While surfing the Internet for information on a presentation, I came across a Toastmasters video of a guy giving suggestions on “how to overcome the fear of public speaking.” The example that he used to get his point across will certainly help you if you have to give a speech, but more important, it will help recruiters fill more jobs by emotionally connecting with both the hiring manager and applicant on every deal.

He indicated that in order to eliminate stage fright and deliver an effective presentation, the speaker must know both the subject matter of his speech and his audience. When that is established, the objective of the speaker is to simply share information that he likes about the subject that he wants his audience to know. And, because the speaker is convinced that his audience will like the subject, he will not only use words, he will also subconsciously employ eye contact, facial expressions, dramatizations, body language, and enthusiasm to emotionally connect with the audience.

Here is the example: Let’s say that you have a male friend who is single and is open to a meaningful relationship should the right female cross his path. And, it so happens that you meet a new friend, and after getting to know her, you realize that they would be interested in each other if they knew what you know. You decide to become a matchmaker and introduce your friends to each other.

To make the introduction, most of us would immediately pick up the phone and enthusiastically describe each person to the other as if he or she actually walked on water. We would describe everything that we like about each individual, emphasize the level of interest, and encourage a first date.

What is the likelihood of a first date materializing after such a compelling introduction? And what kind of influence would you have on the courtship if the first date was a success? This is also the job of a professional recruiter; he must emotionally connect with the hiring manager and the applicant to be successful in filling job requisitions.

A recruiter’s job is to sell two of the greatest products ever conceived: talent and opportunity. And, because of electronic technology (e.g., job descriptions, resumes, and emails), he is challenged in emotionally connecting with the hiring manager and applicant (i.e., buyers and sellers).

Let me demonstrate this challenge. Let’s say that someone from HR emailed to you a job description along with resume submittal procedures.

Job Descriptions

We know that the search process is typically initiated by the hiring manager. But, if the hiring manager is not accessible to the recruiter, the recruiter is forced to make an emotional connection with the person hidden behind the job description. And, most job descriptions are unexciting; they are no different than an insurance policy that consists simply of terms and generic verbiage. After you read the fine print, it’s all about work. Unless someone’s desperate for a job, who gets that excited about work?

The recruiter needs to emotionally connect with the hiring manager to bring the job description to life! If not, his presentation will be uninspiring. In making any presentation without fully understanding the scope of the job, the company brand, the accomplishments of the hiring manager, the strength of his team, and the specific role on the team, he will lose credibility with the applicant. More important, his job is at risk because he will be perceived as someone lacking competence by the hiring manager based on the lack or quality of resumes submitted.

A job description by itself is simply a request for resumes. To the recruiter, resumes are simply billboard advertising that individuals use to present an image to the world as how they would like to be perceived. To HR, resumes are screened profiles of only A-players who have the right skills, understand the role, live in geographic proximity, are underpaid, and are sold on the company brand. Because of disconnect in expectations, HR will always complain that recruiters need to do a better job of screening candidates, and recruiters will complain that HR is continuously changing the job description. In order to deliver quality talent, the recruiter must connect with the person hidden behind the resume. To do so, he must start by connecting with the person hidden behind the job description.

Email

Email has changed the way we communicate with each other; it is also a very efficient method in terms of productivity and time and cost savings. However, when used primarily to avoid direct conversations, it is the most damaging element in emotionally connecting the hiring manager with the applicant. Emails create disconnect for the following reasons:

• They are unreliable and may not reach the recipient’s mailbox.
• The message content is sender-focused, so its intent is often misinterpreted by the recipient.
• Words alone are faceless and voiceless; they take away from one’s sense of hearing.
• Words alone are generic; they place everyone on the same playing field and do not distinguish the individuality or true personality of the sender.
• Written words cannot detect or elicit a person’s true emotional reaction in real time.
• The thoughts behind the actual words are projected.

Recruiting is a relationship-building business in which one must continually practice his verbal and interpersonal communication skills to be successful. Any reason to interact is an opportunity to build on your relationship with that individual. Email, though convenient, is counterproductive when your job is to emotionally connect with individuals who you do not know on a personal level.

Before the Internet, recruiters successfully filled jobs without a resume or a job description. They did this by bonding with both the hiring manager and the applicant, and, as a result, the recruitment process was simply a friend referring a friend. Technology has created electronic recruiting tools that have changed the recruiting world; however, the misuse of these tools has created barriers in the emotional connection between the hiring manager, the recruiter, and the applicant.

I know of a youth basketball coach (we’ll call him Jim) who is undefeated for the past six years. But as a result of Jim’s success, other coaches often complained that Jim always ends up with the best team because of unfair politics within the league. This isn’t the case, because every coach gets an equal opportunity in selecting his players from the same pools of kids within the specific age group.

Jim ends up with the best team because he applies the two most important recruitment fundamentals, which are research and networking. These fundamentals are transferable and will assist HR departments in generating superior placement results from their internal recruitment staff.

Resumes Are Overrated

Like most internal recruiters, the coaches rely on the resume and the interview as the primary tools in selecting players for their teams. In this case, the resumes are the kids’ visual appearance of having the physicality, versatility, and athleticism needed for the sport of basketball. The interview is the kids’ try-out performance of mini drills that are collectively evaluated by all coaches.

Jim doesn’t use the resume as his primary tool in selecting his players because the resume doesn’t tell him what’s inside of the player. Specifically, the kid’s motivation, knowledge level, and desire for the game.

Jim makes it his job to know each of the kids on a personal level. This is possible for the following reasons:

• Jim has built a solid winning reputation over the years and has developed a great relationship with officials of the league. The officials organize, maintain, and track statistics of all kids in the league. As a result, Jim knows most of the kids by their first names, he can identify the strongest players, ones who are improving, as well as the ones who are overrated.
• Jim is very informed about the policies and procedures of the league and on occasions has informally counseled many parents on the benefits of their kids participating in a team sport. Since he speaks the language the kids understand, Jim is able to provide valuable feedback to parents to help them better understand and motivate their kids. By talking to parents on a personal level, Jim has learned the kids’ true motivation for participation, their personalities, the ones that will need special attention because of medical/mental conditions, and the ones who concurrently participate in another activity that may conflict with practice and games.
• Jim attends every game, mostly as a scout; he knows which kids are team- players, shooters, rebounders, ball handlers, defenders, hustlers, slackers, or new to the sport.

Jim always ends up with the best team because he only selected players he knew personally. He got to know each player by outworking the other coaches and applying the basic recruiting fundamentals of researching and networking. Most important, he has heightened his perception from simply a coach to be perceived as a partner, an advisor, a mentor, a friend, and a winner. And he does it all in his spare time.

In his day job, Jim is a “big biller” headhunter!

These days, strong recruiters like Jim are taking a back seat to the new recruiting model: online recruitment tools supported by an internal recruiting staff.

Here are four things HR must do to develop talented internal recruiting performers like Jim to maximize their investments in online recruitment tools:

1. Convert your recruiting team from generalist to specialist functions. Bad hires are often the result of a recruiter matching job description to resumes and presenting jobs that he does not understand to candidates he doesn’t know. This recruiting approach also compromises the integrity of the specific job opportunity and tarnishes the reputation of the company to a limited candidate pool. It also wastes hiring managers’ time because it places the burden of the candidate selection process back into their hands. A specialist recruiter with a strong subject-matter expertise can quickly access a candidate’s competency, gain confidence, and generate respect and credibility with the hiring managers and candidates in that specialty. HR must recruit recruiters with specific industry knowledge or convert individuals with that specific industry knowledge into recruiters.
2. Move recruiting from HR to sales and marketing. Prior to the Internet, recruiting and HR folks were never on the same page philosophically; one was focused on results and the other on procedures. Like sales and marketing, recruiting is one of the most challenging professions; it requires a certain type of individual with a competitive risk-taking mentality, strong self-discipline, and interpersonal skills to be successful. The typical HR personalities tend to be more cost driven, bureaucratic, and administrative. Having recruiting report to HR is certainly not a good marriage and will only guarantee mediocre recruiting performers.
3. Change the compensation formula to a performance-driven formula. Historically, recruiting as a profession has been the highest-paying hard work and the lowest-paying easy work. To develop the skills necessary for success, new recruiters were only given a desk and a telephone and were compensated by a small draw against future commissions. Present HR compensation structures rewards average recruiters by providing a steady paycheck along with fringe benefits, multiple jobs to work, and access to an abundant supply of resumes. These structures also deprive good recruiters of two important elements that propel them to greatness: the drive to be the best and the fear of failure. To encourage and motivate individual creativity, recruiters should be paid a small base salary plus incentives and quarterly bonuses for stellar placement performances. Placement performances would include: total number of placements completed; number of high-impact placements; opportunity-hires placements, hard-to-find candidates placements; and creativity in finding new methods to recruit candidates without increasing expenses. More dollars in the recruiters’ pocket is a stronger personal motivator than saving the employer more money in agency fees.
4. Create internal competition among your recruiting team. There are limited incentives to be the best if your recruiters are spending too much time searching the Internet for resumes and chasing hiring managers with non-stop emails! In order to encourage a recruiter to outwork his counterparts, HR must create different levels of achievement within their department, where the top recruiters are given distinctions that separate those from the average performers. For example, top recruiters are given individual offices, marginal recruiters should work in cubicles, and low performers should be shown the door. This type of recruiting environment will transform average recruiters into superstars and attract strong sales-oriented talent to the recruiting field. In addition, hiring managers and candidates are always confident and responsive when they know that they are working with the best recruiter.

The good recruiters like Jim are not born with great recruiting skills; they must be trained and challenged in an environment that encourages and rewards exemplary performers.

During a break in the action in one of my weekly racquetball games, a fellow racquetball player mentioned that the new guy on the court was the highest-producing stockbroker in the entire state of Florida, but no one would ever know because he never talked about it.

Suspiciously, I congratulated the new guy on his success and commented that I didn’t think stockbrokers existed today, as the Internet has replaced most stockbrokers with the online trading concept.

“Sure, there are more online tools available today, but I am by far better than any individual investor who has to use those tools,” he replied.

Before I had an opportunity to support my statement with the concept of online recruitment tools replacing headhunters, as I have read over the past few years, he postulated, “Take a look at those basketball players on the basketball court. Do you think that the best player on the court can step onto this racquetball court and beat you in a game of racquetball?” I knew the answer because I competed with many good racquetball players.

Before I responded, he asked, “Do you think that you can walk onto the basketball court and compete with those guys?” I knew the answer to that question as well, because I coach my nine-year-old son’s basketball team and know first-hand the difficulty in mastering the mechanics and fundamentals of basketball.

Before I responded to that question, he said, “The reason that you would answer ‘no’ to those questions is the same reason why online tools will never replace the good stockbrokers: most investors do not know what they are doing.”

Based on the veracity of his comment, two things became clear at that moment: I was convinced that this guy may be the top-producing stockbroker in the state, and with the latest recruitment tools in corporate career sites, job boards, applicant tracking systems, and referral programs, corporate recruiters may not know what they are doing in successfully recruiting top talent.

From a headhunter’s perspective, I am not stating that all corporate recruiters do not know what they are doing; I am suggesting that the new talent-acquisition model is flawed in the quality of corporate recruiting talent and the cost-per-hire strategic objective.

Quality of Talent

To win the war for talent and maximize the ROI in recruitment tools, organizations must upgrade their recruiting staff by recruiting only top recruitment talent. These professionals bring successful headhunting skills in developing relationships and gaining a level of trust with candidates in accessing their skills, understanding their career motivations, selling the organization, and motivating that candidate to take action.

The usual suspects on the typical corporate recruiting staff consist of the ex-headhunters who have crashed and burned in the third-party-agency model because they were unsuccessful in making enough placements to earn/sustain a living. Since they can earn a steady income in the corporate setting, they may not be as passionate about the thrill of the hunt, which is the common denominator for success in finding the right candidate for the right job.

On the other end of the spectrum, some corporate recruiters are more HR-focused. They are subject-matter experts on HR metrics, branding, onboarding, retention, and engagement; however, they tend to be reactive, process-oriented, resume-content driven, and often lack the hands-on sales skills necessary in strategically leading procrastinating hiring managers throughout the interview process while anticipating and resolving issues.

Organizations must recruit top recruiting talent, not through online job postings, but the proven way by headhunting for the successful recruiting professionals who are not actively seeking employment. Initially this will be a more expensive proposition from a compensation perspective, but in the end you get what you pay for because finding good talent won’t be cheap, and cheap talent will not produce good results.

Cost Per Hire

I once interviewed a candidate who stated on his resume that he reduced cost of hire by $500,000 in his first year as a corporate recruiter. After inquiring how he achieved that amount, he indicated that his team made a number of hires without using third-party recruiters and as a result, saved $500,000 in placement fees. Placement fees paid to third-party recruiters have being targeted of late, and rightfully so, since more recruitment tools are available. But it is also ironic that the number of hires made via third-party recruiters has historically been an amount less than 15% of the total hires; the vast majority of hires have always been through the result of employee referrals and job advertisements.

Electronic recruitment tools are very effective in achieving favorable cost-per-hire results in finding the majority of active job seekers. However, there are challenges in capturing the high-impact candidates typically handled by third-party recruiters. High-impact candidates are the hard-to-find candidates who the hiring manager needs yesterday; he is compromising service and losing customers by not having that person onboard.

High-Impact Candidates

High-impact candidates are the “rain makers” who excel in their craft; they can pay for themselves in terms of efficiency, developing revenue, leading teams, and attracting/developing new talents to their organization. They are happy and busy in their present jobs and will only take calls from recruiters who understand the types of unique roles that may be of interest to them.

They interview well but are concerned about confidentially, and as such are reluctant to submit their resumes to job boards, apply online in corporate career sites, or divulge compensation information. Their preference is to bypass HR and interview initially with hiring managers to determine their level of interest in a particular job opportunity.

To successfully recruit these individuals, recruiters need to establish an ongoing relationship with candidates and have strong industry knowledge with regard to competition, recent market activities, and career progression within your industry. These individuals are very susceptible to counteroffers.

If you’re too focused on cost per hire and on following a set procedure, you’ll run the risk of getting bogged down: there are too many steps involved in obtaining the lowest cost-per-hire: post the jobs internally, search internal database, obtain and contact internal referrals, post the job externally, search external database, contact agencies (involves additional steps).

This process increases the time to hire and allows the best available candidate to slip to the competition. It is restricting to third-party recruiters for the following reasons:

• It processes passive candidates in the same manner as the active job applicants. Many job offers will be lost because this process does not energize high-impact candidates and as a result, they will not develop that “warm and fuzzy feeling” toward the job opportunity, which is essential for motivating an individual to take a leap of faith and leave his present employer.
• Does not allow interaction between the hiring managers and third-party recruiters during the interview process. Corporate recruiters concurrently work on multiple job requisitions and do not have enough time to devote to any one particular search assignment. Successful third-party recruiters know that the compelling candidate presentation, interview feedback, and ongoing dialogue between the candidate, hiring manager, and recruiter are the critical elements in determining the proper job fit and resolving issues that may derail a successful hire.
• Ignores opportunities to hire candidates because its focus is limited to only approved job requisitions in the system. Successful third-party recruiters know that hiring managers need to be immediately notified when a high-impact candidate may be available, which will allow that manager to determine whether an opportunity to hire possibility exists. More specifically, the Miami Heat would have not acquired Shaquille O’Neal and won the NBA championship because they had no open requisition to add a perennial all-star center at the beginning of the 2006 season.
• Considers resumes in the database a property of the HR department and off-limits to third-party recruiters for a candidate submission. Recruiters approach high-demand candidates on an ongoing basis; however, it is the right approach at the right time by the right recruiter that will ignite and motivate the right candidate to take action. Corporate recruiters should not overlook top talent in their internal databases.

To successfully recruit the best talent and maximize the ROI of online recruitment tools, HR departments must restructure their talent-acquisition strategies with objectives of hiring the best available talent now, top-grading their internal recruiting staff with sales-oriented performers, and using third-party recruiters as specialized search partners that can add value in successfully recruiting high-impact candidates.