began charging for every job posted to the site.

So why now is The Ladders looking backward?

“We realized over the past couple years,” Douzet explained, that “job postings in their current form have become commoditized. Recruiters don’t necessarily see the value in job postings.”

In the last half of the last decade, as Indeed and SimplyHired came online, and Craigslist exploded globally, and recruiting SEO took center stage, many recruiters discovered they could get just as good a response for free as by paying to post. Corporate career sites took on greater importance as a place to court prospects, as well as process their applications

That doesn’t mean recruiters are wholesale fleeing pay to post sites. There is still value in paying to post an opening, not the least of which is convenience. However, it does mean that services are becoming more important. These include wider distribution via integration with the social media sites, improved resume searching, candidate matching, branding, and the like.

Which is why Douzet said, “What we are really selling… are the services.” “If I was working there (at a pay-to-post site), where half their revenue is from job posting, I personally would be nervous,” he added. Douzet once did. He was director of online marketing at HotJobs a decade ago.

Now, Douzet and The Ladders team detect the trend is toward free postings, which will put more importance on the other things a commercial career site can offer. FitFinder is one of those other things, Douzet pointed out. “It’s been phenomenal,” he said of the reception its gotten since being introduced last summer. Being a private company (at least for now — see this), Douzet wouldn’t share numbers, though he did say growth in FitFinder use has been strong.

Why not just offer free unlimited postings? Douzet said most recruiters work on just a handful of the top salary jobs a month, so wouldn’t likely post many openings at any one time. And, though he didn’t say this, there’s still money to be earned from the pay to post business.

reposted with permission from ERE.net

Phone sourcing has become somewhat of a lost art form – which is interesting considering that we live in a world of connectivity yet have lost the personal touch of picking up the phone and calling, regardless if you are full cycle recruiter, a sourcer, or a researcher.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that, at times, cold calling can be daunting and sometimes it’s easier to hide behind the computer. Many today have either never cold called or are fearful of doing so, not realizing that ultimately it is the human connection that creates lasting bonds within networking.

When I started out as a phone sourcer, I was led to believe that creating elaborate stories would get me to the candidate I desired. Quickly, I discovered that honestly and ethics, combined with a simple question of “can you help me,” was of greater value.

There are best practices that I follow when phone sourcing:

1. Don’t be afraid of rejection.Don’t take rejection personally. Undoubtedly you will encounter two types: those willing to talk with you and those unwilling.
2. Don’t be afraid to call back or talk with anyone. If you do encounter an unwilling individual, try calling back using another approach.
3. Be courteous to the gatekeeper. They desire to help, but often need subtle persuasion.
4. Ask for help. It’s okay to admit you’re not an expert. People who are experts love to talk about what they do.
5. Know what the target looks like. Let’s be honest, if you have absolutely no clue as to what you are looking for in your search, then perhaps it would be a good idea to spend some time figuring that out first. The other side of asking for help is the risk of sounding incompetent. People who are really good at their jobs are insulted by recruiters who call not knowing exactly what they are calling about.
6. Aim for a positive candidate experience. We all have heard stories from candidates about their negative experiences with recruiting and sourcing. View each interaction as an opportunity to change a perception, even if the individual is curt or rude and hangs up. When I’ve encountered such an individual, I acknowledge that they are not interested by saying, “Thank you, I appreciate your honesty and time,” which normally catches them off guard with kindness.
7. Use a script if you need to; at the very least have a bullet-point list of what you are looking for. I personally refrain from using a script, as many lack a “natural” rhythm to the conversation. When starting out, I did use a script, but I soon found that I was comfortable talking on the phone with just about anyone and just as quickly put it aside. I do however, keep a bullet-point handy.
8. Call back, but don’t call so many times that you become a nuisance. While persistence is key to success, calling into reception every five minutes will not win friends. Engage those individuals you speak with to forward you to the right person, and make sure you ask for direct dial numbers and extensions.
9. Be considerate of the other person’s time and location. They may not want to or be able to speak with you while at work or sitting in a cubical. Ask them “is this a good time?” If not, suggest speaking with them after hours at home. Try to get their personal email, offer to leave your number or email. Be convenient. After all, you are calling them – not the other way around.
10. Consider what you can do for them. Build a bond. Have their interest at heart.
11. LISTEN! Be ready. Use a headset, have computer ready to transcribe or at the least a notepad and pen to take notes. LISTEN, (as Maureen points out in her post Over Confidence). This is recruiting/sourcing 101. Limit distractions, be ready. Gather competitive Intelligence.
12. Don’t hang up in fear. Hanging up is rude. In today’s world, caller ID is everywhere, and anyone can Google a number and/or name and put the two together. If you hang up, don’t expect that individual to take your call again or recommend your company or you to anyone they know. Employees talk and share stories about rude recruiters and sourcers. My suggestion is that if you get stumped, think quickly, either admit it to the receiver, or politely ask if you can continue the call at another date and time (suggest each) due to schedule conflicts.
13. Don’t be afraid to leave a message. In general, people will return calls, if for no other reason than curiosity.
14. Follow up as promised. This applies to full cycle recruiters more than sourcers/researchers. Check back with them periodically, especially if you recruit/source within a specific field and anticipate a future need.
15. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Be honest, if you never work on positions that would be of interest to them, it’s okay to let them know this. This goes back to #9…How can you help them? If they mention that they would like to work for a specific company or in a certain position and you have the contacts to make an introduction, offer to do so, but follow through.
16. Say “Thank you!” Be considerate and understanding; thank someone for their help. Even gatekeepers want and need to feel appreciated, even when they are unable to provide you with information.
17. Persistence pays! The more phone sourcing one does, the easier it becomes. Phone sourcing and recruiting are ultimately driven by numbers. The more you call, the closer you will come to finding the right individual.
18. Six degrees is real. The impression you leave is important not only for your personal brand but also for the company that you are representing. A good impression may lead the person you contacted to recommend you or your company to a colleague when looking for their next position.

Phone sourcing can produce some great candidates, but it does take forethought and effort. Implementing some of these best practices into your phone sourcing activities may help you to take your efforts to a new level of productivity and success.

What are some of your phone sourcing best practices? Share them in the comments below.

I wonder. I wrote the following with the idea that it might help some express some of their challenges through a third-party voice.

I’m a phone sourcer. That means I am paid to find people who hold specific titles or who are doing specific job functions inside (usually) specific companies.

I’ve been doing this a long time.

There are a few things that spell disaster for you as a job seeker.

These are:

Being old

It’s a nasty dirty secret inside recruiting but the fact of the matter is if you’re over 50 – maybe even over 45 – many recruiters aren’t interested. They say they’ll look at you and accept your name in the lists I generate but they’re really not. No kidding.

I know this will bring down a firestorm of disapproval from some of my readers, but the fact remains that ageism is a very real and huge problem in our society.

Face it. Get over it. Do something — talk openly about it here.

Being unemployed

This one translates to “…desperately needs a job.” Whatever you do, try not to be unemployed when you look for another job. This is one of the paramount reasons you should always have your eye and ear open to new opportunities. Women should take special heed to this advice.

As a jobholder do you know how to also be a jobseeker?

Having holes in your resume

Again, girls, listen up. Those five years you took off getting five kids up out of the dirt are going to penalize you when you want to (have to) go back to work. I’m not quite sure what to say to you: this issue is endemic also in our society and contributes to the fact that you only make seventy six cents for every dollar a man makes.

Maybe others can help out here with advice.

A resume that looks like a treatise

Keep it direct. Keep it simple. Use a bullet plan. Most recruiters like that best.

And whatever you do, do not speak about yourself in the third person.

Not being relocatable

Being able to relocate is a huge advantage in today’s job market. So many people are “underwater” in their housing and haven’t had their “come to Jesus” moments of awakening, yet they’re in denial about what’s going on in the housing market and think they’d be better off waiting this thing out.

If you’re one of these, get on with your life. Sell your house and move if you have an opportunity to do so. Don’t wait ‘til you need to move. Put your house on the market NOW and prepare to move if you have any inkling at all that you may need a job in the near future (five years or less).

Not being “warm”

I just heard that the single most important thing to career success is being “warm.” This means knowing how to talk to people in real time, face to face, and being able to engage with them on a human level. If you don’t know — learn how to do the facey-face stuff.

Not being findable

They pay me to find you guys. And some of you just can’t be found because the last time you updated your LinkedIn profile was when you joined three years ago and in the meantime you’ve lost the job you had and you haven’t gone back to let anyone know where you are today.

They’re not mind readers — recruiters, you know.

They like things simple, easy, and fast.

Nowadays, social media sites are beginning to monetize — fast! They’re eliminating last names to get viewers to pay to see you. Yes, there’s a way to find your last name, but most don’t know how to do it or don’t want to take the time to do it.

Many — the great majority — won’t pay (at least yet … it depends how this thing evolves) to see you.

Get smart. Think how to get your contact info into your profiles. Place your e-mail in (use the word “at” instead of the @ symbol for your email) and get your phone number in there for goodness sakes.

Read their Terms of Service. Most don’t want you doing this, so take my advice at your own risk on some sites. But some other sites don’t seem to mind.

Women: listen up again. Your names many times don’t show up on 411.com searches because your phone number is listed under your husband’s name. If you live alone many of you like to use unlisted numbers. This is career suicide these days.

If you’re only using a cell, get it out there linked to your name. Most people don’t know how to find cell numbers. Beware, though — I can see cell phone crawlers accumulating cell phone numbers for distribution lists. Is there a way to block crap calls?

If you have a common name, think to use a middle name or initial. Maiden names might also be considered.

Unwillingness to change direction

If your resume (or profile) reflects that you’re unwilling to do just about anything at just about any pay to get out of the situation you find yourself in as an unemployed jobseeker — forget it. Employers are looking to retool their workforces with workers who are multidimensional and cheap.

These are hard and fast facts of life these days. Get used to it. I don’t care that you have a PhD in fiddle-fooling-around. You’re at risk.

re-posted with permission from ERE.net

“It was pretty easy to feel “OK” about being on Twitter during most of 2009. Everyone was there – and more were joining every day. It was “interesting” to feel like one of the first rather than one of the last – so I hung out. It has now become apparent to me that there is no viable BUSINESS reason to spend much time on Twitter as a 3rd party recruiter. Might be great for plenty of other professions – but recruiting? No way. Sorry.”

This is a common sentiment in our world of recruiting – that Twitter is a waste of time, and that real recruiters are on the phone with candidates and not tweeting out job opportunities. On the other hand, others argue that Twitter is a growing source of candidates, as well as a valuable tool to develop a good online presence and enable candidates to find you as well.

As search professionals, to which of these thought processes do you subscribe? The way we approach recruiting is different than the way our corporate recruiting counterparts do. Neither way is right or wrong; they are simply different. Twitter certainly has value it can offer, but does it belong in a 3rd party recruiter’s resource toolkit?

We want to hear from you! Do you use Twitter? Do you find it to be a waste of time, or a good resource to add to your arsenal? Have you made placements or gained new clients based on conversations you’ve had via Twitter, or has it been a dead-end street for you? Share your experience in the comments below.

Great leaders are optimistic visionaries. They have the capacity to interpret trends and foresee the future. This “first mover advantage” creates wealth.

Great leaders convey universal messages which appeal to the hearts and minds of many.

Thomas Jefferson inscribed “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

John F. Kennedy evoked “We shall go to the moon and return a man safely to the Earth.”

In the same way:

• Master artists create timeless works with their vision.
• Legendary sports coaches use visualization techniques to win championships.
• CEOs of high-performing firms craft mission statements from their vision.

Leadership in Search

Search consultants are leaders of the placement process. We lead clients. We lead candidates. We lead candidates to accept offers with clients. The most successful can vision a placement from the start of the process. They can predict the probability of a placement after initial conversations with clients and candidates.

Top consultants start with the end in mind. They have a plan.

An exercise many know well in achieving a larger vision is to write down goals (both business and personal) and a timeline to achieve them. Another is to visualize goals by drawing a picture of where you will be and what you will have at future dates (e.g., a specific car, house, travel destination, community position.) The key here is to be as specific as possible with imaging your goals (e.g., what model and color car or what you’ll be wearing at a future business event). The hard part for many is knowing what you want.

Testing Your Vision

Ask yourself these two questions:

1) Do you know what you want?

2) Do you know how to get what you want?

The answer to the first question is about vision. It’s about being passionate about something that truly interests you. The second, how to get what you want, is about goals. This involves creating an action plan, working the plan and committing yourself to realizing your goals.

Achievement of goals begins with a personal vision.

In my training I use a fun exercise that gets to the heart of what people truly want. I pass around a rectangular 3″ x 10″ green piece of paper to each attendee blank side up. When everyone has one, they flip it. On the reverse side is a mock $10 million check made out to cash. (“Don’t try to deposit it,” I say, “The money is in another account!”) I ask the group, “What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” To the readers of this article I ask the same, “What would you do with $10 million bucks?” In other words, if money were no object, what would you do? Your answer should help you discover your personal vision.

The New World of Search

My vision for this article came from today’s converging trends, including:

The Internet’s impact on the search business.
The recent grueling job market.
Economic and demographic trends.
Articles and books on leadership.
New Media + Reality TV.
The books Brave New World and 1984.

Have you ever read George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World? Influenced by World Wars, both depict anti-utopian worlds which limit human individuality and freedoms. The stories’ negative messages are so disturbingly powerful that their effect is to shock readers into preventing the possibility of these worlds from materializing. In 1984, Big Brother is always watching. Technology is ever-present and human relationships are destroyed by the state. Likewise in Brave New World, human life has been industrialized by technological “advances.”

We in search have entered a new world with new technologies and new rules.

It is for us to decide whether the outcome will be positive or negative.

New technologies will continuously change the way we do business. If we harness them to our advantage, they can assist us. If we don’t, they have the potential to erode the foundation of our business by diminishing our relationships with clients and candidates.

Let’s take a look at making placements in ten year intervals: In 1984 (pre-PC), 1994 (pre-Internet), 2004 (today) and 2014 (the fun part). To compare decades in time and predict how future placements will be made, we need a central theme. We’ll focus on what I see is at the core of the search business information:

How we learn, store and retrieve it;
How we use it and convey it;
How we manage it and make money from it.

Two caveats before proceeding:

Caveat 1: Since I wasn’t in the business in the mid 80′s, many who were have shared with me details of those times. Thank you.

Caveat 2: The following sections focus on big picture trends. Since space here is limited, I don’t describe specific search and recruitment techniques. Another time, another place!

Making Placements in 1984

Signs of the Times: In 1984 Ronald Reagan won a landslide second presidential term as the “great communicator.” His supply side economics and tax cuts stimulated the economy and created jobs. High inflation and interest rates were the norm (the prime rate was about 12.5%), but times were better than the no-growth stagflation of the 1970′s. Aiding growth was a drop in gasoline prices from a high of $1.30 per gallon in 1982 to $.90 in 1986.

The fax machine wasn’t yet widely used by most American businesses (even though it was invented in 1843 before the telephone!) Microsoft introduced its Windows operating system in 1983 and personal computers appeared more a novelty than a business tool. Typewriters were more common than PC’s. The Soviet Union was still the Soviet Union.

Large search firms worked nationally and internationally because they had offices in many cities. Smaller firms tended to work locally in cities or regions. As a result, most recruiters met with clients and candidates in-person. This solidified relationships.

The Approach: New clients and candidates were found by telephone and networking. (“Tried and true” techniques that won’t ever go out of.) New job leads were found in newspaper and trade journalified ads. Phone numbers (vital information to recruiters) were found in industry directories, the yellow pages or through telephone operators. Imagine now sitting down at your desk with no computer to turn on. Only the phone. This might be a good idea for many today to increase productivity and earnings!

Information about clients and candidates were written and stored on 3 x 5 index cards categorized in desk-top file holders. (Remember those boxes?) Paper resumes were stored in file cabinets, organized alphabetically or by discipline.

In those days, resumes weren’t sent often to clients. Verbal presentations secured interviews. Written fee agreements weren’t yet standard practice. Since there was no physical tracking of information, legal issues inevitably flared up. Some say practices were less ethical than today; making placements was more “hard core” sales. Closing candidates was more direct such as, “Let me tell you why you should take this job.”

The Numbers: Placements were made mostly by instinct and intuition. Short-term results (closed sales) carried greater weight than longer-term strategies (relationship development). Measurement tools were basic:

Calls per day.
Job orders per week.
Candidates recruited per week.
Placements and billings per month.

In the 1980s and before, strong relationships were built based on a person’s word. The same holds true today and for the future: Our word must be our bond.

Making Placements in 1994

Signs of the Times: In 1994 the U.S. was enjoying a “peace dividend” as the world’s sole superpower — from the end of the cold war and the breakup of the Soviet Union. This gave President Clinton the latitude to “reinvent” government with deficit reduction, welfare reform and small business tax cuts. The prime rate in 1994 rose from 6% to 8.5%, reflecting a resurging economy. Gas prices were about the same levels in 1994 as they were a decade earlier (lower in inflation adjusted terms). It was the start of a multi-year bull run for the job market — a golden era for search and placement.

The personal computer was making its way to recruiters’ desks. As a stand alone, non-networked machine with little storage capability, its use as a productive tool was limited to data processing (resume writing and spreadsheets). 1994 was the year that Netscape’s precursor company, Mosaic Communications, built the first web browser. (Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet.) Though, the coming “information superhighway” was about to explode as no one anticipated.

At the same time, the world was getting smaller. NAFTA was passed in the mid 90′s creating a North American free trading region. NATO accepted former Eastern bloc nations. Europe was preparing for its monetary union and Hong Kong for its handover to China. Globalization was the watchword as old barriers were breaking down.

The Approach: Making placements was becoming less sale-sy and more consultative. Information stored in databases assisted in engaging clients and candidates. “Private” information the kind that leads to placements — still came from the tried and true methods: Sourcing by phone and effective networking.

Managing information was always the ticket to increased earnings.

Now the PC could do it efficiently at low cost.

Some firms built rudimentary databases early on. Others bought the first industry-specific database packages. With contact management software, firms could now more effectively follow up with prospective clients and candidates by logging personalized data, e.g., birthday, kid’s names, favorite sports team. And they could better track their own activity, empowering consultants to self-manage.

The Numbers: Activity-based analysis and “management by the numbers” were becoming standard. Measurement tools were expressed in ratios:

Sendouts to placements.
New job orders to placements.
Recruited candidates to placements.
Total billings to placements.

Search firms became aware of a powerful combination: Information management was central to a longer-term relationship strategy and productivity could be improved by managing results.

Making Placements in 2004

Signs of the Times: The boom years of the mid-to-late ’90′s created over 15 million new jobs, primarily in the service sector and technology-based fields in IT, communication services and bio-sciences.

The party came to an end after the year 2000. The stock market bubble popped. Financial scandals rocked the corporate world. The events of 9/11/2001 led to Mid East wars. Gasoline prices spiked to over $2.50 per gallon in some areas.

A perfect storm created a crisis in confidence.

Three million jobs were lost from 2001 through the first half of 2003. Corporate layoffs were a sign of the times. Although no specific figures are available, an informal survey reveals that over 50% of search consultants exited the business and nearly 1/3 of all firms closed shop. The largest search firms dripped millions in red ink, while many smaller firms were reduced to skeleton staffs.

With the combination of fewer jobs and top talent itching for new opportunities, companies used the Internet job boards to fill open positions. Companies also used the opportunity to data dump tens of thousands of resumes into their corporate databases. In addition, third party recruiters went to work in the corporate world and began putting to use proven search techniques. All in the attempt to save budgets, control expenses and save the CEO’s job.

With an eye toward reelection and to stimulate the economy, George Bush II cut taxes while boosting military spending to fight terrorist wars. With inflation non-existent, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to 45 year lows (a 1% prime rate) which boosted economic growth and rekindled the job market. The massive fiscal and monetary stimulus boosted demand and led to over one million new jobs created from Q2 ’03 to the Q2 ’04. For those who survived, as some say “the worst job market in 30 years,” the Internet created new rules of the game.

The Approach: With networked PC’s, powerful databases, digital high speed Internet all at low costs — search firms can now “data mine” and manage information more efficiently than ever before. Key contacts are downloaded from corporate websites. Firms tap into on-line candidate databases to make them their own. The “Internet Researcher” is a valued member of the search team.

Today most agree business is bouncing back. But somehow it’s different. Tougher to get higher fees. Clients are more demanding, very selective and taking a longer time to make hiring decisions. At the same time, top candidates have many options. In high demand niches and geographies (e.g., legal in the Northeast corridor, bankers in the Sunbelt and heath-care nationwide), times are very good, because talent is scare. The premium, again, is reverting back to the relationship with the candidate.

Those who survived the last three years are adapting to a new data-rich, Internet world. Top consultants are asking more insightful questions before accepting search assignments. In working with candidates, they are screening rigorously before taking action. Behavior-based interviewing, testing motivation and covert reference checking are becoming common practices.

Search firms are harnessing the Internet to offer clients value.

Firms are developing a long-term relationship development strategy in conjunction with building a brand that stands the test of time. To demonstrate value, search consultants must be management consultants, industry experts, trusted advisors and career developers.

For candidates:
What are the true motivating factors which will prompt a career move?
How can we raise their confidence and prepare them for interviews?
How can we advise them on their career goals?

For clients:

How can we make their lives easier?
What’s the “value proposition” of our service?
What industry and competitor knowledge can we offer?

Building brand loyalty is paramount to establishing exclusive relationships.

These are the kind of relationships in which clients call us first with new search assignments. And, the kind where top candidates call us with jobs they want — whether they be with specific companies of interest or whether they find the leads on the Internet. We know we have the right relationship, when candidates see the value of the service we provide.

The Numbers: The combination of the Internet’s impact and the recent job market has made search firms rethink their business models. Productivity metrics are used to manage profitability:

Quality search assignments per 100 calls.
Top tier, placeable candidates recruited per 100 calls.
New client and candidate calls per hour.
Billings per time period (hourly, daily, weekly).

With job boards prevalent and candidates exploring multiple opportunities, search consultants are getting wiser. They are developing exclusive relationships with clients and candidates by asking, listening and delivering what their “customers” want. The by-product is a stream of valuable referrals into the future. Many know it well: Focus on your customer and the bottom line takes care of itself.

Making Placements in 2014

Signs of the Times: In 2012 the U.S. elects its first female president. (Guesses anyone?) Interest and inflation rates are low by historical standards — in the mid single digits — as “information everywhere” continues to reign in price pressures.

In 2014 the service sectors dominate. Greater than the influence of technology are demographic trends. Aging baby boomers stretch the U.S. social security trust fund to the limit. Energetic seniors demand higher levels of service in healthcare, hospitality and financial areas. (Good disciplines to specialize in.)

Impending Crisis: Too Many Jobs and Too Few People (a book published in 1993) accurately forecasts the U.S. labor market. In 2010 there are 167 million open jobs with only 157 million people to fill them: A shortfall of 10 million. The largest growing occupations are in computer services. The greatest shortage is in healthcare.

In select niches, search fees rise to 40%+.

The U.S., still the sole economic and military world power, is losing ground to China and the Far East. The world has partitioned into three primary trading blocks: The Americas, Europe and Asia, including the sub-continent. 80% of all U.S. manufacturing is outsourced to low cost, newly-developed countries. Ever since gas prices hit $4.00 per gallon in 2010, OPEC’s influence has diminished. Advanced energy sources hydrogen, solar and wind are feeding an increasingly power hungry world.

The Approach: Visual Communication Devices (VCD’s) have a profound impact on the way search consultants do business. The phone and keyboard of a decade earlier are obsolete. PC’s now double as video-phones. Great leaps in bandwidth and storage capability enable sending digital audio and video messages instantly, globally.

Standard IT formats morph from words to images. Clients and candidates can observe our presentation from anywhere. When we meet “face-to-face,” we can see them and they can see us. We no longer refer resumes to clients. We conduct, record, save and send digital video interviews.

As the world becomes increasing smaller, physical location is less important. Distance and time are squeezed. Virtual offices and flexible office arrangements become the norm. The “wireless world” connects all seamlessly. Large search firms are dispersed into virtual deal teams. The major job boards no longer exist in their former forms: In the talent drought, they were not producing value relative to their costs.

With all the technological advancement, search firms thrive because humans like to deal with humans. Artificial intelligence is still decades away.

Brand and brainpower are the new capital.

In 2014 there are half the search consultants practicing as compared to the height of the late 1990′s. This is not a reflection of the times. In fact, the shortage of service sectors jobs is creating tremendous demand for search services. Rather, firms large and small across a wide spectrum of industries bring in-house highly skilled consultants to save costs. CEO’s have gotten wise: Human capital is viewed universally as the most valuable of all corporate assets. And companies now pay up for the best search talent.

Independent search consultants are now management consultants — in not only talent acquisition but also talent retention. Clients work with fewer consulting firms and are screened for fit — culturally, ethically and in working-style — before engagements are granted. Since most HR functions have been eliminated, search consultants are seen as outsourced employees. Human capital is viewed by C-levels as a strategic imperative.

The term, recruiter, is used less and less.

Top search consultants are career managers.

In 2014, consultants no longer “recruit.” They grow “communities of networks.” They accomplish this by developing enduring relationships with top-performing candidates in the same way sports agents have done with athletes for decades. They focus — not on the next placement — but rather on how they can assist candidates in achieving their career goals.

The Numbers: To quantify and track results in this high demand, talent-short world, new client-centric criteria are used:

% time spent on high value, customer-focused activities.
Exclusive candidate agent contracts signed per month.
Repeat client engagements per quarter.
Client and candidate satisfaction scores.

In summary, the placement-focused model of the 1980s transforms into a client-centric one by the second decade of the 21st century. Performance and activity is still managed by the numbers.

The shift is in what’s being measured. Quantity of results (e.g., sendout volume) is replaced by quality of experience (e.g., client and candidate satisfaction). Those who adapt profit more and build wealth.

What’s in store for the search industry in 2024 and beyond? Use your leadership and visionary abilities. Email me your predictions at mramer@ramergroup.com and I’ll return send my “Double Your Billings Scorecard.”