Of late, given the decrease in open positions, the candidate pipeline subject has resurfaced again as a hot topic among many recruitment leaders and hiring managers.

I’ve heard comments like:

“Now is the time to fill the pipeline for future hiring needs.”

“Since the recruiters have extra time, let’s have them build candidate pipelines.”

These comments are being made at companies throughout the country.

What I find most interesting is a growing frustration and disconnect between recruiters and hiring managers regarding this subject.

Additionally, while in theory recruiters with fewer requisitions should have more time to “pipeline candidates,” in most organizations, this is not happening.

Why is this the case? The frustration and lack of candidate pipeline development is a result of:

1. Managers’ unrealistic expectations regarding candidate pipelines.
2. Undefined, unrealistic expectations regarding the time it takes to create pipelines and develop a candidate relationship management program.

Regarding the first point, recruiters and hiring managers have different definitions for “developing candidate pipelines.”

If you ask most hiring managers what the definition is, most will say:

“A ready pool of pre-screened applicants interested in working for our organization. When an opening comes up, we call them up, bring them in for an interview and if we like them, hire them.”

My (and I think most recruiters’) definition is:

“A pipeline/network of talented professionals (active and/or passive job seekers, pre-screened or not) that you regularly communicate with regarding opportunities with your organization. A pipeline of candidates, that when an opening comes up, you can immediately contact and engage in discussions about the opportunity and/or to network.”

To maintain a pool of pre-screened, job seekers ready to join our organization with little more than a two-week notice (managers’ definition) is not achievable or realistic.

We need to educate managers of this fact and the potential difference in the definitions.

First of all, taking into consideration that most of these so-called “ready in the wings” applicants would be active seekers, the probability that they would remain interested and available for an opportunity with your organization (before taking another) is very low.

Second, let’s assume you have 50% attrition of this pipeline on a monthly basis (i.e., 50% take another position and/or lose interest in your position/organization). The amount of time required to keep the pipeline stocked with candidates would be very inefficient and most likely be cost-prohibitive.

This concept proposed by managers would be comparable to a grocer acquiring perishable food, only to lose 50% of it before they can sell it! It’s probably not smart business!

Most recruiters (and hiring managers) underestimate the time required to develop candidate pipelines. And relatively few recruiters have calculated the amount of time it takes to identify, contact, and maintain relationships with quality professionals.

To help you quantify the time required, let’s dissect the process:

• First you to need to find qualified applicants who meet the position specifications (and we all know quality talent is not sitting out on job boards or applying to our postings). This might include performing primary (phone-based) and Internet research to identify potential prospects.
• You then need to verify that they are potential candidates and validate they are good at what they do (typically phone and/or referral based).
• Once identified and validated, you need to make contact with them, engaging in discussion to understand their current situation, what would motivate them to move, etc.
• Once you have established a connection/relationship, you need to create and maintain an ongoing relationship management campaign to stay connected with them.

Of course using your centers of influence (hiring managers, employees), and using technology (including social networking sites) can reduce the time required to build and maintain pipelines, but I haven’t found anyone who has built strong candidate pipelines (as I defined above) who doesn’t dedicate a 5-10+ hours a week to this activity (pending type of recruit, # of job categories you recruit for, etc.).

Are you (or your recruiters) spending this amount of time per week on this task? Do you have a sourcing team dedicated to this task?

So what is a solution to the candidate pipeline dilemma?

1. Educate hiring managers regarding candidate pipelines, and make sure your definition of a candidate pipeline is the same as theirs.
2. Educate the hiring managers regarding the process of developing candidate pipelines.
3. Make sure the hiring managers and employees are engaged in the process: Who do they know in the market who are top performers that we should connect with? Who are the top performers at our competitors? Once we identify potential prospects, run the names by staff members to capture positive/negative intelligence about them.
4. Do a pure time study to quantify the amount of time it takes to: a) identify applicants; b) verify skills/quality; c) maintain contact with them and build relationships
5. Develop a data-driven strategy to develop candidate pipelines based on customer demand (time and tools required).

While these ideas outlined probably seem fairly simple and straightforward, you will be amazed at the results of implementing them.

(Editor’s note: Sometimes we see great blog posts on ERE.net, and when we do, we publish them here with the permission of their authors. This post was originally on David’s blog.)

While I’m sure we all aspire to have the discipline to implement new things that will ultimately make us better recruiters, it’s easier said than done.

To help with this dilemma, a lot can be learned from our friends at Seattle’s Pike Place Fish market. For those of you that have studied the Fish! Philosophy, you learned that the employees at Pike Place Fish Market created a super satisfying work environment by implementing four key ideas (aka The Four Steps of the Fish! Philosophy):
• Play
• Make their Day
• Be there
• Choose your attitude
While all are very important and excellent steps, incorporating “play” within your work day can dramatically improve implementation of new ideas/tools/techniques and, most importantly, overall improvement.

Let’s face it: playing and contests are more fun than work.

In spirit of recruiting performance improvement, here’s an example of a contest you could implement with your recruitment team to help improve their sourcing and time management skills. While the playful contest outlined below might be a little wordy and a tad cheesy, it could be a lot of fun and drive a huge ROI for the time invested by you and your team.

Recruitment Decathlon

The Recruitment Decathlon is a contest combining 10 recruiting events. Events will be held over the next 90 days and the winners are determined by the combined performance in all events. Performance is judged on a points system outlined below.

Traditionally, the title of “World’s Greatest Recruiter” has been given to the person who wins the decathlon.

• Employee Referrals — Each recruiter picks 25 top performers within the line of business they support. They have two weeks to engage these employees for specific referrals for openings within the organization.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for most qualified referrals.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for regions with most referrals per recruiter.

• Hires from Referrals (maybe break out exempt/non-exempt) — Person who hires the most people from referrals gathered during the Employee Referral contest (see above) by a certain date (say December 15, 2008).
o Gold, Silver, Bronze to the individuals with most hires.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for regions with most hires per recruiter.

• Association Membership Lists — Person who harvests the most qualified association membership lists from/using your Centers of Influence (hiring managers, peers, employees, etc.).
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for regions with most lists per recruiter.

• College Alumni Directories/Passwords — Harvest the most qualified college alumni directories and/or passwords to get online access to the directories from your Centers of Influence.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for regions with most directories/passwords per recruiter.

• Hires from References — Most hires from qualified references from applicants/candidates/new hires.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for regions with most hires per recruiter.

• Most Innovative Sourcing Tactic/Story that leads to a hire — By a certain date (say Nov. 15th), we will accept nominations for most innovative sourcing tactic that leads to a hire.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Region picks up points for having a gold, silver, bronze winner.

• Best ‘Attention Grabber’ email — Winners for best attention grabber email voted/judged by leadership/management team.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Region picks up points for having a gold, silver, bronze winner.

• Best ‘Attention Grabber’ voicemail — Winner for best attention grabber voice mail voted/judged by leadership/management team.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Region picks up points for having a gold, silver, bronze winner.

• Best Perfect Week/Perfect Day Routine – Winners will be awarded for demonstrating their weekly/daily planning process and how it makes them a productive/efficient recruiter.
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Region picks up points for having a gold, silver, bronze winner.

• Best overall success story from participating in this Recruitment Decathlon — Winners will be awarded for sharing their success story (how this decathlon improved performance, customer service, etc.).
o Gold, Silver, Bronze for individual winners.
o Region picks up points for having a gold, silver, bronze winner.

Point System:
Gold = 3 points
Silver = 2 points
Bronze = 1 point

• Individuals will be awarded a Gold, Silver, Bronze metal for each of the 10 contests.
• The individual with the most points will be crowned the winner of the decathlon!
• Each region will receive points for individuals who are awarded gold, silver, and bronze in each event.
• In addition, region will be awarded points for each event as outlined above.
• The region with the most points will be crowned the top region!

While many recruitment organizations have created service level agreements that define the recruitment/hiring process and each parties’ (hiring manager and recruiter) responsibilities, many do not define and establish a “time-to-first-submittal” SLA. This SLA is what I believe to be the most important.

We (and others!) call this SLA: Requisition Received to “First Submittal.”

This is the time between receiving/qualifying the requisition from the hiring manager to the time you send over your first pre-screened, qualified candidate for consideration/interview.

Now I know that your manager will ask for/want more than “one” candidate (although it truly takes just one qualified candidate to successfully fill a position!), but we all know that a manager’s most anxious time is the time that lapses between giving a requisition to a recruiter and receiving the first applicant.

This time period (between req received and first submittal) causes the most anxiety/pain because of the “fear of the unknown.” Their thought process might be something like; “…I don’t know what is going on; I don’t know when I will see candidates; I don’t know when I will be able to get this position filled, etc.”

When applicant flow starts to come in, regardless of whether or not the candidates are the perfect fit, they rest easier knowing that “the ball is now rolling.”

You can avoid all this pain, anguish and anxiety, and most importantly — define expectations and improve customer service — by setting a realistic SLA. The process includes (but is not limited to) the following:

• Meet with the hiring manager and qualify the open position/requisition.

• Identify whether or not you feel there are internal candidates qualified to fill the position. If you believe an internal candidate exists, start the internal recruitment process/posting and set the appropriate service level that defines when you expect internal applicant flow.

• If you have to search externally, define (with the hiring manager) the position’s level of difficulty to fill:
o Standard, business as usual
o Difficult to fill
o Extremely difficult to fill

• Once you determine the level of difficulty (and get sign-off/buy-in from the hiring manager), define (with the hiring manager, if possible) your search strategy for filling the position. Educate them on how you will find (your action items/steps) qualified candidates for this position. While they might not care about what you need to do to fill the position, educating them on your search strategy will give them a better idea of how long it actually takes to identify, make contact, and pre-screen qualified, passive candidates (especially during the summer with folks on vacation, etc.).

• Now time to set your SLA:
o “Joe, based on the fact that this is a difficult to fill position, as we discussed, and that we don’t have any internal candidates and, honestly — since it is a new position — no external candidates in my pipeline, I want to set a realistic SLA. You should expect to see applicant flow by Friday, 8/19. Of course, as soon as I identify candidates that I think are qualified, I will send over ASAP. But I want to set a realistic expectation given the search, my search strategy, etc.”

• If for some reason you are unsure that you can not meet that service level, give yourself a “safety net.”
o “Joe, if for some reason I don’t think I will meet that deadline, I will let you know by COB Monday the 14th.”

If the only SLA you have ever established with your manager is; “…I will get working on it…” When they say, “I need it filled ASAP/yesterday…” don’t expect your managers to roll over and be happy with some of the SLAs you set (especially for difficult-to- fill and extremely-difficult-to-fill positions).

Anyone that has set this SLA will attest to the fact that many managers will still want candidates “yesterday.” With that said, over time, you can start to educate them on why it takes time to generate a slate of qualified candidates. Just as important, if you meet/exceed the SLAs you set, your hiring managers will start to appreciate your honesty regarding the situation. And most importantly, your hiring managers will trust and respect you more for setting them.

One simple, but powerful referral sourcing technique is closing each recruitment cold call with the question: “Can you do me a favor?”

As we all know, much has been much written about overcoming the objection “I am not interested…” or “I am happy; thanks, but no thanks…”

But in reality, you will not be able to turn a “no” into a “yes” in many (if not most) of these situations.

Yes, they might listen to your message (or pitch) but in the majority of cases, they won’t be interested or, they won’t be qualified.

Of course, when this happens, it is your job to network with this person to get referrals. Your ability to extract referrals and/or leads to help you with your search depends on many factors; including (among others):

• How you opened your call.
• If you were able to build rapport in the first 30 seconds of the call.
• The thought-provoking questions you ask during the call.

At some point, you will exhaust your ability to harvest referrals and will end the call.

This is where the “Can you do me a favor?” line can link you to your next hire!

A good habit to get into (if you are not doing it already) is to close each one of these calls with the line: “Can you do me a favor?”

Of course, expecting the worst, the prospect might come back with a line like: (shaky, nervous voice . . .) “Yeah, what is it?”

“I was wondering if I could shoot you an email outlining the specifics of this opportunity and my contact information (attach your Outlook v-card)? If you think of anyone who could benefit from the info and/or could help me with my search, I would appreciate if you would pass this info along.”

And 99.9% of the time, they will say “sure,” if for no other reason than to close the call and get on with their day.

While this may not seem like a big deal (some of you use this technique already), the benefits of this simple “habit” are huge:

• If you do not have their personal email address, this is the time you can harvest it to send the email.
• The written word is more powerful than the verbal word. Most people comprehend information better when reading it. Often, you will send a well-crafted “Attention Grabber” and . . . they will shoot back an email saying they are interested!
• It will sit in their inbox. When something negative occurs at their workplace, they will look you up.
• They end up passing this email to their peers. We know the whole power of being LinkedIn!

The record in our office is a sixth-generation hire. An email was forwarded six times, ending up in the hands of the person who we actually hired.

We achieved all this by implementing a simple routine at the end of a sourcing call.

To compound this situation, we do this in an environment of constant change (shifting priorities, new requisitions, etc.).

If not managed properly, it is easy to lose focus, get de-motivated, and become non-productive.

To avoid this situation, most top sales organizations have a weekly “sales” meeting. Objectives of these meetings include:

• Make sure each salesperson has a focused plan of action for the week.
• Make sure each salesperson’s plan includes an adequate amount of measurable “outbound” activity.
• Set team/individual priorities.
• Discuss any administrative loose ends.

If, for some reason, you are not having a weekly “recruiting” meeting, start now. Based on the challenges outlined above, I can’t think of a logical reason why you wouldn’t.

In our research efforts, we have learned that the best sales organizations not only have meetings, but the salespeople enjoy attending them!

While the clear intent of these meetings is to get focused for a productive week, unfortunately, the majority of companies’ sales meetings are mundane, boring, and unproductive.

Most sales professionals view these meetings as a “necessary evil” to provide management with a status on progress toward their goals.

Indeed, during my 19 years in recruiting, I have attended my fair share of boring, mundane meetings!

To avoid falling into this trap, try the following meeting agenda/format. It provides structure and sets the tone for a productive, positive week:

Meeting particulars:

• Hold this meeting first thing Monday morning starting at 7 or 8 a.m. (depending on company culture, attendee’s personal schedules, etc.)

• Limit the meeting to no more than 15 participants. If you have a larger team, I assume there is some logical way to break the team into groups of 10-15 people based on line of business you support, geography, etc. There is no minimum required. If you have two people on your team — meet. If it is only you, meet with yourself.

• With today’s technology (conferencing, web meetings, video meetings), you can’t use “geography” as an excuse for not getting together.

• Keep the meeting to one hour. To keep the meeting on schedule, remember these tips:

1. The moderator is responsible for keeping the meeting positive and lively, but also on time! Every minute the meeting runs over, the moderator owes $1 (or some other form of motivation).
2. In addition, all late participants must donate $1 for each minute they are late (it is amazing how people become respectful of being on time when you adopt this policy).
3. This money can be used for a teambuilding event, given to charity, etc.

Meeting agenda:

Let’s start the week off right!

• Share a great, positive story from last week/weekend. Stories don’t have to be work-related. Personal, positive stories are the best.

• Business review. Review your current open positions. Discuss status, pending action items, next steps, etc.

• Discuss last week’s achievements. Each week, we recommend each person develop a Perfect Week. This is a list of billable/non-billable activities you would like to get done during the week. These action items can then get scheduled into your Perfect Day routine. At this time, have each person discuss the past week, including:

1. Overall week; how did things go based on what they set out to get done?
2. Top two or three most critical things they accomplished last week.
3. Maybe the two or three things that did not get done last week that will either become this week’s priorities, or, possibly removed from this week’s “to-do” list.

• Biggest frustration(s) last week. Let it out! We all have had weeks when things don’t go the way they were supposed to go. If your frustration is dragging into this week, ask your teammates for solutions to make it better/solve the problem.

• Visualize this week’s “Perfect Week” and post goals in a public location. Discuss the critical things you have to get done (billable/non-billable) to make this week a “Perfect Week.” If possible, have each team member post them in a central location (whiteboard in your office?) so everyone can see. As you go through the week, cross off the activities as they get accomplished. Crossing off tasks on a to-do list feels good and can motivate others around you.

• Visualize your “Perfect Monday.” Discuss the critical activities you have to get done today (Monday) to have a “Perfect Monday.” Being motivated and productive early on Monday can set the tone for the rest of the week.

• Education. Each week, have a person on the team (rotate this duty each week) discuss something we didn’t know about our clients, recruiting, and our industry. Make sure this discussion is no more than five minutes. Providing a “short” handout (don’t pass out War & Peace) people can take away and read is great.

• End with a positive thought (or two or three) for the day.

In order to accomplish these agenda items (on time), everyone must embrace and practice the Milo Frank habits about getting your point across in 30 seconds or less.

Have fun with this process. Each week, have a different person moderate the meeting. This is a chance for us all to come together and get motivated, focused, and ready for the week.

Your thoughts/comments on this subject are welcome. I hope your next weekly meeting is a great one.

I don’t run into many recruiters/staffing/HR professionals who don’t agree with the statement: Recruiting is just like sales.

While we can argue over the differences between the two professions (please don’t lose sight of the trees through the forest on this one), we all know the parallels are overwhelming.

Consider the following shared business philosophies:

• Recruiters prospect/source for candidates, while sales people prospect/source for new business opportunities/contacts.
• Recruiters develop relationships with prospects to turn them into candidates, while sales people develop relationships to turn prospects into viable business opportunities.
• Recruiters assess the candidate’s skills to determine whether they are a fit for the organization, while sales people assess the business opportunity with a potential client.
• Recruiters “negotiate” compensation and turn (close) candidates into employees, while sales people close deals and turn prospects into customers.

So if recruiting is just like sales, shouldn’t we be benchmarking the most successful salespeople/organizations and learn from them?

While there are many things we could learn and benchmark from top sales producers, you will find a lot of their energy and true passion is around the following topics:

• Monthly/weekly/daily meetings about pipelines, activity, etc.
• Incentive-based compensation models.
• Ongoing motivational contests to reward top performers.
• Emphasis on ongoing learning, execution, and time management.
• Aggressive attitude about achieving goals and performance management.

Although many agency/staffing recruiters subscribe to some, most, or even all of these types of behaviors, I am always surprised to find that many corporate internal recruiters do not function like a sales organization!

Investigating the Trend

Why is this?

Is there really a big difference between internal and external recruiting? Again, we know some obvious differences, but really, recruiting is recruiting, isn’t it?

To this point, I am often amazed at the response I get from corporate/internal recruitment leaders. With one statement they will say “I need my recruiters to think of recruiting like it is sales. I need them to act more like consultants.”

But when I start discussing the topics and behaviors above, they get uneasy.

They say things like the following:

• “That won’t work in our culture.”
• “We are not a staffing/agency.”
• “We have large req loads, so that won’t work.”
• “We are all too busy to do these things.”

Desperately Seeking Sales-Minded Recruiters

There are many corporate recruitment organizations that function and think like a sales organization, and it’s time these people speak up.

I am not making these points to “bash” corporate/internal recruiters. That is not my intent. The main reason I bring this up is because whenever I start talking about these subjects, many (not all) people say, “Oh, that is for agency/staffing recruiters!”

But I just do not see it that way. If you can see the parallels between the two and believe that recruiting is just like sales, then you need to start benchmarking the most successful sales organizations, thought leaders, etc., and start learning from them.

Do this regardless of what type of recruiter you are!

With that said, I would love to share best practices around a variety of topics (i.e., internal, external, staffing, HR, corporate, agency recruiters, all are welcome):

• Monthly/weekly/daily meetings about pipelines, activity, etc.
• Incentive-based compensation models for corporate recruiters.
• Motivational contests to reward top performers.
• Emphasis on ongoing learning, execution, time management.
• Recruiter goal setting and performance management.
• Best sales organization, thought leaders, etc. to benchmark.

I will present these best practices in future articles on ERE!

• Employee referrals
• College recruiting
• Internet postings
• Internet databases
• Advertising
• Job fairs
• Applicant tracking systems (candidate database)

So why then do some recruiters excel at sourcing? Why do they always seem to have the perfect, passive candidate to fill every req? How do they fill 50-75% more reqs than their peers, in about the same amount of time? For most of these “stud” recruiters I work with, it’s because they have mastered the lost art of investigative questioning! In fact, if you took the time to study the sourcing techniques these recruiters use, you would probably find that the catalyst to their success is a simple concept that many of today’s “Internet generation” recruiters have not yet mastered and that many pre-Internet recruiters have forgotten about! That is: Savvy sourcers, during conversation with the people they talk to each and every day (friends, family, peers, employees, applicants, candidates, hiring managers, etc.) ask good, thought-provoking, investigative questions! Why Is Investigative Questioning a Lost Art? In the pre-Internet era of recruiting (which was not that long ago!), resumes and candidates where tough to come by. Sure, you could run an ad in the newspaper and get 30, 40, maybe 50 resumes mailed in (yes, mailed) or faxed over (on to that rolled-up, shiny fax paper). But that’s decimal dust compared to the instant access we have to millions of resumes in today’s Internet age. In the old days, your ability to extract information, leads, and referrals from the people you talked to each and every day was key to your success. In the old days, if you couldn’t network for referrals, you couldn’t survive! You scraped and clawed to get people to send resumes. You waited for the mail every day to see if any resumes came in. Today, that’s not the case. With the Internet, search engines, and job boards, we have access to millions of applicants. Why would we have any need to ask investigative questions to find a qualified candidate? Surely, there must be one good candidate somewhere in the bunch! But this is a false sense of security. We are conned into believing that out of these millions of applicants, there must be at least one qualified one. And when we find out that this is not the case (i.e., when we find ourselves with no qualified candidates), we don’t know what else to do. Because of this, many recruiters in this new Internet era of recruiting have lost the fundamental skill critical to a recruiter’s success: investigative questioning. Investigative Questioning (IQing) I remember when I first started recruiting. A savvy recruiter I worked with gave me some great advice: “Everybody knows somebody. The key is for you to develop a rapport with them, and then ask the right questions to get either a referral form them or information that will help with your search.” That line has always stuck with me. So why don’t applicants, candidates, friends, hiring managers, and employees normally provide us with leads, referrals, and competitive intelligence to help us with our search? Probably for two basic reasons:

1. The majority of people do not like to give out information to strangers (especially names).
2. The majority of recruiters don’t ask the right questions!

Mastering the art of IQing is not as difficult as you think. To become a savvy investigator, all you need to do is ask the right questions with the right people at the right time! So who are the right people? First off, I will tell you who the toughest people to get referrals from are: candidates that are not interested in new employment opportunities. It is difficult to get information, leads, referrals from someone who has already said no. So while I would encourage you to keep asking these folks for referrals (you never know when someone has a lead), I have found IQing works best with people that you talk to each and every day, those who have a vested interest in providing you with leads. This list includes:

• Candidates interested in employment opportunities with your firm. These people have a vested interest in helping you cause they are seeking employment with your firm!
• Friend and family. Their vested interest? Hopefully they want you to be successful!

All of these folks (if approached at the right time and asked the right questions) are excellent sources of leads, referrals, or competitive intelligence to help you in your search. IQing 101: Leveraging Your Hiring Managers and Employees By far the easiest folks to IQ are your hiring managers and employees. Who could be more motivated to provide you with referrals and leads then your hiring managers and employees (at least those who are happy campers)? Your hiring managers want you to fill their positions, and employees usually get some type of referral bonus for doing so! Let’s take a further look at IQing both groups. Your hiring managers are excellent sources of leads, referrals, and competitive intelligence. You just have to ask the right questions! The best “time” to IQ your hiring manager is when you first discuss the opening (if you forget to do so, really any time is good). Some great questions to ask:

1. Who are your top 10 employees? Where did they come from? Can I see their resumes? Can I talk to them?
2. Do you recommend we get active in any industry-specific association? Are there any industry events coming up that we should get involved with?
3. Which of our competitors have high-quality people? Did any of your current staff work at any of these competitors?
4. Do you have any resumes that have come directly to you that you might want me to contact?
5. Are there people in the industry that you think I should contact?
6. Where did you work previously? Are there any folks there that you think I should contact?

I would bet that most organizations could get almost twice as many referrals (at far less cost) from their employees if their recruiters asked better questions. Instead of throwing more money at employees to get them to refer people, ask the right questions. If you ask these questions with all of your employees, I bet you improve your employee referral recruiting efforts by at least 50%:

1. Where did you work previously?
2. What did you do? How many of your peers did the same thing?
3. If you were to create a dream team of former co-workers to come work with you here, who would be on your team? Who are the top 10? The top 5?
4. I know these folks might not be actively looking for a new position at this time, but could I give them a call to see if they are interested in opportunities with us?
5. What associations are you aware of or actively involved in? Do you attend the meetings? Do you have access to a membership directory that I could use for recruiting purposes? (Reward them with a referral bonus if they can provide it to you.)
6. If you were me, and you had to find people like you, what would you do? Any places you recommend we advertise? Internet boards you think might be a good source of candidates?

When is the best time to ask these questions? Typically when there is a current opening within their department. When should you approach your employees? Common sense should be your guide with this, but some ideas include:

• When they take breaks
• At lunch (in the cafeteria?)
• At the end the day if people are sitting around chatting
• Friday afternoon. People are checking out for the weekend.
• Any time folks don’t look too busy.

Other ideas on how and where to use IQing:

• Ask the hiring manager if you can buy the whole department lunch (maybe a cookout on a nice day) and ask everyone for advice. This works great. You get the whole team thinking about recruiting.
• Always leverage your employee referral program. “Remember, every name of a person you provide me with that we end up hiring, you will get a bonus for.”
• Implement a “special” referral bonus program. In addition to the standard bonus an employee would normally receive, maybe give out a weekend getaway trip, a gift certificate to Best Buy, or a large-screen TV for things like the most referrals, the first person that gets hired, etc.

Remember, savvy recruiters who excel at sourcing usually ask good IQs with the right people at the right time. So if you’re looking to become a better investigator, replace the overused, ineffective line, “Do you know of anyone looking for a new opportunity?” with some good investigative questions. I can pretty much guarantee you will see exponential results in your ability to find qualified candidates!

1. Quantify how well you are performing and how satisfied your customers are
2. Properly justify recruitment resources, headcount, workforce planning, etc.
3. Develop performance improvement strategies for ongoing continuous improvement

For the past 10 years, I’ve been helping recruiting organizations develop performance metrics to manage their business operations. Through trial and error, I have found some powerful rules that all organization should consider ó both to successfully implement metrics and to develop a performance-based management culture within your recruitment operation. This article contains some of the golden rules I’ve found to be true for all metrics initiatives. None of this is that difficult, which is why I also call these rules “Metrics for Dummies.” 1. Keep it simple. A big problem I have with the business metrics many companies have established (or some of the new theories on metrics in the industry today) is that they are way too complex! If a metric is not self explanatory, or can’t easily be defined with a simple description, then it is way too complex. For metrics to take root and become part of an organization’s culture, they must make sense to recruiters, HR management, and your board of directors alike ó not just other HR/recruiting experts in the field!. If you make them metrics too complex, you’ll probably fail at all three of the metrics goals I defined at the beginning of this article. Some might argue that executives and CFOs will easily grasp complex metrics. But from my experience, I’ve found that while they might understand the logic or theory behind complex metrics, they are also likely to dismiss them as too “scientific” or “academic.” More importantly, you will lose your frontline recruiters (the most important audience for developing a performance-based culture) if you make them metrics complex. Recruiting is such a simple business process, why complicate it with complex measurements? If you need a PhD in statistics to understand some of the metrics you track, I would advise you either alter the metric or discontinue tracking it. 2. Only measure what is important to your client. What do your clients/hiring mangers really want from recruiting? In the past six years, I have never worked with a recruiting organization that hasn’t quickly identified what clients (hiring managers) want from their recruiting organization (or recruiting vendor): they want quality candidates, quickly, at a fair price (or low cost). Pretty simple! Yes, there are other things important (like understanding the business, excellent customer service, etc.), but when you sum it up, the three most important things to our customers are:

• Cost
• Quality (including candidate experience)
• Responsiveness/Speed (including candidate experience)

(Note: In my organization’s metrics-based, performance management system, we include a fourth category: efficiency. It is so important and so powerful (it impacts cost, quality and responsiveness) that it deserves more attention. More on this topic in a future article.) If this is what our customers care about, then every metric you track should directly relate to one of these three categories. In other words, you should be tracking metrics to see if you are:

• Reducing or controlling cost
• Improving quality (candidate, candidate experience, hiring manager satisfaction, etc.)
• Improving speed

If you’re currently tracking metrics that do not fit into one of these categories, I would seriously consider whether those metrics are worth tracking at all. 3. Only track metrics you intend to use. I often run across companies that are metrics junkies. They have attended every industry conference, read every book on business improvement, and implemented every metric they have found. You go into their office and they enough charts, graphs, and complicated excel spreadsheets to make Bill Gates proud! Then I ask a few simple questions. How many of these metrics do you actually analyze on a regular basis? Have you developed continuous improvement strategies based on your analysis to:

• Reduce costs?
• Improve quality?
• Improve responsiveness?

Typically, it is only a few ó if any! If you do nothing with your metrics except create pretty charts and graphs that you show your peers or managers, then I believe you are missing out on the core reason why you are tracking them: to develop continuous improvement strategies. If you are not using your metrics to develop continuous improvement strategies, the I would also bet your recruiters resist tracking metrics or don’t see the value in doing so. Why? Usually because they can’t see how these metrics impact the big picture, or they never see their managers do anything with them except create pretty charts, graphs, and excel spreadsheets. They never see any positive rewards (performance improvement, satisfied customers, etc.), so to them, tracking metrics has little value. If you are a metrics junkie, I would encourage you to review your suite of metrics, identify which ones your team actually understands, and consider using only those that relate to cost, quality, and responsiveness. As a rule of thumb, if you are measuring more than four to six key metrics (I like to call them vital signs) for each category (cost, quality, responsiveness), you probably have too many or are using the wrong metrics to analyze your performance. (I understand you might track other “sub-metrics” to measure your business processes in addition to your key metrics. This is okay, as long as you use them! When presenting your value to executive management, I would only present your key metrics ó keep it simple.) 4. Keep goals realistic. When setting goals for metrics, remember to keep them realistic. I have seen some articles of late challenging recruiters to meet or exceed targets that I don’t believe are humanly possible. There is no quicker way to lose your audience than to set a goal that is unrealistic or unachievable. In setting goals for metrics, use past historical performance and industry benchmarks to set your targets. But beware: I see many people who are so concerned about finding the right benchmark that they forget why they are “benchmarking” in the first place. Don’t get me wrong; I encourage you to seek good benchmarks ó that’s the only way to measure how well you are doing. But while you gather that information, don’t be afraid to set a realistic goal based on your past historical performance. In setting goals, I would also encourage you to follow the sound advice we get from experts in self improvement, personal achievement, and behavior modification: “Incremental improvement over time will result in exponential results.” Setting realistic quarterly goals will allow you and your staff to see results. This is the quickest and easiest way to foster a positive attitude around continuous performance improvement. The absolute worst thing you can do is set “pie in the sky” goals (some people I believe call them stretch goals; I call them dreams) that are not humanly possible or will take years to achieve. This will only hurt the motivation of you and your team. 5. Constantly reinforce why you are tracking metrics. I would encourage you to make sure you are constantly reinforcing the value of tracking metrics for your team (and for you!). The message is pretty simple:

Our job is to find quality candidates, quickly, and at a fair (low) cost for our customers. In order to make sure we are doing this, we need to track metrics (vital signs) that validate our performance with regard too:

• Cost
• Quality
• Responsiveness
• Efficiency (if you choose to add this as a fourth category)

If we are performing better than our competition, we want everyone to know about it. To remain the best, we need to develop continuous improvement strategies to keep us on top. If we are not the best, we need to develop performance improvement strategies to catch our competition.

This message needs to be constantly reinforced with you and your team to foster a positive attitude around metrics and continuous improvement 6. Keep your metrics visible. To help develop this culture, I would recommend you post all your key vital signs in a highly visible place for all to see. I would recommend using colorful trend charts that show:

• The metric
• Your goal
• The industry benchmark
• Your current performance

Trend charts (over time) are great visuals to quantify how well you are performing. By putting them in a visible spot, it will keep them in front of the recruiting team and ó just as important ó in front of your clients or key stakeholders. What better way to demonstrate your commitment to running your organization like a business and your pursuit of ongoing continuous improvement? 7. Celebrate metrics and have fun with them! Metrics get a bad rap. Why? Because we typically use them to show all the things we need to work on or improve upon. To develop a positive culture that embraces metrics and continuous improvement, don’t forget to use them to demonstrate all the things you are doing right. Reward incremental improvement. Provide positive recognition for those people that are demonstrating continuous improvement. Implement contest or games that reward performance improvement. If discussions around metrics are always punitive in nature, you will have a difficult time getting people excited about them. Remember, recruiting is a simple process. Don’t make the business of “managing by metrics” more difficult than it needs to be!

• Dramatically improve my time management, planning, and organizational skills
• Manage multiple projects/ and tasks
• Not forget things that often used to fall off my plate
• Get more things accomplished in less time!

Can you have a perfect week? A perfect day? The answer is probably no. While we strive to complete each week and every day perfectly, it rarely ever happens. But if you take a defeatists’ attitude and never try to have a perfect week (or perfect day), I can pretty much promise you it will never happen. A great analogy to illustrate this point is that of a football coach (or any athletic coach for that matter) preparing for a game. All week long, a coach and his assistants spend 16 hours a day in preparation and practice to prepare the perfect game plan. They try to predict what the other team is going to do and, based on that prediction, develop a plan of action to do the things necessary to win the game. Six days of intense preparation, planning, and practice ó all to find out that one minute into the game, their opponent’s strategy is vastly different than what they prepared for! So what do they do? Throw in the towel and give up? No! They adjust their plan of action (based on the new strategy of the opponent) to win the game. If you talk to a coach, this happens more often than not. So why do they spend all that time preparing for the game if they don’t know the other teams strategy? There are lots of reasons. But minimally: “A plan that needs to be changed is better than no plan at all.” To me, this is no different than what recruiters face each and every week. How many times have you started a week thinking that you have X requisitions to work on and X things to get done ó and then by 10:00 a.m. Monday every thing has changed! Positions go on hold, candidates don’t accept offers, and new positions are thrown on your plate. This is why our office created “A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” routine to help set a strategic course for the week AND to allow for changes that might pop up each and every day. Developing A Perfect Week At the beginning of each week (Friday before you leave for the weekend, over the weekend, or early Monday morning), we list all the activities that we want to accomplish in the upcoming week. We organize these activities into two categories:

1. Billable. Billable are activities directly related to hiring new employees (a recruiter’s primary job). In Business 101 class in school, they called these “line” activities: things that directly contribute to making money for your organization. For recruiters, we get paid for hiring quality people! Examples include prospecting for candidates, making offers, attending job fairs, setting up interviews with hiring managers, qualifying a requisition, etc.
2. Non-billable. Non-billable (or staff) activities are things that you must accomplish and typically support your line activities. Examples include entering candidates into your ATS, developing postings for the Internet, activity reporting, department meetings, training, paperwork, etc.

We then document activities in our perfect week as either actions or results. Some examples of actions:

• Source six hours on the Branch Manager position.
• Get requisition from Horseman for the SVP of IT.
• Attend EEOC/Compliance training on Wed.

Examples of results:

• Get three submittals to Koesel for the IT audit position.
• Close Doris Kellsy! Get a start date!
• Get Lisa and Catherine scheduled for interviews with Minnick.

The template (and an example) we use to document our perfect week would look something like this:

David’s Perfect Week Billable:

• Source six hours for BM position. Get three submittals to Minnick.
• Get requisition from Horseman for the SVP of IT.
• Close Kellsy and get her to start on the 24th!
• Attend job fair in Fairfax ó hopefully get 10 good candidates.
• Source four hours for SVP position ó goal is two submits to Craig.
• Set up date for Lisa and Catherine to interview with Williams. Non-Billable
• Finish website information and post.
• Do edits on website from CC.
• Make travel arrangements for Charlotte trip.
• Do expenses.
• Pull of posting of the Internet.
• Update job posting for BM position.
• Attend EEOC/Compliance training on Wed.

Every Monday morning, we have a team meeting to discuss last week results and our plan of action for the upcoming week. We have fun with this meeting! We critique our own performance. We discuss how the week went ó what we did get done; what we didn’t get done. We rate our performance like grade school: A through F, plus or minus acceptable. We post everyone’s perfect week on a flip chart for all to see. This makes it is easy for review purposes. We also use this meeting to share information, to ask for advice, and to get our “game faces” on for the week. If you are part of a “remote” team, have a conference call. If you work by yourself, meet with yourself! The Perfect Day To actually accomplish the activities outlined in our perfect week we create the perfect day. Prior to starting the day, we review our Perfect Week (to see what we still need to accomplish) and work in progress from the previous day and develop a plan of action. For peer support, we email out this schedule to our teammates to kick off the morning in a positive manner. A typical perfect day email looks like this: 7:30-8:30 Planning, return emails, call Bob about Sue

8:30-11:00 Sourcing for SVP position (database search and Internet research)

11:00-12:00 Interview with Joe Edwards

12:00-1:00 Lunch; return emails, voicemails; call to cancel hotel reservation

1:00-1:30 Meet with Barb to qualify new position

1:30-4:00 Call/email all candidates I found in dbase and through next research

4:00-5:00 Return all emails from net postings

What I want from my day: I hope to get the requisition qualified with Barb and find at least two qualified candidates (and talk to them) for the SVP position! The perfect day routine forces us to keep reviewing all the activities we want to accomplish during the week. By sending out the email (and receiving them from my peers), it forces all of us to plan our day. Questions on “A Perfect Week, The Perfect Day” Routine

• Does each week and every day go perfectly? Absolutely NOT! Like a coach preparing for a game, rarely do I see it go perfect. But I do know that with this tactical level of planning, I am getting more done and managing my time better than ever before.
• What happens if the activities you document in your perfect week change 180 degrees during the week? Then I readjust and develop a new plan of action. Plans were meant to be changed. That is what The Perfect Week routine is for. To allow for changes that occur during the week.
• How important is the format for the perfect week/day routine? Not important at all. Do what makes sense for you and document it with tools that you use. (I still use a day planner. I know many of you probably use Outlook or a Palm Pilot.)

Helpful Hints

• Frontload your week. I like to play a game with myself and try to check off as many activities as early as possible in the week. This is motivating and allows me the option of cutting out a little early on Friday knowing I had a great week. What an awesome feeling!
• Have fun with this routine. In our planning meeting, or when we shoot our perfect day routine via email, we send motivational quotes, jokes, etc. to lighten up the day.
• Create contests against your teammates or yourself. When planning your perfect day, challenge your peers (or yourself). See who gets a hold of the most candidates; gets a candidate to accept an offer; etc.

This routine has dramatically improved my planning, time management, and organization skills. More importantly, I am getting more done in less time and not forgetting to do things that in the past often fell off my plate. If your having a difficult time managing all the things us recruiters have to get done during the day, I would encourage you to develop a perfect week and plan the perfect day! Let me know how it works.

• The ability to source passive candidates who are not looking for employment
• The ability to attain high customer satisfaction ratings with all clients (hiring managers, candidates, key executive stakeholders)
• The ability to effectively screen candidates and differentiate between those who are qualified and those who are unqualified
• The ability to defuse counteroffers
• The ability to lure top talent to join your organization
• The ability to effectively negotiate equitable compensation packages

The list could go on from there. I don’t think anyone would disagree that world-class recruiters possess (or should possess) the skills listed above. I’ve found, however, that there is actually a separate set of “success attributes” common to world-class recruiters, regardless of:

• The type of recruiting they do (corporate, staffing, direct placement)
• The type of people they recruit for (non-exempt, exempt, executive)
• The industry sector they are in (manufacturing, retail, financial services, etc.)

Unlike a particular recruiting skill (such as Internet sourcing, objection handling, behavioral interviewing), these “success attributes” are often difficult to teach. Not to be cynical, but I’ve found that frequently these are qualities that people either do or do not possess. Have you ever heard the phrase, “Hire for attitude, train for skill”? These 10 success attributes are the “attitude” piece of the world-class recruiter. 10 “Success Attributes” of World-Class Recruiters By no means do I think the following is an inclusive list of recruiter success attributes. These are simply 10 attributes I find common in the top-notch recruiters I have met and worked with in my career. I’m sure that I am missing others that I just can’t think of right now. Please feel free share your thoughts with me and add to this list!

1. World-class recruiters respond to ongoing change and rejection well. Recruiting can be a thankless business. You fill 10 reqs; you get 10 more. You source out five candidates for a position; it goes on hold. You think you have the perfect candidate; they change the specifications. For many recruiters I talk to, these are all catastrophic tragedies. For world-class recruiters, this is just part of the job.
2. World-class recruiters are resourceful. World-class recruiters don’t need a big budget, expensive sourcing tools, or technology gadgets to get the job done. Many of the best recruiters I know (to this day) do not have big budgets for sourcing tools. They don’t use a Palm Pilot; they do not have (or use) an ATS. But they still manage to out-produce their peers while maintaining the highest customer satisfaction ratings. They are resourceful and get the job done regardless.
3. World-class recruiters are savvy investigators. While technology has provided us with the ability to access millions of applicants quickly, it often leads us into a false sense of security, lulling us into thinking that these are actually quality candidates! Recruiters who have grown up in this new technology age often do not possess the investigative (or networking) skills necessary to generate new candidate leads from unqualified candidates. In the old days (and I am not that old), you viewed every resume (since they were hard to come by) and every phone call as a chance to investigate. The mentality was, “Everybody knows somebody.” If the person you were talking to wasn’t right, the goal was to extract out names (or at least clues) that would lead you to the right person. World-class recruiters excel at this! They are savvy investigators. They know what questions to ask to generate leads to fill a position, and when to ask them.
4. World-class recruiters are competitive. I’ve found that most people who can handle change and rejection are also very competitive. They play the game to win. And when you play the game to win, you often lose. In recruiting, as we all know, you are either the hero or the goat. You’re only as good as your last placement. Competitive people rise to the occasion, don’t sweat the small stuff, and play to win!
5. World-class recruiters have the discipline to try new things. How many times have you sat in a meeting to brainstorm new ways to find candidates or new ideas to improve the hiring process? World-class recruiters actually leave those meetings with the discipline to implement the ideas discussed. Since they are competitive and handle rejection well, they don’t consider it a tragedy if the new ideas don’t work. They just move on to the next.
6. World-class recruiters are likable within the circles they recruit for. This doesn’t mean you were voted “most popular” in school, that you were the homecoming queen, or that you are the life of the party. All it means is that you have an excellent rapport with your clients (candidates, hiring managers, employees, etc.). This attribute is tough to explain, but it is easy to spot. A “likable” world-class recruiter gets gifts from candidates and employees, gets a ton of quality referrals without asking, and often gets employee lists from former employers and alumni rosters from candidates without much effort. People like them. This is a key to their success!
7. World-class recruiters are proud to be recruiters and view recruiting as a profession. Unfortunately, many recruiters view recruiting as a “stepping stone” to bigger and better things. If you work for a staffing company, your goal is to get into sales or to get your own accounts. If you work within a corporation, you goal is to get your HR certification and become an HR director. While I have worked with many good recruiters who thought this way, the majority of world-class recruiters view recruiting as their chosen profession.
8. Work and life are seamless for world-class recruiters. Get in a room full of world-class recruiters and start talking “shop,” and you’ll see that they have a seamless work/life balance. This doesn’t mean they work 14 hours a day, seven days a week. On the contrary, they are efficient, productive, and work the hours necessary to get the job done. They think nothing of doing a phone screen in the evening, contacting a candidate on the weekend before they start their new job, responding to emails when the kids go to bed, or sourcing candidates off the Internet at 6:00 am to beat their competition to the quality candidates. World-class recruiters recognize that recruiting is not a nine-to-five job. They measure themselves by results ó quickly filling positions with quality people ó not hours worked.
9. World-class recruiters are self-motivated and enjoy the recruiting game. For some people, recruiting becomes a laborious, repetitive job. To world-class recruiters, it’s always about playing and winning the game. They see the challenge in filling an orientation session with 20 new customer services reps (not 18). They see the challenge in coming up with candidates for a senior vice president position. They see the challenge in filling 10 requisitions no one else can fill. Day in and day out, they view this laborious, repetitive job as one big game ó and in a sick, twisted way, they enjoy it! They are self-motivated and need minimal direction because they are focused on winning the game.
10. World-class recruiters believe they provide people with better opportunities. Why don’t many recruiters cold call passive candidates? Walk up to a group of people to talk about their job opportunities? Recruit at family events? They don’t do these things either because they think they are bugging other people or because they fear being rejected ó and they fear they will be rejected because they think they are bugging people. World-class recruiters see things in a whole different light. I’ve always said that recruiting is the best sales job in the world. Unlike a traditional sales position, recruiters are not selling anything, they are offering something ó potentially a better position than the one a candidate is currently in.

I recently had the pleasure of working with a woman who is approaching her 70th birthday. Each day, she gets up and starts recruiting candidates at 7:00 a.m. She spends well over six hours a day (on the phone, not hiding behind email) sourcing candidates! I am humbled and amazed at her tenacity and stamina! I recently asked her, How do you stay motivated? How do you stay fresh? How come you haven’t burned out after all these years? “David, I truly love what I do,” she replied. “I get to spend all day talking to interesting people. They become my friends and I often get the opportunity to find them new positions that they are truly grateful for. I enjoy finding that one person for a position that has been open for a long time. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. It is a lot of fun.” Now that is a world-class recruiter in my book!

• Finding cost-effective ways to tap into the 70% of the candidates who do not find jobs via career services and job fairs
• Utilizing colleges to tap into experienced, exempt-level professional talent

In an article I wrote on college recruiting in February, I outlined a cost-effective strategy to tap into 100% of the qualified candidates on campus (not just the 30% that show up at campus job fairs) using a “college ambassador program.” Today I want to tackle the second issue and discuss an excellent, cost-effective way to tap into the passive candidate pool of experienced, high quality professionals by utilizing college alumni rosters! Traditional Alumni Services In recent years, many colleges and universities have evolved their business models to include more “life-long learning” services for post-graduate students, including advanced degrees, professional seminars/workshops, and ongoing career counseling. Many of these same organizations have done an excellent job of creating Internet-based job boards for alumni to either post their resumes or review positions targeted to experienced professionals. While I would encourage you to check out these services that many colleges universities have to offer (and use them!), remember that they still only tap into the fraction of the labor market that is either:

• Out of work
• Looking for a job

Based on most labor studies, this probably only represents 15-30% of the total alumni population at best! So how can you tap into the other 70-85% of experienced alumni? Those passively looking, highly skilled applicants our hiring managers (and we) desperately desire? Tap into the passive candidate pool using college alumni rosters! College Alumni Rosters The majority of colleges create a book (or CD) that includes all alumni who are interested in keeping in contact with former colleagues, etc. They normally make it available, for a small fee, to all alumni. Typically, these “alumni rosters” contain such valuable data including:

• Degree and year graduated
• Current contact information, including email
• Current employer, occupation, and title

In other words, a recruiting goldmine! Acquiring an Alumni Roster Getting a hold of these rosters is pretty simple. Just identify the schools that you want to get them from and cross-reference the list with your personal or professional network. Then ask one of the people in your network to purchase the book for you (of course you will pay for it). Be upfront and let them know what you are going to use it for (marketing your organization’s opportunities). If you can’t find anyone in your personal or professional network that is an alumni of a particular school you want to acquire a roster from, you might want to ask some of your employees to assist. A passive approach might be: “We have had tremendous success hiring people from East Western Michigan. If you are alumni of this school, please contact me. We are looking to recruit experienced alumni from this school!” How To Use Alumni Rosters Once again, this is pretty simple. Depending on the types of people you are looking for, you can cross-reference the book and identify target profiles. For example, if you are looking for a mechanical engineer with three to five years of experience, you can go back three to five years, look up mechanical engineering graduates, and start dialing (or emailing) away! If you’re looking for a sales manager with 10-plus years of experience, you would probably start with all business graduates (or MBAs) who have been working for at least 10 years. You might also want to check out the liberal arts major graduates, or maybe just review all graduates who have been working ten to fifteen years and look at what they are currently doing. This is an excellent way to develop a target sourcing strategy that taps into the experienced, passive applicant pool of quality candidates your hiring managers are looking for! A real life example: Last year, our company was looking for a candidate with an engineering degree (EE or ME preferred), at least 10 years experience, and expertise in supply chain manufacturing processes. In addition, we were hoping this person worked for a “Big 5″ consulting firm and had an MBA. Within one day, we had three qualified candidates (after four hours of sourcing) from alumni rosters. They all interviewed, and one got hired and filled the position! To have fun collecting these roster lists, we held a contest (for 10 recruiters) to see who could collect the most college alumni rosters. In one month, the team had collected over 18 books with over 100,000 names. Cost of these invaluable resources? $900! In just over two months, the recruiters made five executive and exempt-level placements via a targeted email sourcing campaign. Not a bad return on the investment! Don’t make sourcing passive candidates harder than it needs to be. Spending a few hours collecting college alumni rosters (and using them for sourcing) might be one of the most beneficial sourcing practices you can do.

• Finding cost-effective ways to tap into the 70% of the candidates who do not find jobs via career services and job fairs.
• Utilizing colleges to tap into experienced, exempt-level professional talent.

In this two-part series, I want to share a couple of tactical, practical ideas that have helped us become better at both. The first one we will tackle is called the college ambassador program. College Ambassador Program So how do you tap into the 70% of the graduates you won’t find at the next collegiate job fair? Some good ideas include:

• Contacting social/professional associations on campus
• Contacting professors and speaking in their classes
• Holding events at social gatherings and or hangouts such as sporting events, local taverns, etc.

While I am a supporter of these ideas, and have been successful using them, I’m finding that a typical corporate recruiter does not have the time, resources, or support necessary to execute them. Yes, you could argue that if hiring quality talent from the campus was a priority then you can (and should) find the time and resources necessary to do all these laborious activities. But when a recruiter has over 30 open requisitions, is handling employee relations issues, trying to set up new hire orientation for their last 10 hires and is responsible for college recruiting ó you could also argue that they really don’t have the time to do it! Regardless of your point of view, the fact of the matter is that while most recruiters know about these tactics to uncover “passive” candidates on campus (these ideas are not new), very few are actually doing them. Here’s an interesting observation. The same organizations that claim they do not have the resources to develop a robust, campus-wide recruitment program are usually the same folks that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on job fair “giveaways” (i.e. trinkets and trash). While these toys might divert more attention to your booth, I have never heard of someone taking a job because a company had great squeeze balls. Twisted logic for another story for another day! So, more importantly, how can you tap into 100% of the quality candidates on campus with limited time, money, and resources? Deploy a college ambassador program! While working with a company stuck with the same constraints everyone complains about ó too few resources ó we came up with the college ambassador program. The concept is actually pretty simple, economical, and easy to implement. While conducting a brainstorming session to improve the effectiveness of this company’s college recruitment program, many questions were raised:

• “Even if we had time, where should we roam? What are the hot spots we should canvas for the types of graduates we hire for? What social organizations must we tap into to find the folks we are looking for?”
• “Sounds great. But who has time to do all these things?”
• “Who would be the best person to roam the campus and spread the word about our company and the opportunities we have to offer?”

With some common sense and some creative thinking, the solution started to take shape. The person most capable of “recruiting” on the college campus was a current college student! What if we hired a college student (at minimal cost) to do this work for us? A current student will know where to roam, what social organizations to tap into, where the hot spots are, and what events will get us the best bang for our buck. They are a low-cost, on-campus solution for getting all of these laborious, time-consuming recruiting/networking/PR activities accomplished! To provide structure to the “ambassador” position, we developed a job description including responsibilities of the role. They included the following:

• Identify each social organization related to the type of hires we are seeking. Contact the chapter presidents and present information on our organization and services. If beneficial, organize an onsite visit to speak to their organization (preferably, we can get a current employee that is an alumni of that school to go back and speak).
• Identify all recruiting events on campus and do a cost/benefit analysis on which ones you think would be most beneficial to attend.
• Identify the places we should post information and local hot spots where we might want to sponsor an event. Make sure that our postings are visible all over campus. Make sure we keep “reposting” in spots that either get ripped down or covered with new postings.
• Identify the most popular professors on campus and set up a meeting to discuss our company, career opportunities, opportunities to speak in their class, etc.

These activities would take a remote recruiter who does not know the campus countless hours (and cost) to get done. For someone on campus, we figured it would be about a 15-25 hour a week (per college) part-time job to accomplish all the things we wanted. Outside of the obvious, the benefits we gained from using a college student to do this type of recruiting activity included:

• Tapping into the 70% of the candidates traditional tools don’t reach
• Developing a proactive awareness/PR campaign on campus
• Developing awareness about our organization and opportunities with the influential professors on campus
• Tapping into the power of the social/professional organizational network

We found it to be very economical compared to traditional recruitment expenditures. To maximize productivity of the program, we structured an incentive-based compensation plan that rewarded our ambassadors for performance. We paid an hourly rate of $7 to $9 per hour, plus a commission plan as follows:

• The ambassador received a commission for each applicant that they referred with a complete “set” of paperwork (which included an application, resume, and successfully passing a set of basic screening questions).
• The ambassador also received another commission for every graduate hired by the company (and who made it through the probationary period, usually 90 days).

The commission plan was a huge success. It compensated our ambassadors for producing results rather then just “going through the motions.” A good ambassador could double or triple their income if they provided prescreened, quality applicants that we ended up hiring. The fixed labor cost per school ended up being usually less than $1,000 a month. Commissions and bonuses were easily cost-justified based on results. Can you afford this extra cost? Think “instead of” versus “in addition too.” Instead of spending another $10,000 to upgrade your trinkets and trash each semester, you might consider diverting about $5,000 dollars to a college ambassador program (that is, take the money out of a budget that already exists). Getting Started While this program might sound like a huge undertaking, it really isn’t. The basic elements are as follows:

1. Find ambassadors. The best ambassadors would be interns that return to the college campus. They are walking testimonials (if they like you, of course), and they are known commodities. If you don’t have an intern crop to choose from, start recruiting! Talk to employees who went to that school or run an ad online or in the school newspaper.
2. Develop a job description. Develop a job description (including a compensation plan) with a list of responsibilities for the ambassador. The more detailed, the better. Provide them with a checklist of things to get done. Have regular review sessions to monitor their progress.
3. Provide some basic training on your company and your hiring process. To keep the lawyers off this program, I would recommend that you do not use the ambassadors to do pre-screen interviews. Just have the candidates they find fill out an application, give them a resume, and fill out a pre-screen form. You can make the assessment yourself and avoid legal issues that might arise with using inexperienced personnel in this fashion. Consider them as marketing people!

Advanced-Level College Ambassador Programs Once you’re able to get this program off the ground and firmly rooted at a few college campuses, you might want to try a number of innovative ideas to make this recruiting solution even more effective. Consider, for example, holding ambassador incentive contests. When you have more than one ambassador, create incentive-based contests to encourage and reward productivity. The costs are nominal compared to the results. Some programs might include:

• Most applicants collected in a month wins a mountain bike
• Most hires for the quarter wins a trip for two for spring break
• Highest percentage of applicants that turn into hires wins a gift certificate to the bookstore

The creative ideas are endless. You might also try turning the ambassador program into an internship program! One of our clients approached a school of business and was successful in turning this program into an approved internship program. The business skills gained on the job as an ambassador (sales, project planning, recruiting, etc.) are invaluable, and they are ideally suited for an internship program. Are you looking to develop a “world-class” college recruiting program that taps into 100% of the quality applicant pool? Do you have limited resources and a small budget to accomplish this task? If so, I would highly encourage you to investigate developing a college ambassador program like the one I’ve described above!

• Set public goals. Peer competition can be very healthy when the contest does not pit team members against one another. For peer support, start each week with a “kickoff” meeting. This meeting is to discuss the goals you want to accomplish during the week. Things like: “I will have two new candidates for the VP of Purchasing position,” or, “I will find a candidate for the UNIX administrator position.” Post these goals so they are visible to your teammates and check them off as you accomplish them during the week. To assist in staying on track, have a “halftime” lunch meeting on Wednesday to discuss status. On Friday, hold a debriefing session to see who accomplished what. Make this a positive session discussing accomplishments, challenges, success stories, etc. For fun and team building, hold it at your local tavern on Friday afternoon.
• The “twos” system. Think of prospecting as your daily two-a-day practices. Try and carve out two hours each morning and two hours each afternoon to find candidates. I have many clients who swear by this.
• Misery loves company. Sometimes the toughest thing is to just get started. When you feel yourself getting into a rut, grab a peer and challenge them to a prospecting contest. While it is tough to get a whole office on the same schedule with meetings, interviews, etc., you can normally find at least one other recruiter to prospect with you. You’re the only recruiter at your company? Call a peer in the industry to pump you up. I used to do this all the time.
• Contests and games. Make a game out of anything and it becomes more fun. Who finds a qualified candidate first? The most live contacts in two hours? Most email responses within a day? The prizes don’t have to be big. Loser pays for lunch? Buy’s the other person coffee the next day? Has to clean up the lunchroom? The more creative the contest the better. Whenever you can make a game of the task at hand, your activity level usually picks up, you become more focused, and intensity rises. All great things to get out of recruiter’s rut!
• Preparation. If you say you are going to prospect from 9:00 am to 11:00 am, you need to know what activity you are going to do. Call off names you have gathered from an association meeting? Call on candidates you found in your database? Call off references from current employees? Know what activity you are going to perform during your prospecting session and be prepared to do it. If you aren’t prepared, you will end up spending the session researching the information required to do the activity.
• Develop a routine. After all, we are creatures of habit.

Recruiter’s rut is something all recruiters will face from time to time. To keep focused, to keep the excitement, passion, and intensity in your day, don’t forget to think like a competitive athlete or coach. It’s as simple as the five points below:

1. Outline your goals each week and develop a game plan to achieve them.
2. Schedule the necessary activities to achieve your goals (try the “twos” system), and prepare to achieve them.
3. Have regular “checkpoints” (halftime meetings or debriefing sessions) to measure your success.
4. Develop a regular routine for conditioning.
5. Spice up your routine with contests and games to keep it fun.

With a little effort in the right places, recruiter’s rut is something that can easily be avoided!