1. Instead of going to a career fair to find your next top tier hire, get your manager to realize that great people have to be recruited. “If you needed another QB like Tom Brady, would he stand in line at a career fair, or answer a want ad online, in the paper, or on your website? No, you have to call his agent who gets him interested and to the table to talk. I’m that agent.”
2. When a hiring manager and HR want to make a lowball offer because the recession has made everyone more desperate, but your candidate is employed, here’s what you say to get them to reconsider low-balling. “When a kid is getting ready to go out high in the draft, do you think about what the lowest package is that he will consider? No, you make him the best offer you can afford to make or you pass on the pick. No one who is good is going to be happy or accept a low-ball offer.”
3. When a manager wants to look around at all resumes and candidates on the planet even though the very best candidate just interviewed and wants the job: “It’s kind of like picking a starter instead of second string. When you see someone who is going to be the key to your bench, you don’t hesitate to look around in case someone else might be better; you add them to the team in the first string. Just because he is first doesn’t mean he isn’t the best.”
4. When a manager wants to change the position or add unrealistic job functions to a new role: “It’s not like there aren’t people like Deion Sanders who can play offense and defense and the entire length of the game. It is just extremely rare to find someone who will do both. It would be better to find a great cornerback than an average cornerback who can also return a kick.”
5. Instead of letting a team do too many jobs for too long and asking them to double that for the “good of the company,” consider this: “Even the best players need to feel like they have back up, have time to recover, and like to play one position very well. Do you think that you may risk losing your best players if you play them too long?”

I know a lot of people who will think it is very funny that I would ever remotely write about football because I don’t give a hoot about it. And I also know that managers don’t want to be talked down to or reduced to silly analogies. But there is some truth to the fact that language and cultural barriers account for the majority of miscommunications. Finding the common ground in what interests them may be the entry point toward showing them what you got.

I chose the word tribe because it is a good, short noun for the idea that “birds of a feather flock together.” And top managers can be a destination. They have their own posse and peeps who follow them wherever they work. I know: I work for one. But even the most incredible managers eventually run out of people to call when rounding up the usual suspects. This is where I come in. I sell the manager and the team. I look at the group that I am headhunting for and try to find some common denominators.

1. Get the existing team’s resumes. Use LinkedIn, resource managers, or go to their portal and search the bios. Look for common schools, themes, associations.
2. Ask the manager where he found them. Who is his best hire? How did he find them?
3. Take a look at the companies they worked for, and when. Is there a theme?

You figure out that Java developers in Europe like Twitter, W.O.W., Ruby games, and Stockholm. To get them to leave their company to come to yours, build your own tribe’s membership theme. To get a pitch, figure out what membership privileges are:

• Ask the people who work for your “chief” why they worked at three companies for him.
• Ask them what they like about the company.
• Ask them how it was different than the company they came from.

You can build a message from this, like “we still have Peet’s coffee! We still have Thirsty Thursdays! Conference Calls longer than 17 minutes are forbidden!”

That is the message. Not “Java Consultant — EMEA.”

• If they are doing the exact same thing, why would they leave one software company to come to another? To come back to a tribe like them.
• Examples of common denominators might be, “worked in start-ups,” “went to MIT,” “plays W.O.W.” or “brags about Platinum status.”

Here is a thumbnail of my tribe:

Bay Area Software Company. Managers who are Java experts. Peet’s Coffee. Thirsty Thursdays. “It’s-It” ice cream bars. People from Cal and Stanford.

I get that tribe. It’s the tribe of the Bay Area software engineers.

If you have ever been a worker bee or a headhunter in the Bay Area, which I have during several waves (1990, 1999, 2009), you know that there are companies with handbooks containing phrases like, ‘Managers must wear shoes. Beer Me Fridays are mandatory, and don’t get Folgers or you’re fired.” They stock Peet’s coffee; everyone is a Stanford and Cal grad; and now, It’s It (a Bay Area ice cream bar with a cult following) is in the breakroom. These people swarm to the new “it” company and they don’t stick around when Folgers makes its debut.

Call them and/or connect with them on Twitter, LinkedIn groups, user’s group meetings, industry associations, however, whenever. I may even ask an Internet sourcer to find some profiles to add to the pile. I look at my Rolodex. I put the whole lot of them into one big pile and I begin to air out my message that “we want you eventually and this is why.”

This is where the Tweetups come in. If I can get the manager/chief to ask the real qualifying questions that I mention above, it is not a stretch to get to the next piece. “If I find someone from Cal working at XYZ company, would you buy him a coffee in Stockholm?”

Or even better, “Tweet me before you go to Stockholm … and let’s find a place to meet … and if you have time, let’s send out a TweetUp to all of the Java developers in Stockholm who are following me on Twitter, and get them to meet you somewhere. We’ll Tweet that the first round of Guinness is on you at The Rusty Nail pub across the street from our client.”

That way I can put real live candidates who don’t have resumes in front of a real, live “chief” and without a lot of wasted time. Sounds expensive? Twenty five rounds of Guinness is a helluva lot cheaper than 35% of an annual package which the agencies are charging us, and you get to meet a real live person and do the puppy dog close.

For those of you with ADD, here is the upshot:

1. Analyze the tribe. Who are these people and what do they do and care about?
2. Evangelize the message of the tribe through your grapevine — Twitter, LinkedIn, your company’s career page, user group meetings — heck, anywhere you can.
3. Sell the manager on selling his job on the fly.
4. Always be closing the candidate on why your tribe kicks their tribe’s ass. Ask: “When they can come have a look see?”

There are going to be accountants and HR people who read this and say, “how does that fit into $10,000 cost per hire, and how do we know that this will work, and why do we have to do anything since everyone is unemployed and is dying to work here?”

But top-tier people are always taken out of companies. There are some things that just can’t be automated and outsourced and cost-optimized, such as building a A-team, building a tribe, and building loyalty.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

In today’s age, the fable is a metaphor for those in HR who are unwilling to state an obvious truth to a higher up out of fear of appearing stupid, sacrilegious, or politically “incorrect.” They would sooner let a company’s reputation stick out buck naked than tell the truth about the company culture and reputation. This is co-dependency with a superior who wants Yes-men, not accountable partners.

I arrived at this observation because I am always struck by the stark difference between what companies think their employees think about them and what they tell me when I interview them. I also am always shocked about what those employees will say on Twitter, Vault, and any other number of “pink slip” sites about these top-rated employers. I wonder if anyone in competitive intelligence, PR, marketing, or HR ever reads about the fallout of bad managers making bad decisions, including furloughs, reduced hours, wearing double hats, etc. When did having a bad reputation not count?

I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me at Wal-Mart. I haven’t recruited for Wal-Mart. Last week I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about Wal-Mart’s Super Store operations. They have onboarding sessions and songs that everyone sings that promote team spirit at Wal-Mart. They showed the droves of people who drove for miles to work there. Right after I watched the show, my iPod had to be replaced. Since I was too lazy to go to the Apple store, and I wanted it right now, I went to Wal-Mart. While I was standing at the counter trying to get this chick to hand me the iPod, she turns her back to me and starts complaining about her hours being reduced to another guy who is complaining about his benefits. I finally interrupted them and asked her to please hand me the iPod and take my money. I got home, got down to my iTunes work, and opened up my gmail account, and there was an email about boycotting Wal-Mart on account of some hideous thing that it did to bust a union. In the course of one week, I had some serious employment brand material in my consciousness.

What is interesting about the TV show, the store experience, the e-mail, and the press about Wal-Mart is that there is a level of chatter about its brand that is beyond their control. Wal-Mart feels it is well on the way to rehabilitating its image through a new logo and green Super Stores; yet, that doesn’t match my personal experience in that week. What can it do about Twitter, e-mail chains, at the store, in the news, and across the Thanksgiving dinner table, especially if one incident adds fuel to the fire?

I chose Wal-Mart because well, that happened to me last week, and that is a fairly large target. I won’t be the first one to raise this reputation issue about them. Frankly, it probably doesn’t matter what people think about its “employee” brand because they employ groups of people who have limited choices and who presumably grow in faster and larger numbers than let’s say, semiconductor design engineers with PhDs. What is interesting is when all of those things collide and affect more vulnerable brands.

The war for top talent is going to get fought and influenced by Twitter, Vault, users groups, and former employees. And in a country like the U.S. where services and design are the only real place where job growth is, people know each other. Maybe some companies should consider cutting down spend on money for logos and Superbowl ads, and treat people better.

In an earlier article, I made a case for cultivating a more civil attitude during the interview process as actually a means of growing a long-term referral base and to stem negative reverberation from bad candidate experiences.

In this article, I want to highlight some of the actions that drive candidates crazy so we can try to avoid them at all costs.

The Top-10 Things Candidates Hate

10. Having no clue whom they are meeting with for an interview, how long they will interview for, and arriving somewhere on time in order to wait alone in a lobby, room, or restaurant (and feeling very conspicuous when they don’t need a job!) while looking at their watch (every five seconds) for the late interviewer.

9. Taking a personal day off on one, two, or three occasions to interview at XYZ Company, only to fall into the Black Hole of No Feedback and never to be spoken to again. Add that their wife continues to harp on the fact that they missed Johnny’s recital by taking personal days to go interview for a new job when “You have a perfectly acceptable one right now.” This is when your picture goes up on the dart board in their rec room.

8. Learning after the fact that someone on the interview team thought that their resume showed too many positions when they actually worked for the same company for 10 years, but it changed names 10 times. This is the reality of never being able to address an objection, real or not, that comes up during the process that can be addressed.

7. Navigating a ridiculous, invasive online application that does not save after each field, crashes unexpectedly, is hard to complete thoroughly, and yet is viewed as a negative if it is incomplete.

6. Walking in to an interview with a person more junior than themselves to discover that said Bozo is reading the resume for the first time and is asking impossibly inane questions such as, “So, why do you need a job with our company?” when they were headhunted.

5. Feeling like they really are the right person for the job but somehow can’t get an interview. Whether that is because of a poor resume, undeveloped communications skills, or not connecting at the right level.

4. Going through a more thorough interview process than a candidate for the Supreme Court. I am ashamed to admit this, but I have actually facilitated interviews that have lasted longer than one year (fortunately NOT at Deloitte.)

3. Enduring a background check that is conducted by hourly workers on a different continent who raise red flags on your background because your university verified your degree as a B.S. in Sociology and Anthropology instead of a B.S. in Women’s Studies (which is no longer offered). Did I mention that the candidate has already resigned, given their start date, and had their goodbye party? Yes, no kidding.

2. Enduring a formal interview process, complete with a one-hour phone screen with HR, a call with a junior team member asking basic questions, and then getting the green light to attend a cattle call. All of this when the candidate has only agreed to being “open to talking” and is NOT looking for a job. In fact, they really only signed up to have a beer with a career-level counterpart on the inside.

1. The number-one pet peeve of all candidates is talking to misinformed, condescending, and unoriginal HR generalists or entry-level recruiters who answer all questions with, “Because that’s the way we do it here and we cannot do it differently.” Or who answer every question with “I don’t know.”

This is not only a reflection of the corporate cultures of both big and small companies, but is made worse by third-party recruiters who send one qualified person to 12 companies and tend to generalize about them all.

We are all guilty of a few spineless process moments that cause our candidates pain and suffering. So what do they like? What wins every time with a candidate?

The Top-10 Things Candidates Love

10. Talking to someone who is knowledgeable about their background, their company, what their potential career path may be, and who can have an unbiased conversation about options that exist.

9. Entering an interview process that is transparent.

8. Getting a courtesy telephone call to the effect of, “What we have is no for now, not forever. We value your time and are sorry about the outcome.”

7. Having someone help them go through the online application process or be on hand and be knowledgeable about the system.

6. Getting a list of information that is needed to complete the online application such as W2s, phone numbers, references, and yes, even documentation to present in lieu of a real, live company that has since closed (Enron).

5. Having an honest conversation about objections to their history and being allowed to counter.

4. Getting help on resigning and also being granted some flexibility on start dates if they have real plans to travel, have surgeries, or a need to keep a schedule of their former employer.

3. Being asked for feedback on the questions asked during the interview process or what they felt were high and low points of the interaction. Also, having the chance to weigh in on the overall candidate experience.

2. Having flexibility in the process and a chance for their questions to be answered versus being interrogated without any real dialogue about their concerns.

1. Being treated with respect at every level regardless of whether they are the right candidate.

I’m willing to hear arguments that being service-oriented in this process is going to reduce the quality of the process, the applicant pool, and the hiring manager’s ability to be selective. That’s a cop-out. It’s harder to do this in a high-volume, low-level environment.

But your role can be automated when you refuse to be the human buffer between the process and your candidate. If the worst outcome you get is that every candidate that you interact with wants you to represent them as their Agent for Life, that is not a bad thing.

In the future, it is the person with the candidate connections who will win, not the person who created the horrendous process. I bet that organizations unwilling to change or analyze the process will not win the next generational wave of top talent.

I am Generation X, one of the “slackers” who started out professionally frustrated, cynical, and as an underachiever. I read all about it throughout the 90s. I did not choose to be a part of this group; I simply was born into that time.

Somehow beating all expectations to the contrary, I got a real job. I pause here and explain this so you may decide right away how offended you may get by the gross oversimplification of people, time, and society that I am about to describe. In my mind, quite simply, there is nothing I can say about Generation Y that hasn’t already been said about X.

Flash forward to 2007 and my career as a recruiter. Now, I am looking for candidates for a top management consulting firm who were born after Ronald Reagan was first elected.

The conversation goes something like this:

“Do you think it makes sense for you to talk to some of our practice leaders about opportunities in our strategy group in Manhattan?”

“First I need to know exactly what I am going to work on, for this project and in the future. What is the salary? What level you are considering me for? I will only consider a move if I will be a senior consultant or manager. Then I need to understand how soon I am eligible for promotion. Also, I am going to Thailand in June for four weeks so I need at least 28 days paid time-off. Also, can you tell me what other groups I can work for? If I can’t choose who I work for, I am not interested.”

The first time this happened to me, I was speechless. Five years ago (when this dude was starting college) and during the recession, I had people stalking me for any job. Since then, I have had this conversation repeatedly over the past 15 months with our newer experienced hires. I imagine that at this point, a certain percentage of people say, “Next!” and move on. If I was a sane, reasonable person then perhaps I would, too.

I can’t get into the “why?” of Generation Y because we have to hire them. And my client does not care what it takes for me to get them. What I will talk about is what is important to them and how to turn the conversation into something that is manageable and scaleable.

What’s Important to Them: Money and Skills

The perception among the newest wave of candidates is that they can demand the highest salaries because they have the highest-quality skills. The only way to question this perception is to introduce doubt to this train of thought.

To turn it around, focus on skills versus dollars. Candidate-poor job markets can create prospects who demand unrealistic dollars for marketable skills. The only weapon you have for this scenario is “skills versus dollars.” It goes like this:

• “I understand that $150,000 is your targeted salary for six years of experience, and that you arrived at $150,000 because a contractor is charging $75 an hour on your team. In your mind, you are better than a contractor. I get that.”
• “If you could add a different skill set on your next project, how much more marketable would that make you?”
• “Do you think that it makes sense to join a team where you can get more skills or get the most dollars?”
• “Would you agree that sometimes you have to earn less money if you want to get more skills?”
• “Would you also agree that contractors make more money than permanent people?”
• “Is it possible that great companies can pay less than bad companies who have to pay top dollar, instead of giving time off, career options, and quality of life?”
• “Overall, you would consider a move for more skills and potentially less dollars if it was on a whole a better opportunity?”

What’s Important to Them: Title and Money

The reason Gen-Y candidates feel they need promotions and raises is that they do not understand the downside to being promoted too quickly and given too much money. It is like a credit card; they will deal with the bill later. Your job is to explain to them explicitly what the repercussions will be of this form of career management.

• “Do you think that you can be promoted to a level that would be hard to reproduce if you lost your job? For example, could you graduate from business school and start immediately managing 10 people with no management experience?”
• “Do you think it is fair for two identical workers to earn different pay for the same job? So you would agree that there is a fair compensation level for a certain amount of experience?”
• “Could money affect your opportunities for promotion? For example, could you be turned down for a promotion if you earned more than it paid? If you got fired today, do you think that you are priced competitively or non-competitively compared to others in the market?”
• “You know one of the things that I have noticed is that the last thing you want to be is overcompensated and under-qualified.”
• “When you start having to pick jobs because you have to make a certain amount of money, those choices lead to disaster. One way to look downstream in five years is to be priced affordably and with the most skills. It gives you flexibility.”
• “In other words, always be in the middle of the market and at the top of the competency in your peer group. It gives you a lot of options. The last thing you want is a big title and a big salary and nothing to back it up. (All hat and no cattle!).”

What’s Important: Quality of Life and Fun

To turn it around, focus on the fun. Generation Y candidates actually require a chance to have fun. They can’t imagine all work and no play because they don’t perceive that they need to work very hard. They have productivity tools, they are connected, and they are loaded with options that let them do whatever they please.

In order to convey your understanding of this, profile what they want to do with their free time. In other words, what do they consider fun and a good quality of life? Ask them:

• “So you like to snowboard in Europe with your parents. That’s great.”
• “Did you know about our company’s paid time-off policy? Oh well, we really do work hard and play hard here. This is our vacation policy.”
• “Is that consistent with your current vacation policy? Do you think you can still keep your plans and make a move to a new company?”
• “What do you like to do for fun?”
• “Do you think you want to learn more about our work-life balance program? Great, let me send that to you.”

There may come a time (around age 30) when this new generation gets a mortgage, a spouse, and a few kids when the options to move are limited. At that point, we can have a two-way dialog. Until then, your job as a candidate development expert is to introduce to them what the next best step is long term.

In order to discuss the next step for them professionally, gingerly inject reality into the conversation. If you listen to what they are saying and you help them relate to what drives your organization, you may create an opportunity for a meaningful conversation.

Once upon a time there was a recruiter who was bored at his desk and lacking candidates. To amuse himself, he went on to a resume website and typed in a few random keywords to find some lost-sheep candidates.

Once he found a few repeat offenders, he called out to all of his hiring managers and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! Here’s a candidate who is great and probably has multiple offers awaiting him!”

The villagers/hiring managers all ran to the phone to help the recruiter get the candidate an interview and a solid offer. But when they got to the interview, they found no wolf but a disgruntled, opportunistic, and unemployed candidate. The recruiter laughed to himself that he could make the managers jump and thought to himself, “This is easy!”

“Don’t cry wolf, recruiter, when candidates like this are a dime a dozen. We don’t want to hire someone else’s reject or to hire someone who is under-qualified and overcompensated. And please don’t make us compete against our competitors. And for goodness sake, don’t call us with a serial job hopper.”

Later, the recruiter called and called and no one was interested in making a move. So once again he opened a job site and found a “great” resume that had all the bells and whistles that he needed to make the managers jump. To his naughty delight, he once again sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! I have the best candidate on the market. He won’t last one day!”

Once again, the hiring managers canceled their meetings, scheduled a room, and sat through another hum-drum interview of canned answers and a perfectly orchestrated resume. Within minutes, the candidate was exposed as a fraud.

When the managers saw there was no wolf, they told the recruiter sternly, “Don’t cry wolf when the candidate is a loser!” But the recruiter just grinned to himself and watched them grumbling about all recruiters and thought, “I just didn’t fool them this time. I’ll get a placement if I send enough paper! I just know it.”

Later, he attended a users’ group meeting and met a real, live wolf. This was a person who was a game changer who could put a client company on the map, who could lure away top Fortune 100 clients, and who was ready to make a move given the right circumstances.

So he turned on the volume full throttle and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf! Come quick!”

But the hiring managers thought he was tricking them again and didn’t come. A few weeks later the hiring manager saw the recruiter who was weeping that he lost the wolf.

“There really was a wolf, and I cried out for you! Now he is gone. He left and went to your competitor and now we will never get a single person from his team. We are doomed!”

The recruiter sulked back to his office and cried in his latte.

An old recruiter tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the vending machine.

“We’ll help you find more recruits in the morning. Try to remember the cardinal rule in recruiting: no one believes a liar even when he is telling the truth.”

A recruiter needs to ask themselves if they are in this business for the long haul or to get a new house in Saratoga (an expensive suburb of San Jose, California).

Truthfully representing a candidate and working hard at locating the top talent, not just the available talent, takes time, persistence, and skill. It also takes market knowledge, a compelling opportunity, and sometimes sheer luck. In a hot job market, everyone and anyone can throw up a shingle and be a recruiter who throws resumes against a requirement and hopes that they stick.

Before the dot-com bust, it seemed like every Oracle consultant I knew would call into my company to send over a resume and set up an agency agreement. They stammered: “Why should I only get paid an employee referral fee when I can get 20%?”

In some ways, I can’t blame them, because they had only been represented by lousy recruiters who misrepresented the job, rewrote their resume, and told them exactly what to say and do to “get the offer.”

Being optimistic about a candidate can make a recruiter very persuasive to a hiring manager about a candidate’s marketability. We call this “marrying” the candidate. Recruiters who repeatedly “marry” candidates develop a reputation of only telling managers what they want to hear.

One step further, and recruiters may go on to present resumes without verifying a candidate’s background and references. They may even write or rewrite resumes and “prep” the candidates on how to answer interview questions. Once the person starts and falls short of the qualifications, the truth comes out. This gives everyone in recruiting a bad name.

The rule of thumb is that until you are paid a placement fee from a candidate, you work for the client. And the client is paying you a substantial fee to screen a candidate and not re-write a resume to fit the job requirement if it is untrue.

Once you get caught in the snare of scrimping on the details, it’s hard to win trust back. We all need to consider whether we cry wolf too often.

If you have read a newspaper, business journal, or online media outlet lately, you know we are in or on the brink of a serious candidate shortage.

The Beige Book, published by the 11th District of the Federal Reserve, said in December 2006 that, “worker shortages were reported by service, manufacturing, finance, and energy firms. A lack of labor is a capacity constraint for some firms and, in some areas, companies have resorted to using billboards in an attempt to attract workers. While the shortage extends to many types of skilled and semi-skilled workers, of particular note in this survey were reports of difficulty finding engineers, electricians, high-tech technicians, certified mechanics, and accountants.”

Recruiters need to inform hiring managers and make sure that they own this fact. While I certainly don’t want to return to the Y2K “hire anyone with a pulse mentality,” I am convinced that some managers haven’t gotten the memo on the shortage.

Here are some clues that they are stuck in 2002:

• Waiting two weeks to respond to resumes.
• Missing interview days/refusing to schedule interviews.
• Missing telephone screens.
• Taking three to four weeks to extend an offer.
• Allowing one person’s opinion to override six other decisions to hire.

Articles have repeatedly instructed us on how to train managers to get with the program and fix these bad behaviors. But have you considered how the candidate feels about this treatment?

Let’s consider the poor candidate’s experience with these behaviors. Imagine how you would feel submitting a resume and your salary history and getting blown off, lied to, ignored, or treated poorly. Recruiters must admit that this behavior is disrespectful and is ultimately planting widespread seeds of fear and loathing of your company.

It is a humbling and humiliating experience to go on vault.com or to get an email with feedback describing the interview process as “horrendous.” Perhaps managers have the best intentions and are completely overbooked.

I have tips on dealing with busy hiring managers. Recruiters, once they have earned the respect of the manager, have ways of dealing with even the most sought-after, globe-trotting general manager if they are remotely on board with the plan.

Our job is to get managers to see candidates as people instead of resumes. When the candidate moves from just a “body to put in a chair” to a real, live person, they are treated respectfully. Once they are treated well, it isn’t a huge step for that same candidate to become a fount of competitive intelligence, sales lead generator, employee referral machine, and the one who most wants to work with you in the future.

I believe that when you do what you say, you build trust; with trust comes respect; with respect comes helpfulness and bonhomie and traction and good will. What follows disrespect? At the least, disgust. Perhaps eventually even a libel suit.

When a hiring manager treats candidates respectfully, they are very likely to receive respect from them in return. As Kant has said, it is important to treat everyone “never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”

Perhaps the manager believes that when they are polite, cordial, and respectful, they are telegraphing that “it is easy to get a job here,” or “I want to hire you,” or “we are buddies,” or “I am powerful because I can treat you badly.” Those attributes are overrated and a sure indicator of a poor manager.

I have heard all kinds of arguments about putting a candidate off balance or a team interrogating them to test them under pressure or trying to get them to be flustered as a means to an end. Why? When I have gone through ill-begotten interviews myself, I walked away thinking I would never work for those companies and I won’t purchase their products. They are boneheads.

Cold, hard facts: we have fewer people to choose from, the population is more closely linked than ever before and is using social networking tools, online associations, and openly rating the interview/candidate experience at sites like vault.com. So while the traditionalist generation may think it is acceptable to be a jerk to a Gen Y candidate by being haughty, dismissive, or downright rude, the Gen Y person will have the last laugh. And the process will be the laughingstock of the employment market.

Here’s what to do to get the manager to change her ways:

• Write a Statement of Work. Collaborate with the hiring manager on what the process is going to be. Pull out a calendar and mark the milestones and interviews down on it. Set up times to review resumes once per week. Don’t let them slack. Escalate it if they do, or if you are an agency, fire the client.
• Manage the candidate’s experience through expectations. Walk the candidate through the company’s process. Prepare them for delays if they are unavoidable.
• Prepare the hiring manager before the interview on what the expectations are on the candidate’s part. Explain to them how crucial it is that the candidate walks away wanting the job and how to elicit that response during the interview, rather than delivering a canned sermon on why XYZ Company is the Best Place Ever. Give them questions instead of speeches. Teach them how to build rapport and still ask tough questions.
• Explain to the manager that it is very likely that even if you don’t like this particular person, if you treat them badly they could poison the well from his alma mater, his current employer, or in his city. That means that he may have to actually be polite to them even if he thinks that they are worthless.
• Follow up with all candidates. Regardless of the outcome, let candidates know their status. You should even do this with the people who were a stretch or were low performers. This is the honorable and respectful thing to do.
• Consider implementing a grading system on the candidate experience. Ask the candidate for a grade and some feedback. Show the manager the feedback from Vault. Ask the manager if he thinks he can afford to not look at the experience. (He can’t.)

While you may be able to get by with this behavior at a top prestige firm like a McKinsey, even the McKinseys/Bains/Boston Consulting Groups of the world will eventually lose some candidates to a company with a winning formula.

Additionally, companies that embrace this philosophy may even get business (people and projects) in the process. I don’t know of any company worldwide that can afford to look at candidates as disposable, cheaper by the dozen, or worthy of downright rudeness. That is a seed that should not be sown and will reap a bitter “reward.”

• Political strength and level of commitment of leading sponsors and supporters. Before you present your candidate to your manager, line up your supporters for them. Who do does the candidate know internally who can vouch for their skills? Do they share an alma mater or have a common network, such as a previous employer? Besides your testimony, can you elicit a connection with the manager that goes beyond a verbal pitch? Consider the political ramifications of the referral. Is the employee referrer well-connected, or can you find someone better who can perform that function? Get it up front instead of trying to turn the tide in favor of the candidate after the interview.
• Level of understanding of the scope and nature of the position. If you understand the underlying nature of the issue, you can effectively present a candidate against it. Have you ever pushed back on a manager’s requirements — for example, in a situation where they require twelve years of HL7 experience when the technology has been around eight years? When you’re pitching a passive candidate to a manager, help the manager understand why you see a fit, such as “I realize that he has five years of HL7 data architecture, but prior to HIPAA, he created EDI security measures for Blue Cross/Blue Shield that are comparable to some of the security measures that HIPAA requires, giving him a foundation to build on.” By truly understanding the scope and nature of the position, you can sell the manager on a candidate’s qualifications without challenging the requirement directly.
• Nature and strength of the opposition. A lobbyist always knows what they’re up against. Who will oppose them? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Unfortunately, we all know that placing high-level people isn’t always about the most qualified person getting the position. Some people will oppose your candidate and some will not. Make sure that you know your competition. Know who else is interviewing both internally and otherwise. Know who was passed over for the role. Know whose budget is going to be affected.
• Presentation (lobbying) strategy. Are you going to present the candidate’s bio or a resume? Introduce them over lunch? Have them meet at an industry event? Send on an article that the candidate published first, or their patent history? Surely you have a bigger plan than throwing a resume over the fence and praying for a reply. How will you handle it if you don’t have a resume? My vote, hands down, is that the best way to present a candidate is as a referral without a resume. Why? Because resumes are not people. Yep, without a resume, a manager actually has to talk to them and ask questions.

The Other Side of the Aisle: Working Your Candidates

This is a nightmare that makes me sweat: you find out the name of a great candidate, you reach out to them, and they express a lukewarm interest. You call the manager and tell the manager about the conversation, but he or she retorts, “Well, if he isn’t excited about us, then I can’t be bothered to talk to him.” Next time, hang up and call your manager and tell them what the candidate is excited about. Accentuate the positive about a candidate’s interest level.

• Let them know there are other Yankees fans in the firm. How are you going to sell your candidate on the team he or she will work with? Do you know the culture of the group that the position is in? Do you know where the person that they will be meeting with came from, where they went to school, what their management style is, what their personal professional goals are, and so on? Knowing this information allows you to match the candidate’s personal goals with the department’s needs in a tangible way.
• Make it about them, not you. I like to think of introducing people as a way of broadening everyone’s horizons. Frame a request for a meeting like this: “How will you make an informed decision without actually dealing in facts?” I think any reasonable person realizes that they must have career options if they are to have any assurance at all that their career will progress ó and that includes CEOs.

There are other useful lobbying tactics. You can say things like, “I heard that XC Electronics is going through a rough patch. Maybe it makes sense to do a little networking as a safety net?” Or, give them a little compliment: “It’s not often that we get to meet an industry expert like you. Do you think you would be open to meeting the team?” If all else fails, do a light sell. Say to the candidate, “Did you know that we were recently featured in a piece by the Gartner Group? I have a PDF. Would you like to see it?” In the traditional sense, lobbying is “the practice of private advocacy with the goal of influencing a governing body by promoting a point of view that is conducive to an individual’s or organization’s goals.” That sums up recruiting, too.

• “I can’t commit to a specific day every week to talk or interview. Clients come first.”
• “I travel all of the time and I don’t have time to talk to people unless it’s a final interview.”
• “I have standing meetings with my staff once a week and we can go over the people you want me to meet on that call.”
• “I don’t know what my schedule is until the Monday before since it is always up in the air.”
• “You just find me the people and I’ll worry about my schedule and when it is convenient for me to talk with them.”

All of the managers that I have a working relationship with have used these lines on me before we got into a groove. They don’t have some mysterious pocket of time that the other don’t. What they do have are some solutions (and success stories) to back up making recruiting priority number one. Here are some solutions to getting the time that you need to review resumes, facilitate interview days, or make introductions. This can be done with your soon-to-be best friend, their administrative assistant, or directly with them. What you both will need is a calendar and to exchange all contact information.

1. Industry events. Find out what industry events they will be attending over the next quarter either as a keynote speaker or as an attendee or host of a hospitality suite.
2. Locations of prospective clients. Find out who in their pipeline of prospects is located where. Find out if they have a planned trips or whether they can piggyback an introduction on an impromptu visit.
3. Locations of existing clients. Find out where their existing clients are and when they are planning their next trip.
4. Location of their favorite hub. I work with a lot of managers who try to use the same airline because they want the miles or they use the hospitality club (Admirals Club) as an office. I know in most major airports if there is a meeting facility onsite or a major hotel with a lobby near the terminal. I keep track of this so that when I have a candidate in Atlanta and my Manager is on a layover, we can connect the dots.
5. Conference-call numbers. One of the things that I recommend is asking the manager to keep a time slot available from 5 to 6 p.m. on Thursdays on their conference-call line. When I screen a top candidate, I will ask them, “Are you around 5 to 6 p.m. Central time on Thursday?” If they are, I give them the conference-call number and password, and start a slate of people to have the manager talk to. Typically, Thursday morning I will send a manager an email with the agenda, the notes, and if I have it, bio or resume. The call is brief but the goal is to start the dialog and candidate experience off quickly and well.
6. Staying off team calls. One of my previous employers used to require me to sit on these interminably long team calls. Two hours later, they wanted to discuss our pipeline. By the time we got to recruiting, I had been on mute for two hours, the managers were fantasizing about lunch, and my poor candidates were reduced to three-second sound bites. Schedule a time for you and the manager or his administrative assistant to go over the pipeline every week over the phone for five to ten minutes. The pipeline should be the only item on the agenda. Friday evenings are great.
7. Identifying a favorite lunch spot. I always ask my managers if they eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, or go for drinks. This seems like a personal question, but there is a method to my madness. Some people like to meet at 7 a.m. and some people prefer 7 p.m. Once I get a handle on their preference, I’ll ask, “Do you mind some company once in a while?” If a candidate is local, I will set up a meet-and-greet this way. One of my managers always goes to get a coffee at 2 p.m. He was traveling between India and Dallas and was in the office once a month for three days. I would schedule one candidate a month to meet him at Starbucks for a brief meeting ó at 2 p.m.

Once you have assembled this information, you have a roadmap to when and where your candidates can be reviewed, introduced, and interviewed. As I screen candidates, I also get the snapshot of their travel plans and availability. This way, I can lighten the load on my managers’ administrative assistants as well as my coordinators so that their jobs are a little bit easier. If a manager resents this level of micromanagement, the best way to qualify it is to point out, “You know we would hit our numbers today if I had the authority to make hires. If we can’t come to a working service-level agreement on candidate feedback, candidate screening ,and interviewing, I can’t guarantee that you will make your numbers. This is really a way for you to be successful.” Another way to introduce this idea is to say, “Let’s just try this for a quarter and see if there is an improvement in the numbers. If the candidate quality or time burden becomes too much, we can talk about it again.” We could spend another 1,000 words on how much money a single hire can boost revenues or cost the firm. Help your manager help you.

1. Hone the pitch. Write down a five-second elevator pitch such as the following:

   I am calling from TransCo. We are engaged in a search for the top 5 percent of widget developers to join a top flight team of developers. Your name was suggested as someone with the background who may know that top 5 percent.

   It must be short, sweet and genuine.

2. Know the “why.” Imagine for a moment that you are a Ph.D. at Texas Instruments who develops chips for telecom. Put yourself in their shoes: Why should you move your family from Dallas, Texas, to Cambridge, Massachusetts to work at another company? Think about: a) Your company’s strengths against TI, b) your weaknesses against TI, c) the opportunities that exceed TI’s ability to propel this person professionally, and d) the threats that TI may pose in terms of behavior, money, and performance that can come back to haunt you. Don’t just “sort of” think about this. You must have cold hard facts if you want to get the top 1 percent. They will not talk with amateurs. You must display “street cred.”
3. Know what this person cares about. He invested $100,000 to become a Ph.D., so he is not going to move to a different state because “we’re a great company.” Instead try, “I think you may find it interesting that we have a dominant market share in communications ICs for base stations, and since we are interested in maintaining that lead, we commit time, resources, and energy to enabling experts like yourself to win.”
4. Take away the pressure to move. Lead with this statement: “I am not asking you to make a move. I want to get to know you over the next couple months in the event that you ever become interested in talking with us. I want to be the person you call to meet with our team.”
5. Re-read the last paragraph fifteen times. You must be thinking, “I am getting paid to make hires every month. I can’t spend my time on engineers who can’t move right now. I need resumes and people now. I have to justify my salary.” Think about that reasoning. Engaging key talent over the phone that develops into candidates may be exactly what your value to the recruitment team is. Remember that cold-calling off of an original research list isn’t the only thing you do to build a pipeline. The time that you spend doing your phone work is just a concentrated effort made every day in addition to candidate referrals, mining, and posting.
6. Don’t start with the end in mind. If you approach each name on the list as an opportunity to meet someone, you begin to do what I fondly call “percolating” candidates. You develop a group of people with varying degrees of interest. You let it brew. Your goal is to reach out and build trust, exchange contact information, do what you promise, and set up the next time to talk. In other words, treat them like people instead of candidates. You may be surprised with the results when you stop closing them too soon.
7. Always have a follow-up in mind. For example: “What I want to do next is email you my contact information and talk again soon. Are you around in a couple of weeks?”

One question that I get from recruiters new to doing phone work is that they frequently get interrogated on what the source of the lead is. This question results in call reluctance because they feel uncomfortable answering that question. The answer to use every time is, “I really don’t know. We have a large research effort and I try to stay on top on who is who in industries, and sometimes I just plumb forget.” That’s pretty much the truth.

It’s an Art

One of my favorite books is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. It appears to chronicle the cross-country trip on motorcycles of a father and son. But what it is really about is “quality” ó which the author defines as “what is real, what is good, and what is moral.” He explores these values in a series of conversations — Chautauquas. It is interesting to liken building a relationship over the phone with a stranger as an adventure and as an art versus a science out of a textbook. I like to think of each call as a running dialogue that doesn’t have a finish line. There is something Zen in making contacts in the industry you’re knowledgeable and passionate about, something authentic. Some people may object to this approach. There is reluctance on the part of the recruiting departments internally to poach because of the fear of non-competitive lawsuits. You may find that a high-touch and soft-handed approach quickly disarms these objections.

It’s Worth the Time

The market for candidates throughout the last two decades has been competitive for the top 1 percent of performers. Within top companies, there is a need to contact the performers at competitors and engage them in an employment dialogue on some level. If you establish a best-practices approach as outlined above and document the results, a recruiter and the company will be in a defensible position that is legal, moral, and viewed with integrity. The hallmark of this plan is calling people and introducing yourself as an industry expert in recruiting, especially when you don’t have the end in mind. Be patient, this process can take time: About 45 to 70 days more time than opening up Monster and pulling down a keyword search find a candidate who needs to move. But that person you meet is your contact, candidate, and network for life — so it is definitely worth the wait. Once you get the hang of it, it is a lot of fun. I find that when I sell them first and then win their trust, the candidate is more qualified, more committed, and the ultimate result is a longer-term relationship.