One of the first things seared in to my psyche upon arrival at recruiter training in the Marines was the term esprit de corps. Having not taken French, I was flummoxed by this oft-used military colloquialism.

Everywhere I turned, someone was all too enthusiastically force-feeding me (and the rest of my platoon) this concept to the extent that even to this day, I find that I have actually incorporated it in to my daily vernacular.

It loosely translates into the spirit or pride that exists among comrades or colleagues who are cumulatively pursuing a common goal. Put in military context, it becomes immediately evident why this term is so prevalent in said ranks. Couple this with drill instructors always yelling in your ear, “You’ve got to want it!” and you start to get an idea of what goes on during those horribly challenging 12 weeks we so affectionately call “boot camp.”

In the traditional workplace there is a different and slightly more recognizable expression for this concept: employee loyalty. If as a company you have it, you’re also likely to have a few other things: low turnover, higher productivity, fewer employees taking sick days, happy customers, and most important to investors, healthy profits and consistent sales.

To be sure, there are myriad positive attributes that come in tandem with esprit de corps. I’ve only named a few. To illustrate esprit de corps within the armed forces, let me offer two examples:

1. While already mortally wounded, Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta dives on a grenade to absorb the blast, thus saving the lives of several other members of his platoon. He is now being considered for the Medal of Honor.
2. Army Sgt. First Class Paul Smith, with total disregard for personal safety, single-handedly repels an enemy attack and in doing so, eliminates over 50 enemy personnel and saves the lives of dozens of fellow soldiers. SFC Smith was mortally wounded. For his heroism, he is awarded the Medal of Honor.

These two acts are certainly uncommon and noteworthy. And I know that rarely would circumstances arise in the workplace that would warrant such selfless and perilous behavior. I draw upon these two heroic deeds to demonstrate a point. Both of these men acted not out of the interest in a pay raise nor the prospects of leveraging their acts to secure greater career opportunities.

I also suspect neither of them imagined that they would forever be enshrined as heroes while they were engaged in their duties. The compensation structure of enlisted military personnel is far from lavish; Smith probably grossed around $50,000 per year and Peralta $30,000, according to the Department of Defense’s 2007 pay charts.

The entitlements provided to Medal of Honor awardees, while considered generous by some accounts, probably had nothing to do with it, either. If I had to characterize what was going through their minds, it would likely have something to do with nationalism, commitment to their fellow service men and women, and belief in their mission, among other things: esprit de corps.

Lacking hundreds of years of tradition, as is the case of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, in addition to lacking the foundational underpinnings of a deeply socialized national spirit, fermenting this type of attitude in your average W-2 employee is hardly a walk in the park. But every year there are always a handful of employers who manage to remain on the Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Companies to work for. This isn’t a coincidence?

Admittedly, there’s a “chicken or the egg” paradox here. Are certain employers atop of that list because of the unique nature and demand of their offering and are thereby able to attract, retain, and afford good employees? Or did their good employees somehow band together to get (and keep) those companies on that magical list?

For example, first-place Google revolutionized the search business with a pretty sharp search algorithm and a bare-bones approach to the user experience. Its elimination of the glitz and glam “click here to refinance your mortgage” visuals has made it the Band-Aid brand of search; the term Google now more aptly represents the act of searching the Internet than it does the noun of a one with 100 zeros after it. Heck, MS Word even puts a red squiggly line beneath it because it thinks the term should be capitalized!

I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but something special is going on over there at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California, and everyone wants in on a piece of the action.

Or perhaps it is something unique to the way a company treats its employees? J.M. Smucker is on that list year after year. For those of you in the cheap seats, it’s the king of the jelly/jam/fruit preserve industry, located about 30 minutes south west of Akron, in the thriving metropolis of Orville, Ohio. I’ve been there on numerous occasions and trust me when I say that the most exciting thing to happen in Orville in recent years would likely have something to do with an Amish carpenter briefly considering the idea of using a power tool.

As remote as it is, highly educated and extraordinarily talented people flock there. Once they are there, they’re not likely to leave.

Companies spend millions of dollars each year trying to figure out how to make their employees more productive. They hire consultants. They mass email surveys, they have retreats and off-sites, team-building exercises, cash incentives, contests, and on and on.

What’s the magic secret? Well, it’s hardly magical, and certainly not a secret. Like I wrote earlier, the first ingredient has to do with want. Employees have to want to be where they are and they have to want to be doing what they are doing.

For this, I draw on the subject of natural point of aim. Each employee has to be functioning in a capacity that comes naturally to him or her. Pay attention to your mind when you catch yourself daydreaming; that daydream place you frequent is where your mind naturally wants to go. You don’t actively sit down and dedicate the next 10 minutes to letting your mind wander. How many times have you driven to your destination only to have no clue how you got there because your brain was busy reminiscing and daydreaming? Figure out the natural tendencies of your brain and then find a career that will enable you to capitalize on that. Additionally, companies must recognize this and figure out ways to attract people whose careers are aligned with their natural point of aim.

Next comes the initial indoctrination. Each of the armed forces has an indoctrination and evaluation period. It goes by the name recruit training, basic training, officer candidate school, and so on. The purpose of this phase is multi-fold:

1. Re-socialization. You do the same things, but now you do them their way.
2. History, traditions, customs. You are taught all about those who went before you, what they did, how they did it, why they are special, and why you must do it their way or else.
3. Learn by the numbers. You are taught the basics of military life: shoot and salute, as they say.

All the while, each recruit, private, or candidate is being closely watched and evaluated. There are other purposes of initial training, but these are the basics. They do weed people out during this phase. Those who are weak, either mentally, physically, or emotionally, are given the resources and encouragement to strengthen themselves to make it through.

Those who want it badly enough go on to graduate and wear the uniform. Those who don’t reenter the civilian workforce with a little chip on their shoulder and have to explain to their friends and family why they did not or could not hack it.

The civilian workforce has inappropriately called this initial phase of employment the “probationary period.” That really sounds pleasing. “We’ll hire you, but if you even so much as tie your shoes in a way we don’t like, you’re out of here, and don’t bother asking why, because we have no official comment other than it just wasn’t a good fit,” so the line goes.

If the civilian workforce wants to make a difference, it will need to adjust its indoctrination to more than just going over benefits, I-9, and W-4 information. It had better change the name from something a judge hands down as punishment to something that sounds a little more appealing.

This period should instill a sense of accomplishment upon completion. This costs money, I know, and it seems that the Defense Department has a limitless supply. But a smart company will incorporate a comprehensive indoctrination period. And it does not need to last three months.

The last component is reinforcement. This “stuff” all adds up to a culture and it needs to be omnipresent. Further, it needs to be reintroduced on a schedule, lest it be forgotten and dispelled. Take a trip to any military installation. You’ll see the reinforcement taking place everywhere you look. It is indeed cult-like, particularly within the Marine Corps, as well as with some of the more elite units in other branches. It takes many forms, and to cite even just a few would not do this aspect justice. Reinforcement in the armed forces is omnipresent.

Corporations try to do this, but not hard enough, nor do they encourage people to initiate reinforcement strategies. In medium and large companies, typically the sales force goes to an annual conference, which is essentially a motivationally packed “off-site” gathering that culminates with some sort of awards ceremony.

While I can’t cite supporting evidence, I’m certain that if you look at the numbers, you will quickly notice that just after these annual gatherings, there is typically a spike in sales production. Aside from that, few companies do much to reinforce esprit de corps on a regular schedule. That’s a shame.

Anything short of hiring for natural point of aim will populate a company with people who work for a living, not people who work because they like what they do. Not having some initiation and indoctrination, which does more than just cover the basics of HR and how to find the lunch room, is another ingredient for apathy and inertia.

Finally, without a steady and consistent diet of company punch, the result will be just another company with staff as opposed to a team of comrades charging up the hill of the business marketplace.

I have an old college friend that I get to see about once a year. Back in school, “Joe” was a happy-go-lucky guy with above-average looks. He’s in excellent physical shape, and he always applied the appropriate amount of attention to his wardrobe. His personal hygiene is impeccable.

However, he had one problem. He could never get a date, nor could he approach women in public settings. We used to marvel at how a guy who appeared to have all the necessary attributes would strike out every time he stepped up to the plate.

What’s even funnier is that women would ask me, “Who’s your friend?” In answering, I would silently muse that perhaps this was going to be the time when all the cards were dealt and Joe would come up with a Royal Flush, simply by chance, but no luck.

Even when the stars were aligned, Joe would manage to do something, albeit incredibly subtle, that would broadcast a message that announced he was not desirable. Poor Joe.

Fast-forward a few years, and Joe has now become something of a dating guru. In Casanovian circles, the once dual-left-footed klutz of dating is now collecting more numbers than a Lotto machine at your local quickie-mart.

I can’t even get him to answer the phone; lacking the right equipment, I no longer make the cut of a same-day call back. Good for him! What a turn-around.

He was in town not too long ago. At dinner, I noticed that he was looking beyond my shoulder at someone else. It was then that I realized that I was not in the presence of the same person. Just behind me, two tables away, were two attractive women.

One of the women briefly left the table, and in the blink of an eye, Joe was then sitting at that table having a glass of wine (from their bottle) and laughing it up with the other woman. When the other woman returned to the table, she too jumped right in to the laughter; it was as though the three of them had gone to war together and were having something of a reunion.

I had to investigate the rage. I walked over and Joe introduced me to his two new friends. He hadn’t met either of them before that moment, but it appeared that the three had a lifetime’s worth of stories to share. What the heck was going on, I wondered?

The Smooth Moves

That night I witnessed one of the smoothest bachelor moves ever pulled off. Joe got both of their phone numbers at the same time! He asked the one, wrote it down, and then asked the other, and on the same napkin, wrote it down as well.

A few minor details worth sharing: Joe told both of them that he lived about 1,800 miles away and was only in town for two nights. Joe said that although it might have been fun to see them the following night, he already had plans and could not. He also told them it was unlikely that he would return any time soon. Yet, the women were not at all dismayed. One even said she had always wanted to visit the city where he lived.

It took about 10 minutes for me to clean the dirt off my jaw, as it had been stuck to the floor for the duration of the entire episode. I just could not comprehend what was going on.

This guy was for so long incompetent at meeting women. Then, right before my very eyes, it was as though he had hypnotized them and they were clinging to his every syllable.

Now, I know that up until this moment, this account might seem more appropriate for a publication of a different sort. But there is a recruiting lesson to be learned here, and I am about to share it.

Four Recruiting Moves

Later that night, Joe taught me something that has forever changed my recruiting talk-track. He said he got some “game” after starting a mission of diagnosing and curing his loneliness problem. He spoke with psychologists, read books, joined singles clubs, and studied the habits of successful people.

Essentially, Joe had become a recruiter. He wasn’t recruiting to fill jobs like most of us; instead, he was recruiting people to enjoy his company, plain and simple.

Here is his strategy:

1. He had memorized and internalized 20 different “openers,” simple, non-threatening stories or questions that demand thought and response.
2. He had memorized about five different transition questions, or positive topics that move away from the opener and stir up something positive in the other person.
3. He would retreat and transition back slightly, acting as though he may or may not be interested in continuing the conversation.
4. He developed a limitless supply of stories to tell, as with a good story, anyone will remain captivated.

As recruiters, apply these “boot camp” basics to shift your initial habits. For example, I charted out my initial approach. First, I wrote down what transpires in my first 60 seconds with a candidate. For quality assurance purposes, I even considered recording my calls to analyze them. Second, I wrote out my openers, although I would prefer to call them introductory rapport statements.

Third, I wrote out numerous transitional statements/questions, and figured out how to apply the retreat, without closing the door, so to speak. I wrote all the possible statements I could make in response to the myriad statements made by the candidate.

Finally, I created a hook-setting script that would almost compel the person to make time for me, but by their own choosing. I got out my tape recorder and rehearsed these lines over and over, until at a moment’s notice, I could rattle them off and make it sound like this was the one and only time that these words, in this order, would ever pass my lips.

You know what? About 10% of the people I call hang up on me right after I hear them say something such as, “Sorry, not interested.” When that happens, it never feels good. But that is better than my previous 25% rejection rate.

Simple Lessons for Successful Recruiting

Every time you approach a new potential candidate, there is an exchange of dialog. The person who is on the receiving end has not formally practiced his game. He really doesn’t need to.

At a moment’s notice, he can push the conversation ejection button and put you on the receiving end of the click dial tone. Learn, script, and practice your techniques to remain nimble, because at any moment, someone may throw you off balance.

I liken it to Tiger Woods hitting in to the rough, behind some big oak tree. He didn’t expect to do it, but when it happened, he had practiced it enough to know how to fix it.

I’ve found that by taking Joe’s charm and applying it to recruiting, it’s far less often that I head back to the dugout without seeing my shoes set foot on first base. And that is how you start your journey to closing the deal.

One of my earliest childhood memories comes from when I was about three years old. My parents took my brothers and me to visit the grave site of my grandmother, who I never met.

I recall being in the massive cemetery just outside of Cleveland, Ohio; the same final resting place of not only my father’s mother, but also both President Garfield and John D. Rockefeller. Nevertheless, at the ripe age of three, respecting and remembering the dead was just not on my mind at the time. What was on my mind was all of these fabulous headstones and the thought of climbing all over them; like most three-year-old boys, I was more chimpanzee and less human when it came to climbing.

Upon being unleashed, away I went, under the not-so-close supervision of two older brothers, both of whom were younger than 10 at the time. We had a heck of a time. That is until our parents sat us down and explained the whole thing about dead people being just two yards beneath our feet and that by climbing all over these headstones, we were showing disrespect to both the dead and the families who buried them there.

At some point, I remember putting together the notion in my head that if these tombs are their last remaining shrines on Earth, and dead people go to Heaven, and in Heaven we can also find God, and God has supreme command over right and wrong, then I’m probably not sitting too high on God’s list of good kids for that given day. Behold, the dawn of morality had risen over the mind of a young Todd Rogers!

As of late, I have been involved in and sit sideline to several discussions on ethics here on ERE. It’s been a topic of much consideration and I thought it might be a good idea to give this notion a front-row seat, if at least for only one day.

Without question, there are some people reading these words right now and are ready to declare, “Todd Rogers has no business writing an article on ethics, he’s admitted to posting bogus resumes on a job board just to see what’s going on in the market!”

But it’s things such as this that make me unquestionably qualified to write on just such a subject. Practices such as that fall in to that gray-area, and if you go through life staying either black or white on your ethical considerations, then you never get to flex the cognitive muscles which control such deliberations.

If you click on my bio, you’ll discover that while in college, I majored in philosophy. That pretty much means in terms of job qualifications, I’m trained at just about nothing, with a few exceptions. If it involves critically reading, delicately writing, publicly presenting, or sitting around and discussing while not getting paid, then I’m your number one draft pick.

Otherwise, I have to go to law school, get a PhD, or become a recruiter. I took five classes on ethics. Not only did I do the reading, write the papers, and get high marks, but I also found something that truly has meaning to me. I kept most of the books, and much to the dismay of my wife, I still read them and ask her tough and yet silly questions on matter of ethics.

Let’s be clear on this topic: most of the best-known ethicists in history (Socrates, Kant, Mills, Rawls) never made it on to the Forbes list. They mostly did ok in today’s dollars, but cash was not high on the list of priorities.

Walking the Line

So, what’s my prescription for walking the line while not straying off too far in either direction? Before I get in to that, let me say that ethics, like favorite foods, favorite colors, favorite anything, has a component of subjectivity. You’re never going to satisfy 100% of the people impacted by decisions on these matters, so don’t bother trying.

Look at any given topic of political debate for instance. Take the hottest scorcher of them all: abortion. Both sides agree on exactly one thing: the other side is wrong. Beyond that, you’re never going to reconcile the dichotomy.

Sure, you’ll get some middle-of-the-road types. They travel by all sorts of labels, some right and some wrong: fence sitters, eclectics, those in suspense of judgment, moderates. Yet if you try to come up with a system that is all-encompassing and makes 100% of the people 100% happy 100% of the time, then you better move to Hollywood because it only happens in the movies.

Now, it’s pretty common that in articles like this one you’ll get something that reads: “18 ways to become a better recruiter,” or “The top-10 checklist of the hotshot million-dollar biller.” I believe the best way to list steps for success is to keep them at or below three. Anything beyond that and you’re forced to print it out and pin it up next to your PC along side all the other positive-thinking strategies for living well.

With three or fewer, you can usually read it, retain it, recall it, and apply it all without ever walking over to the printer. So, here are my three:

1. Adopt a Principle. If you’re getting the feeling that you might be straying in to the fray of evil, ask yourself a few questions. Is there a principle that is underpinning what I am doing? If the answer is yes, which typically it is, then ask yourself whether you would will it upon anyone else in your situation, or whether you would feel comfortable enacting a law that everyone else would have to follow. (This is from Immanuel Kant. It’s called the categorical imperative). If the answer is yes, then you’re probably doing OK.
2. Ideal Form. With any given activity, think of it in its ideal form. What I mean by that is imagine yourself executing any activity or decision. In doing so, try to critically evaluate your thought process and reasoning. Then, imagine that same activity or decision in comparison to its perfect form. A good tool is to ask whether you would brag about it at a high-school reunion, or would you hide it at a reunion? If you’re proud of it, chances are that the activity is closely matching the ideal, and thus, it’s probably on its way to being ethical. This is a very rough version of Plato. He was not too clear on his ethics. But it works for me. I think of the ideal of anything, and then I try to aspire to be like it, knowing in advance that I can never achieve it, but in doing so, I will at least come pretty close to it.
3. Divine Command. When all else fails, use what is called divine command. It asks one simple question. Even if you’re an atheist, you can use it. Would God like or dislike what I am doing? It’s a personal matter, to be sure. Of all the ethical theories, this is the one that gets poked at the most. It has all sorts of problems, the list of which is too long to print here. I’m one of those holidays, funerals, and weddings type of church attendee. I prefer the Sunday political talk shows for perspective, I guess. But if I’m really plagued by an issue, when all else fails, I think about whether God would approve. Say what you want about it, but it seems to work for me and a lot of other people. Of course, this is not without its problems. We see evidence of this every night on the news.

Whenever I encounter an exchange and someone invokes the “that’s not ethical” objection, you can be sure I’m the first one to ask why that something isn’t ethical. All too often, when I do that, I’m quickly met with an accusation that by even asking suggests that I too am ethically corrupt.

I implore to the ERE readers that if someone plays the ethical card on you, it is your duty to ask that person why. To not do so will cause atrophy in your ethical reasoning capabilities. Typically, I have found that it is the person who tries to plant the ethical stake in the ground is most often the one who has not a clue what ethics are or how to properly apply them. People in this group most often simply say something such as, “It’s unethical simply because it is, and that is that.”

It’s the classic stone-wall tactic that essentially disengages that person from the dialogue. Too often you will hear something such as, “Well, I don’t know about this or that, but what I do know is that it is wrong.”

When I was three years old, my feeble mind didn’t have the capacity to know that climbing on people’s grave stones was not a good thing to do. After my folks explained it to me, I logically reasoned my way through an argument which for years, for nearly a decade, convinced me that I might be going south in the afterlife.

The key piece of that concluding statement is I logically reasoned my way. You should try that one too. And do yourself the favor of not trying to rely on people who would have you do otherwise. I’m 32 years older now and two things are for sure: I’m always asking myself challenging questions when confronted with difficult situations, and I don’t climb on headstones.

About a week ago, I got a call from a former colleague and friend of mine who happens to be a recruiter. “Todd, we just opened up a great position. I just left the hiring manager’s office from qualifying the opportunity. This is your dream job. You need to get me your resume, and fast.”

This friend is one of the most competent and seasoned recruiters I have ever known. He’s a good friend, as well. Were he not so solid a recruiter, I would probably have said “No thanks, I’m pretty happy where I am.”

I tidied up my resume and promptly sent if off; you never know what the future holds. He e-mails me back saying it looks good and that he would like me to complete a “candidate data sheet.”

I receive a four-page, nicely formatted Word attachment in response. The document seeks to collect a lot of information. It would have taken me nearly an hour to complete. Much of the material it asks for was easily available to me, as I have kept close tabs on my work history and have complete documents like this one in the past. But to assemble it, check it for perfection, and then send it off without any sense of return, well, I’m not so sure it was going to be a good use of my time. But, out of respect for my friend, I did read it thoroughly.

Midway through this task, it occurred to me that if the recruiter was not also a close friend, I would have promptly e-mailed back a “you’ve got to be kidding me, are you out of your mind?” response. But he is a good friend, and thus, I am up for the task of at least reading and considering it.

Now that I think of it, I have been asked, and have asked others, more than a couple of times to complete some kind of datasheet which is quite thorough, as a prerequisite to being considered for a job. I’ve taken several psychological assessments as pre-requisites to be considered for jobs.

From the employer’s perch, these devices seem to have the best intentions for making good selections and they act as a means to streamline the process, all of which pass muster of “well and good.”

Trickle those interests down to the recruiter’s level and these instruments translate in to a few positives, at least on the surface, that is. To be sure, they appear to make a process move more quickly.

With a datasheet, for instance, a recruiter can simply send over a document and have the candidate fill it out as opposed to getting him or her on the phone and asking the questions. It’s a streamlining technique. These tools can make the process less emotional and confrontational, as well.

If the document seeks the right information, when it comes time to bargain for compensation, if the datasheet covers it, and we assume the candidate has told the truth, we’re in a fine position to negotiate with our own or our client’s best interests at heart. We can also avoid having one of those uncomfortable conversations in the process.

With assessments, it’s a whole different story. I was contacted once by a recruiter who had a “terrific opportunity” with a Fortune 500 company who shall remain nameless for the moment. He gave me the pitch about the opportunity and the company and I was intrigued. I would be receiving an e-mail from them in the next 24 hours asking me to complete an online assessment.

Upon starting the assessment, I was informed that I would need approximately 50 minutes to complete the task. I later determined that it would take the company about 40 minutes of my time to determine that I was not psychologically qualified for them. Of course, I got no return on my time.

Nevertheless, there I went, answering all sorts of questions about whether some diametrically opposed set of options was more like me, less like me, or neutral. Twenty minutes after I completed the assessment, I received word that I would no longer be considered.

Wow, summary judgment! I didn’t even get a chance to plead my case to his honor.

An Alternative Reality

Consider the case of a company that contacts an individual who is rumored to be pretty good at discipline “X.” They call and initiate a recruiting relationship. He responds positively but declares that before anything else happens, he wants the company’s CEO to complete a brief datasheet and take an assessment. Such is the hegemony of a company versus the status of an employee.

But it’s not always going to be that way, so say the statistics of the Baby-Boomer era. We all talk about it: the numbers are black and white. Pretty soon, there are going to be a lot more jobs than there are people.

By the looks of it, the circa 1999 days of hiring anyone with a heartbeat to simply show up are not far off again. So, if we assume that the numbers are correct, pretty soon it’s once again going to be a candidate’s market; some would argue it already is, however, I am not one of them.

When it becomes a candidate’s market, this practice of putting someone through the rigors of a thorough psychoanalysis or a lengthy candidate datasheet will go by the wayside. Keep it up and you’re soon to find fewer returned phone calls.

In the not too far-off future, there will one day be a full standardized profile each person has of himself. It will be a dynamic tool that captures significantly more information than just what we see on a resume. It will display not only work history and education, but a heck of a lot more, much of which is extracted by today’s pre-employment screening.

If you must use questionnaires, which I do not suggest abandoning entirely, at least keep them short. Ten minutes is about as much time as a candidate wants to spend before getting a chance to interview.

If the first interview goes well, then use a more thorough data sheet. If your company is one who uses psychoanalysis, then perhaps it is better to introduce these tools later on in the process. Doing so too soon can surely raise red flags in the mind of the job seeker. Or, at least, it will cause some of the higher-caliber professionals to think twice about coming to work for you.

The very purpose of pre-employment screening and or evaluation/assessments is to increase the quality of the hire. It’s also to eliminate a lot of folks, too. Suffice it to say, this assumes that there is a higher caliber person out there, prima facie. As an employer, you obviously want as many of those people on your team as possible.

Unless you have a monopoly on reputation like few companies do, hotshots are not standing in line to get a chance to interview with your company. Those people who excel at what they do (i.e. the best of the best) are enjoying it immensely. As an employer, in attempting to attract these people to, remember that you are:

1. Disrupting them while they are in the midst of doing what they love
2. Challenging their contentment with status-quo and asking them to take a risk which if discovered, could cost them their job
3. Placing time-consuming hurdles in front of them before they are allowed to show up for the race

What does this add up to? It adds up to exactly what employers are trying so desperately to avoid: hiring bottom feeders. I have a news flash for those of you who are not convinced: resumes are filled with embellishments, distortions, and in many cases, outright lies.

When it comes to assessments, no matter how good the tool is that’s being used, people can still lie their way past it. Heck, I went to college with a guy who presently makes over $300,000 as a salesperson for a very well-known medical device company. He brags about how he carries synthetic urine in his car in the event that he has to provide a sample. To date, he’s been tested twice. He smokes more pot than a Dutch hippie. But yet, he’s never failed a drug test. He figured out a way to beat the system.

Like my college acquaintance, bottom feeders will figure out a way to beat a system; it’s part of how they get a job.

I wrote “Finding the Best Person for the Job” a few weeks back. Since its publishing, the amount and content of correspondence I received has been quite flattering. Oddly though, without question, the overriding theme of the responses has been inquiries from people wanting to know whether I had any suggestions about finding their own natural point of aim in life.

Now, to be sure, I am no Dali Lama. While on your journey to discover the true self who lies, or lurks, within, don’t expect to find yourself summiting a mountain in Nepal only to stumble upon me sipping tea by a small fire, with a cache of wisdom titled, Life’s Answers to Who You Are, Where Are You Going? Keep in mind that I am probably trying to summit that same peak.

When I got the e-mail from one of my old pals at Monster who informed me that my ditty had been published, and on the front page, I was excited to see how the editors at ERE did with the slicing and dicing of my (well, their) intellectual property. Not much at all changed. The only thing I thought should be different was the title. In my opinion, it should have read, Finding the Right JOB for the Person. As I re-read it, I think that the focus got lost, or shifted to say the least. With the last two paragraphs acting as a preface, my second contribution here on this subject now follows.

Finding the right job for the person is hardly the recruiter’s responsibility. All too often, recruiters fall in to this trap: they change roles from finding good people to fill a position to finding a good position to employ people. One is a business function and the other is a coaching/outplacement function. I know from experience that I have fallen in love with a candidate or two, metaphorically speaking. Now, you can have a lot of success from marketing a solid candidate. I’m not going to dispute that. But, that’s not the point of my contribution. The point of this work is to offer some insight on how one goes about finding the correct career path, and how it relates to recruiting.

If you’re working at a desk, or functioning as an in-house recruiter, and find yourself wondering whether your professional endeavor is satisfactorily answering your life’s calling, chances are, it is not.

I’m not going to claim that I’m an expert on this matter. But it occurs to me that if you’re wondering about this, then your mind is not where it needs to be, and where it needs to be is where it naturally happens to fall at any given moment.

As humans, we are cursed with the capacity of self-examination. That curse has the result of what is known as “meta-thinking” in philosophical and psychological circles. That is, we can think about thinking. Our brains move so fast, that in functioning in our various roles, we lose track of where our comfortably thinking machines take us on our little neurological journeys.

Many of you may remember Kazoo, the little green guy on the Flintstones who would occasionally visit Fred and Barney with words of wisdom and deeds of misgiving. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your own Kazoo who could follow you around and take notes (in strict confidence, of course) about moment-to-moment thoughts? Perhaps after a few months, Kazoo would sit down with you and a psychologist to review your thought patterns. At the conclusion of this meeting, Kazoo, you, and the psychologist decide that, based upon their collective research, and your natural thought tendencies, you should make a career move to a…building custodian! Sorry, had to be humorous.

If you are among those camped out and searching for the answers to your own true calling, let me offer you this. You only get to travel around the Sun 80 to 90 times, assuming you are lucky and take good care of yourself. Chances are, you have already burned through 20, 30, 40, or maybe even 50 of those trips. Are you wondering whether you wasted any of those trips spinning your wheels?

Now is the time to start taking notes on your life. Get out a notebook or start an online journal. Record things that bring you pleasure in a free-verse style. Write as it comes to you. You can organize it later.

Every time you have an experience that brings you pleasure, big or small, take note of it. Each of you reading this has certain activities that are a part of your career that you enjoy more than others. You also have those that you dread. You are probably far more proficient at those that you enjoy.

As you may have figured out, I love to write. I started this piece 45 minutes ago, and it seems like it’s been about 10 seconds. I like to think I’m good at it. (ERE must think so, too.) It drives my wife crazy because as she watches television in the evening, I snuggle up with a laptop and write. My point: I enjoy it, and as a result, I’m pretty good at it.

Now, if you are one of the fortunate ones who did get in to the right career and it happens to be recruiting, here’s what I have for you. Get good at asking questions about, and understanding, what makes people feel good. Then, ask them those same questions about their careers. Find out which aspects of their daily career activities they like, love, dislike, and hate. Then, get good at asking and understanding why. Is this something that you can do in a 10-minute phone screen? Not a chance.

Sure, there are pitfalls. You can become too empathetic and end up with a shoulder covered in tears because you forgot to play your own role and started to play shrink (neither ethical nor profitable). First, determine whether you are in the right career path: see Kazoo. If not, you have a whole different problem on your hands. If you are in the right career path/career field, then you have a new skill to learn: asking questions that will get to the heart of the matter.

The question that captures the “what do you want to do with your life?” phenomenon can best be summarized in one simple question. I think of it as a mantra, really. I took it from a Kevin Spacey movie called Swimming With Sharks: What do you really want? What do you really want? What do you really want?

How many times have you seen your company hire an individual who seemed like he had all the attributes of a successful hire during the evaluation process, and then after the third, fourth, or sixth month, you discovered this person was not cut out for the job?

Conversely, have you ever seen someone get hired – over the objections of others – who you were certain was destined to fail, and that person then exceeded all expectations and set new records of performance? I have seen both situations occur, and I began to wonder why some people succeed at a task that others can’t even conceive of doing. How can a company hire someone with so much pride and conviction, only to have that individual fail miserably?

I have a good friend with whom I used to work, and early in our careers, I thought she was a liability. I thought there was no way she would ever last. Well, it’s several years later, and she’s still with the same company, she’s surpassed numerous records, and she is a top producer month after month. When I ask her how her job is going, she always has the same remarks: she doesn’t get along with this person or that person, the company changed territories yet again, etc. But she always claims it’s a pretty good place to work. And this year, she’s on pace to earn more than any previous year, and she has no interest in looking for another position elsewhere. She has career bliss.

In the recruiting realm, this phenomenon is called “a good hire.” Companies go to great lengths to make good hires, and they should. With enough good hires, a company can obtain a serious competitive advantage. Likewise, a company that makes a lot of bad hires may find itself in bankruptcy. So, the age-old question of course is, “How do you isolate the good ones from the bad?” Is there a system that can be implemented that will regularly yield higher results, over and over again? Many say the answer is behavioral-based interviewing. Maybe so, but that’s not the whole answer. Behavior-based interviewing is a component of the system, but it is not the system, itself.

I want to illustrate two examples that might help illuminate what I believe is the ideal way to isolate the best person for a job. In our house, we have a dog – an English Springer Spaniel named Dolly. She’s a hunting dog. Every time I throw her toy across the yard, she darts off to get it and promptly brings it back to me. I didn’t have to teach her this. She knows that when a toy is thrown, she is to retrieve it.

My second example comes from my days in the Marines. Among other things, Marines are known for being excellent marksmen. In training, Marines are taught a concept called natural point of aim. The concept says if you want to hit your target, you must hold the rifle so that it naturally comes to rest with its sights already focused on the target. All the Marine needs to do is pull the trigger and chances are the bullet will find its way to the right bulls-eye. The concept works. I grew up in the suburbs and had never shot a gun in my life, and after learning this concept, I have become pretty handy with a rifle.

What do these two examples suggest about making a good hire? You need to find a person’s natural point of aim. That is, you need to find their innate instinct and align it with the job. In short, you need to identify a candidate’s talents – his or her God-given ability to do something well, over and over again. Can you imagine a poodle being taken on a hunting trip? Of course not. Poodles don’t hunt. Poodles just hang out; they’re companion dogs. Hunting is not what they do. I suppose you could train a poodle to retrieve, but when put up against my Dolly, I bet my dog would do a heck of a better job bringing back a bird.

Imagine taking your everyday software developer and putting him in sales. You train him, coach him, and put him on the phones. In a short time, you’ll be looking for a new salesperson and a new software developer. The same can be said for most sales people. They were not put on this planet to write code for the most part.

Each person has a certain set of talents, something at which they naturally excel. Babe Ruth hit home runs. Thomas Edison invented things. That’s what they did. If you want to make a good hire, you have to ensure that when you’re evaluating a candidate, you identify their natural tendencies. All too often, a person ends up in a career for which they are not ideally suited. That’s one of the reasons we have habitual job-hoppers: people who go from job to job looking for that ideal situation in which they can become successful. The problem for job hoppers is that they’ve never really figured out their own true calling.

There are myriad tools available that enable a company to investigate and isolate a candidate’s inherent strengths and talents. Mostly, we’ve come to rely on history: a resume. The resume shows what a person has been doing for the last number of years, and we assume he or she must have been doing those things because that’s where their natural talents lay – their natural point of aim.

My technique in getting to the root talent of a candidate is a component of behavioral-based interviewing. But I don’t just focus and dig on a specific anecdote and then play Socrates using the dialectical cross examination questioning method so commonly touted in recruiting circles. I ask a person what motivates them. I ask why he or she is in sales, for example. I often hear the ever popular, “Because I’m a people-person,” or the “I’m entrepreneurial by nature.”

That’s a fine starting place. Then we enter my line of questioning. My goal here is to identify this person’s natural point of aim or instinct. My exploration has questions such as: “I’m a people-person. Let’s talk about that. What do you mean by people-person? What, specifically, do you like about people? What strengths, with regards to people, do you possess? Why do you believe this strength is specific to you? How did you discover this strength about yourself? What have you done to broaden and hone this strength? If you were forced to make a choice, would you prefer always meeting new people, or strengthening relationships you have with people you already know? Why?”

This line of questioning can go on, and on, and on. Hannibal Lectur would be proud. Freud would take notice. The candidate will certainly be put off balance and will always try to steer the conversation – or at least hope the conversation was steered back – to their resume. But remember, you’re not trying to alienate the person. You’ll have to practice this technique in order to apply it naturally.

Your ultimate goal is to find the person’s natural point of aim and determine whether that natural point is properly aligned with the demands of the position in question. The question you want to answer is this: If I seat this potential salesperson in front of the telephone, will he naturally pick up the phone and start dialing, or will I have to tell him that it’s time to make calls? If I put this coder in my development shop without any instruction, would he be able to naturally find his way around and start coding, or would I have to say, “There’s a PC. Here’s our project. It’s time to start coding?”

Oddly enough, I’ve found people who looked totally unqualified for a position, on paper, but when put into that position, they soared like a rocket. And I have seen the exact opposite: people who appeared to have an excellent career history and yet fell flat on their face after getting the job – an obvious misalignment of natural point of aim.

Take a moment now, and search the ERE website for the word, “Talent.” See how frequently it appears in articles, ads, and commentary. The term talent no longer means one’s natural, God-given ability to do something well, over and over again. It’s taken on a whole new meaning. I maintain the term talent still refers to one’s God-given ability to do something well, repeatedly. And if you want your company or client company to have a serious competitive advantage as a result of your recruiting, you should start asking questions that will reveal a candidate’s true talents and see whether those skills fit with the position for which he or she is being considered.

No doubt, if you have ever used one of the major or minor job boards to post an ad, you have experienced what I just described above. Some of the resumes submitted to my postings have been so far off-target that I contemplated asking the candidate whether they’d even read the ad. Oftentimes, it seems as if the candidate didn’t even read the advertisement. Rather, they simply sent their resume out as far and wide as possible, hoping the numbers game would eventually yield them a job.

For about three years, I worked in sales for one of the major job boards ? arguably, the largest job board – in direct sales. I sold the company’s products to small- and medium-sized businesses on the west coast.

To put it simply, I was in inside sales, selling job posting packages and resume access to the Bay Area customer base. From the time the dot-com bubble burst in 2001 to some time in 2003, I called company after company trying to get recruiters and HR managers to buy our products. Their single biggest complaint in using our product? Too many unqualified responses.

During those dark times, the Bay Area was rumored to have people with MBAs and computer science degrees from Stanford working at Starbucks, Subway, and Home Depot, just to pay the outrageous rent on their chic Russian Hill apartments. With the job market as dismal as it was back then, it’s no wonder recruiters universally had this problem. People just wanted jobs.

It’s now 2006, and times have changed. And yet companies still have the same complaint. So I decided to conduct a study. I posted a few fictitious resumes in different locations, across several disciplines, on all of the major job boards, to see what would happen. I’m sorry if you’re one of the recruiters I inadvertently tricked. I wanted to see if the job seeker would have a similar experience as the hiring authority. Well, guess what? That’s exactly what happened. For my software engineer resume in Indianapolis, I was solicited for a variety of jobs, from insurance sales to custodian. My sales resumes received solicitations for multi-level marketing and financial sales jobs. And my registered nurse resumes got flooded with responses for contract positions.

None of these positions are bad, per se. But they’re not consistent with the areas of interest I clearly stated in my resumes. I noticed a few trends. The solicitations that were most off-target were similar: They all told a nice story that was vague and then tried to get me to do something, like call someone, fill out an on-line application, or show up at a job fair. They made no appeal that was in any way targeted at me. They used template e-mails and simply inserted the names I used on my resumes, to make their solicitations appear customized.

The recruiters were using the shotgun method on my resumes, not unlike the job candidates who send their resumes everywhere. It’s a quantitative approach, rather than a qualitative one, and it leaves both parties with a whole lot of quantity and not a lot of quality.

So, how do you get around that? I do an exercise that I call, ”Yes, No, Maybe.? Basically, I short-list the candidates. For instance, I’m currently filling a software developer position in the Midwest. I have access to three boards’ resume databases. Ideally, I want to get passive candidates, but that’s not always possible. So, I am going to search all three databases for one hour a day, for three days. That’s a total of three hours of searching, or roughly 15 minutes per board, each day.

My goal will be to pull three ”Yes’s,? six ”Maybe’s,? and of course zero ”No’s,? from each board. You can do the math. I’m also going to write up a template, but it’s going to be short. And, in my template, I’m going to tell the candidate something that I am going to do: I’m going to call them. I’m also going to pick out something from the resume that is unique to each candidate, and I’m going to comment on it.

For example, I may write:

”Tom, I’m e-mailing you because according to your resume, in your current position, you’re working on a project that?. And your interests appear to be?. This seems to fit with my client’s needs, which are?. I’m going to call you this afternoon at 5:30 p.m. on your cell phone. If you can’t speak then, please let me know if there is a more appropriate time.?

I did not pioneer this approach. I adapted it from a book I once read called, Selling to VITO. This approach basically adds quality to a method known mostly for quantity. Aristotle once said that the highest virtue was achieving balance. It’s my position that our industry has gotten out of sync when it comes to the initial approach to a candidate. We’ve gotten too focused on playing high numbers, given the ease of correspondence via the Internet. How do you expect to get referrals if you don’t establish any credibility with the candidate?

Let’s face it. Some people simply won’t be available or become candidates, regardless of the approach you take. But then the search for qualified candidates is not about achieving perfection. It’s about striving for excellence. This technique will increase your odds. In my opinion, it will yield higher results than, say, the shotgun approach. Let’s carry the analogy further. When hunting, a shotgun is good to have. But so is a rifle. Proficiency with both will help you maximize your chance of landing the big game.

According to many philosophers, psychologists, and effective leaders, the best way to persuade people is to ensure that whatever you’re trying to persuade them to do is properly aligned with their own interests. Many people have heard of Abraham Maslow and are familiar with some of his work. Using his theories will surely help anyone – even a novice – become far more persuasive and influential when dealing not only with candidates and customers, but with other people as well. Maslow was a social psychologist frequently noted for his Hierarchy of Human Needs.

It is, in short, a summation of his life’s work, in my opinion. It doesn’t take a reader very long to understand how an article about this fits nicely with recruiting. People have needs, and the drive to satisfy these needs is a very powerful force. For example, imagine if you were drowning and, as such, badly needed air. Wouldn’t you think that you would stop at nothing, short of death, to get some oxygen into those lungs? You need air, plain and simple. Morbid as it may be, there’s a direct parallel with the business of recruiting.

Candidates have needs, and if you figure out what needs a candidates is trying to satisfy and align your job to satisfy those needs, all that’s left is sending out the invoice…hopefully. Like it or not, candidates do not have the recruiter’s interests in mind when they move from one job to another. If things work out in favor of the recruiter – the candidate accepts your job – from the perspective of the candidate, it is best characterized as a convenient occurrence. Once he or she accepts the job and starts working, in his eyes, the candidate is free of our phone calls, emails, voicemails, probing questions, etc., and for them, that’s a relief. Unless… If as a recruiter, you do a thorough job understanding needs and interests, and you do at least a good job relaying it back to the candidate that you understand it as well as he does.

If all that happens, the candidate will always hold you and your phone calls in high regard. Using Maslow’s Hierarchy as a guide, you’ll quickly facilitate this type of allegiance. In fact, I keep it as a Word document on my desk with questions attributed to the varying levels of human need. With each “layer” of human need, an interest of a candidate can be uncovered. At the bottom of “the Maslow pyramid” is physiological need: food, water, and shelter. A candidate wants to earn the highest possible wage he can negotiate. He cashes his check, and with this he buys the goods he will need in order to simply survive: food, water, and shelter. At the top of the pyramid is actualization. It is here where one finds the unique characteristics of a person’s identity. A person can go on in life for some time without actualization. However, he can only go for a couple of days at best without water. Find out what the unique characteristics are of your candidate; that is, what makes him or her unique. Convey back to the candidate not once, but regularly, that you identified him and understand him, and your candidate will feel as though speaking with you is like speaking with an old friend. A candidate trusts an old friend.

For those of you in healthy interpersonal relationships, take a look at those relationships and try and figure out why you like the person in question or vice versa. Get yourself up to speed on the Hierarchy, and then write out questions that will help you gather information about each layer. Practice asking the questions in a non-threatening way, and then start using them. Here are a few examples of the questions I use:

Self-Actualization:

• If I asked three people you work with what makes you unique, what do you think each person would say?
• Before you leave this earth, what one contribution would you like to make to mankind, overall?

Esteem:

• Tell me about a time when you felt like you were properly respected or recognized for work you had done.
• How do you respond at work when you feel that someone has taken credit for something you did?

Belonging:

• Tell me about a position you had in which you felt like you were part of the team, and what was it like for you to be part of the team when it did well or not so well.
• Have you ever been in a position where you felt the team just did not accept you? If so, what did you do?

Make yourself a nice desk chart that will be used as a reference later on in the screening of your candidates. Don’t overwhelm your candidate and make him feel like you’re trying to psychoanalyze him. Collect information about what’s important to him; that way, he knows you want to line him up with jobs that may satisfy these needs he has. Anyone can extract transferable skills out of a candidate. But, an experienced professional will go the extra mile and collect information about personal interests. By doing this, you can be assured that the candidate will be far more open to your call than someone who just wants to make a fast placement and collect a fee. I have candidates begging their friends to call me. I have candidates give me names of referrals and they tell me in advance what their personal needs are. This type of loyalty is a result of empathy. If you ask the right questions, the answers will foster a long-lasting relationship and plenty of referrals.

This is where up-front operating agreements come in to play. When properly used, an up-front operating agreement/contract will help a recruiter mitigate the tangles that will inevitably develop throughout the evaluation and hiring processes. Up-front operating agreements are quite simple and should be used early on in a candidate relationship. The first agreement I put in place is an agreement about agreements. I always ask a candidate if he or she is the type of person who tends to honor agreements when he or she makes them with other people. Everyone says “yes” to this one; who wouldn’t? But something else is happening. The candidate is also giving you permission to ask for commitments at different points, and at the risk of sounding inconsistent or at worst, psychotic, he or she will tend to stick to these commitments. Then, I always follow up with an out clause which puts people at ease. I ask, “From time to time, I may ask you to commit to something. If you don’t feel comfortable with that, it’s okay to tell me so. One of my biggest fears is a person who says ‘Yes’ to something when he or she actually means ‘No.’ People do this because they are polite and don’t want to be confrontational in most cases. Are you able to come forward to me if something doesn’t feel right, or if you want to halt or slow down our process?” And, you reinforce this contract several times through your process, by asking again, “Are you sure you are comfortable with this?”

You’ve got to let the candidate know that you will not attack him or her if he or she starts to get a funny feeling; you have to explicitly let him or her know that in an emotionally-charged process, he or she will most likely feel uncomfortable, and when this happens, you (the recruiter) are the best person to call. When a candidate gets that funny feeling, wouldn’t you prefer to know about it as soon as possible? You’re essentially letting the candidate know that you will not use pressure tactics. You operate in an environment of truth, and you give the candidate an incentive to be truthful. You’ll be amazed. The candidate will be relieved that he has finally found someone in which he can confide. It’s quite therapeutic for the candidate because all the other recruits will be pushing and shoving him or her to “just go out on an interview and see how it goes.” You, on the other hand, are not only a broker of jobs or a conduit to a new job, but also a confidant.

If you were a candidate, to whom would you be more loyal: someone pushing you though a process, or someone in whom you hold considerable trust because you have facilitated very open lines of communication? Let’s say that one day you’re sitting at your desk, posting an advertisement on one of the major job boards, and your phone rings. The person calling you is a candidate who is about to get an offer from your client. The candidate says, “I’m having second thoughts about leaving this job for your client’s, and I want to discuss it with you. Have you got a minute?” You bet you have a minute. You have all the time that candidate needs. “Remember when you told me if I was not comfortable with something, I should call you to discuss it?” Now, you can fix the problem, if it is in fact fixable. Or, at the very least, you can prevent yourself from looking inept in the eyes of your client. You want all of the what-ifs out in the open, and when you put in place up-front operating agreements, you create a relationship in which revealing these things is not something that causes discomfort in an already uneasy person.