Your value — what you can get done — depends on increasing your influence and strengthening your reputation. And part of that is presentation: not so much what you say but how you say it.

Presentation skills, or a person’s “presentation” is a package; a combination of tangible and intangible behaviors and skills, including:

• How you perform “on your feet”
• Appearance
• Poise
• Knowledge
• Preparation
• Value

How are you known in your organization? Are you known as someone who:

• Gets things done?
• Challenges the hiring manager to think about what is needed, what skills are required, what skills are nice to have, and what skills could be important that the hiring manager hasn’t considered?
• Presents candidates that match the considerations presented above?
• Is confident and behaves as if the hiring manager was a peer?
• Is as impressive “off-stage” as “on-stage”?
• Demonstrates emotional intelligence?

How you are known molds your influence and reputation. And how you establish and reinforce how you are known is through your presentation.

Some recruiters we’ve talked to don’t believe this is possible. They believe their job is only to find and recruit good candidates. Well, there is one thing about beliefs: what you believe is what you are. This is more than pop psychology because we have seen and worked with some very influential and highly successful recruiters.

To further explore and develop your presentation, it is beneficial to understand that it includes four skill domains:

• Business Skills
• Leadership Skills
• Interpersonal Skills
• Intrapersonal Skills

Business Skills include: general knowledge of recruiting, talent management, the industry, and the developing trends. It also includes a knowledge of how business works, both yours and others in the industry. The value is to be able to talk with the hiring manager about business trends, how recruiting fits in, how other firms are handling their recruiting challenges, and how to explain the imbalance in talent availability across different industries.

Leadership Skills include your ability to influence the hiring manager and the organization and the ability to think and present a big-picture, high-impact or more strategic approach to recruiting. Such as, why talent management is important and why such issues as the connection between onboarding and employee satisfaction with their supervisor impact retention. Also, leadership skills include how to deal with a hiring manager who has a poor retention record. Recruiters do not have positional authority, so their leadership skills are developed through and applied in their ability to influence.

Interpersonal Skills include: how you communicate with peers, candidates, vendors, hiring managers, and your boss. It also includes your relationship and social skills. Interpersonal skills are the window through which others see you.

Intrapersonal Skills are basically self-management skills. From how you direct and correct your thinking, to your day-to-day practices in accomplishing tasks to how you run your day and take care of and handle yourself in the process.

Strengthening presentation starts with awareness: being aware that presentation is important and is larger than a one-shot deal and being aware of what constitutes presentation. But change doesn’t happen with awareness alone. Change happens when awareness meets caring (enough to do something about it) and right action.

We can be aware, we can care, but perhaps we may not know what to do, or more importantly, what is preventing us from taking action in the first place. In our work, we have found there are nine common behavioral categories that impact our ability to take action:

• Fear
• Relationship-building
• Responsiveness
• Overselling
• Quitting
• Perfection
• Personal Beliefs
• Focus Management
• Impression Management

These behavior categories are distributed across the four skill domains; however, a lion’s share sits in the intrapersonal domain, which predominantly reflects our personal habits, patterns, and preferences as they converge in our work.

Take a personal inventory. Assess how you believe you are seen in the organization and consider yourself in each of the behavior categories and across the four domains. And understand that improving your presentation skills is a process, not an event. It starts with awareness and a sincere desire (and belief) that your presentation skills can be improved. The benefit will be more influence and a stronger reputation, which will enable greater results and increase your value to others, both inside and outside of your organization.

To learn more, join us at the ERE Fall Expo for our Pre-Conference Workshop, September 7 at 10 a.m.: Strengthening Your Presentation Skills to Increase Your Results.

When faced with hiring managers who are busy (and some less interested then they should be) and with the best candidates shopping options, like it or not, how you present becomes as important (we would say more important) than what you present.

While brevity and fact-based presentation are key today, if what you present is a recitation of the facts about a candidate, ranking them using some algorithm, this can be, quite frankly, boring. How do you get the hiring manager to not only want to meet with you, but also to listen to you, seek your advice, and respond? It’s in your presentation. For example, when you start working with a hiring manager and as the process continues:

• Are you fearful about bothering them in approaching them with your concerns or questions?
• How responsive are you? Are you slow because you are seeking the “perfect candidate”?
• How good are you at building relationships?
• How focused are you on the hiring managers’ issues and needs? Have you inquired as to their key priorities for the role?
• Are you interesting to talk to and meet with? Do you bring energy, knowledge, and value-add ideas to the discussions?
• Do you conduct yourself like a peer or subordinate?

These questions reflect the “intangible” elements of presentation. Many recruiters we meet believe that their value is predominantly in identifying and bringing good candidates to the table. Yes, this is certainly their role, though only a part of their potential value. And strong presentation will help you expand your value.

Start acting like a peer, bring distinctive and useful knowledge to the discussion, demonstrate beyond what is expected, look and be impressive, and you will be seen differently. Presentation is a package, and the ol’ a la carte approach will only take you so far.

The Techniques for Highly Effective Recruiters pre-conference workshop we’re giving at the Fall Expo will address these issues and more to help you increase your effectiveness and impact as a recruiter in your organization. And yes — it’s in your presentation.

It is folly to assume there is an unlimited talent pool in this market. The current 8.9% unemployment rate (based on February 2011 data) is deceiving. First, the actual unemployment level is higher than the numbers suggest because of the number of people who have stopped looking for jobs. Also it is distorted. Many of the jobs that were eliminated during the recession are never coming back. So looking at unemployment levels alone will create the one thing you cannot afford to create: complacency.

In our experience, many recruiters understand this, yet they too need to act on it. (Referenced as “the knowing:doing gap.”) And their challenge is often to help the hiring manager (and the organization) understand it.

Another challenging reality is that the best talent may already be working. This is especially the case in fields such as healthcare, science, and technology. As an example, hiring clinicians who have management experience is a challenge for many healthcare organizations. It may also be the situation for the unique job requirements in your company. While the first challenge is finding qualified candidates, the bigger challenge is closing the deal and hiring them. The reason: they have options. Time is critical!

So, when a candidate or candidates are identified, understand that they will be vetting you as carefully as you are vetting them. Delays and perceived indecision will be seen as a lack of interest in their candidacy and they will quickly move along.

There are four critical points of contact for viable candidates, and they are:

1. Their first impression of you
2. Their first impression of the hiring manager
3. Their general impression of the organization garnered from interviews with other people in your organization and their travels within your organization
4. Follow-up

In hiring highly qualified people for your organization, there are no casual moments. Just because a candidate has agreed to an interview doesn’t mean they will be excited about and stay committed to your opportunity. All it means is that they may be ready to take your job if it is the best opportunity at the time for them and their career. If the candidate is greeted by interviewers who are late, unprepared, misaligned in interview approach, appear harried and rushed, and do not get back to the candidate (in a timely manner) with information they promised, there is a very strong likelihood that only the weakest candidates (with the least amount of options) will still be interested..

Once a passive candidate knows that they are attractive to other organizations, there is a very short period of time to make that hire. Candidates who were excited about your job can suddenly become enamored with the next shiny opportunity that comes along. Always assume they have other prospects in the pipeline. Don’t stall. You will undoubtedly lose that candidate to your competition.

You don’t have to settle. Once you have identified the type of candidate you are looking for, and are confident in your process, don’t get distracted or “over-process.” Ninety percent of the time, an interview process that gets dragged out results in no hire and the timeline gets pushed out. Not only do you lose the opportunity to grow your business, you also lose revenue. And even worse, the candidate may be hired by your competition.

If you find this happening in your organization, reanalyze your hiring process, discuss your challenges with the hiring manager and the director or VP of human resources, ask for feedback, and reevaluate. You are the catalyst. You are the person with the information. Use your influence to communicate effectively and factually the sense of urgency that needs to exist in a scarce talent resource market. Your organization and your customers will benefit.

this article was also written by Heather Cole

The responsibility to establish a positive and productive working relationship with the hiring manager rests with the corporate recruiter. Whether this is the way it should be or not is not the point. What is important is that the corporate recruiter has skills and abilities that will provide significant benefit to the hiring manager, and the key is to develop the relationship and demonstrate it.

So the two questions that need to be addressed first are:

1. How does the corporate recruiter enhance the organization’s ability to select, hire, and advance the right talent for the organization?
2. How do they accomplish this when they have no direct authority over the hiring manager making the final decision?

The answer to these two questions is: You do this by understanding and practicing influence. Influence (something we’re doing a workshop on at the Fall Expo) is the ability to achieve your objective — to get work done — when you do not have complete control or the authority to accomplish your objective alone.

A quick disclaimer: Influence done right and practiced well is not manipulation. It is not about attaining power, control, looking good, or driving your personal agenda. It is about mutuality. It’s about what is known as the law of reciprocity: knowing what is important to the other person and helping them get it. In turn, you will achieve what is important to you: using your skills and knowledge to improve the talent management process within your organization.

For example, when recruiting for a new employee, whether it’s a replacement position or a new position, what are high priorities for the hiring manager? High priorities can be:

• Finding an individual who will best meet the manager’s business objectives for his or her operating unit
• Finding an individual who will fit into the culture of the operating unit
• Finding an individual who the manager feels he or she will be compatible with and who will work in a way that is consistent with their working expectations
• Finding an individual who will make them and their operating unit look good
• Finding an individual who can quickly grow and adapt in their position with the organization (important for fast-growth companies)

How well do you know what’s most important to the hiring manager? Often well-intended assumptions are made that are not in alignment. The five points raised above are examples, and there may be other drivers key to your hiring manager. The very process of asking allows you to better understand the hiring manager, build a relationship and align your efforts.

While it’s easy to talk about the importance of influence, and it’s intuitively logical, actually doing it can be a challenge. Examples of common challenges are:

• Trepidation in dealing with the manager
• Not knowing exactly what to do to build the relationship
• Poor responsiveness (in timeliness or quality) to the manager’s requests
• Tendency to oversell your candidates or your hiring strategies
• Quitting at no — avoiding conflict versus working through it
• A need to find the “perfect candidate” — in your opinion

Learning how to overcome these challenges is important and critical to the organization.

As a corporate recruiter, how do you gain an edge? How do you use your skills to improve the recruitment process and ensure the right candidates are hired? One thing is certain: you cannot do it well alone, nor can the hiring manager.

The fact of the matter is  – some statistics indicate up to 50% of the time — the candidate crashes and burns. What went wrong? Everything seemed to point to guaranteed success.

In our work with clients and their organizations in situations like this, we find three things went wrong:

1. Not clearly understanding the job that needs to be done (before the advertising and hiring)
2. Not clearly understanding the organizational context in which the new manager will work (not assessing the organizational culture for alignment of the new manager)
3. Insufficient candidate vetting (meaning, a mismatch in skills and attributes of the new manager to the role and/or the organization itself)

If you do not know the job that needs to be done (which Michael D. Watkins defines as start-up, turnaround, accelerated growth, realignment, and sustaining success), then finding the right candidate for the job is a stochastic event. The best way to determine what job needs to be done is to ask. Ask individuals who are part of the operating unit, who receive services, and who provide services. Understand what needs to be done now for the department or company to be successful. And, as addressed in our previous article, Hiring for Fast-Growth Departments or Companies, we strongly encourage you to consider the criteria transformability; that is, a candidate’s interest in and ability to adapt to change. This process is really a 360-degree review of the department or the operating unit.

Organizations have personalities. They have established cultures. Many can behave like the body’s immune system, ravaging foreign invaders that appear as a threat to the system. We had a client who hired a CIO who did not represent the culture of the organization. He was direct and abrasive. The organizational members were polite. The hiring manager believed the CIO would “shake things up.”  The only person that got shaken up was the new hire. He lasted six months, even amidst a “polite” culture.

When you know the job that needs to be done and you have an understanding of the culture of the organization, you then outline the skills and behaviors that the ideal candidate should possess. Breakdown the skills and behaviors into “musts” and “wants”: the non-negotiables to get the job done versus the “would-be-nice to haves.” No candidate can meet all the criteria an organization can mobilize in the selection process. But the successful candidate must at least meet all of the “musts” identified. We recommend a personality-based and job-performance indicator that measures a candidate’s potential for success. We also recommend an interview process that includes superiors, peers, and subordinates. Also, the assumption is that what the job is (that is, the current and necessary essential functions of the job) has been assessed and accurately captured on a job or position description to clearly frame expectations from the beginning.

Hiring candidates from outside the organization can be a risk for both the candidate and the organization. Make a concerted effort to reduce the risk and increase the chance for success. Not only does “everyone win,” but more importantly, work gets done, the company continues to grow, and you do not end up with a retention problem.

Talent integration is essential for organizational success. But it starts with a thoughtful and detailed recruiting process; whether the candidate comes from within the organization or from outside the organization. Assuming that a talented person will show up and begin producing great work is naïve and reckless. If you want your organization to grow, if you want to minimize disruptions, if you want to reduce turnover and if you want to control costs, start with recruiting and integrating the right talent.

• Replacement for key employees
• To support anticipated growth
• To address and deal with talent shortages

Unfortunately, however, succession planning is too often considered an exercise, a means to an end, a human resources task to be checked off and moved into the done pile. This is absolutely the wrong way to think about succession planning.

Succession planning is a talent and organizational improvement initiative that enables a business (i.e. your organization) to grow and thrive now and in the future.

Businesses and organizations can neither succeed nor grow without management talent. It’s really that simple. What’s not as simple is developing, nurturing, and grooming your talent pipeline.

We are coming out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Sure, the unemployment rate is still high, which makes some executives believe that the talent pipeline is strong … when they need a management/executive resource, all they will have to do is pick up the phone, post an ad, or look on sites like Monster and CareerBuilder, and snap, their talent needs will be resolved. Heads up: many of your competitors are seriously positioning themselves for growth and are truly hoping you continue to believe this.

Good talent is hard to find — in both good and bad economies. It’s hard to find because talent is a combination of skills, behaviors, motivation, organizational fit, and passion. And that is truly hard to find, especially when a fast hire is needed (yesterday).

Consider the three reasons for a succession plan in more detail.

Reason One: Replacement for key employees

Many people we’ve talked to believe the only reason to do a succession plan is to have a replacement picked for the CEO and perhaps one or two key executives. This is clearly one of the reasons to do a succession plan. The more complete reason is to have replacements identified (and in the process of being prepared) for all key positions within the organization, not just the CEO and key executives. This is often referred to planning several levels deep,” that is, executives to departmental managers and division leaders; those roles that are necessary (even if not obvious) to keep critical business going.

Remember, executives set strategy, and managers implement strategy. You need strength in both areas to succeed.

Executives and managers will leave. They may leave to take another job; they may be fired; they may retire, they may become ill, they may leave because of a spouse’s relocation. When an executive or manager’s vacancy is anticipated, a smooth transition is possible, simply because there is time to manage the transition. It is when the vacancy is unexpected that a challenge exists. Maintaining continuity is important and it results in less cost and less service disruption.

As the economy improves, growth will occur and an organization can only support and sustain growth if it has the talent to manage the growth.

Reason Two: Support anticipated growth

This is different than the replacement strategy noted above. In this case, new positions are needed to support growth initiatives. For example, growth initiatives could be:

• Expanding current products or services into new markets;
• Creating new products or services to introduce into the marketplace;
• Initiating new ways to market (i.e., viral marketing) your products or services

When anticipating growth, identify internal talent and also build and maintain a talent network comprised of viable candidates who currently work for other organizations.

Reason Three: To address and deal with talent shortages

Talent shortages occur even in a down economy. Examples include pharmacy managers, nurse managers, engineers, and sales representatives. If a pharmacy manager resigns in a hospital, research shows that finding a replacement can be extremely difficult. How will the organization respond? What strategies will be put in place to avoid a lengthy leadership void? This may require promoting candidates before they are fully ready for the position. While this will only be done when there are no viable options available, who you select and how you support the candidate’s transition should be thought out in advance. Knee-jerk placements — fast hires and “not ready for prime time” (unless there is an integration strategy) hires — do not often fair well.

Succession planning is a process and not an event, and it is a process that is critical for all organizations whether they are anticipating turnover and vacancies, planning for growth, or working to adjust to talent shortages.

To manage the process effectively, we recommend the following steps:

• Assign responsibility for succession planning to the executive team members (and make its success part of their evaluation process)
• Identify needs/key roles currently and in the future that reflect several layers deep
• Develop and use methods/tools/techniques for identifying employee competencies and aspirations
• Implement a structure for developing potential successors
• Implement a structure for transitioning successors to and in new role(s)
• Identify and emergency or interim process to fulfill a role if for some reason the potential successor does not work out.
• Align your recruitment initiative to succession planning by forecasting key needs and interviewing for growth orientation and adaptability
• Evaluate plan effectiveness and update the plan as required, at least annually

When promoting from within, do you select the person who is doing the best job in their current role? Do you promote the person you like the most, the person who has the most seniority, or the person who gives you attention and deference? It is not unusual to promote a good technical person or a good clinical person into a management position. Technology companies and healthcare organizations do this frequently.

If this is your current practice, then you are missing out on the opportunity to improve business performance. You may also be dramatically and unnecessarily increasing your cost of operations. This is hardly a good strategy in the current economy.

Look at the cost of a bad (mismatched) promotion:

• Time to become productive in the job
• Time to separate from being a peer to being a boss
• Time to learn the new political aspects of the job
• Turnover cost resulting from a bad promotion
• Lost productivity resulting from the turnover
• Recruiting cost to replace employees lost to turnover
• Time to become productive for the new hire

While cost is obvious, time is a valuable and non-renewable resource. A poor promotional decision is expensive.

Internal promotions should be approached the same way you approach external hires: formally. There are distinct advantages when promoting from within. The candidate knows the business, knows some of the politics (politics at the managerial and executive level, however, are different), and is familiar with the culture. But this knowledge alone does not qualify them for promotion. What qualifies them for promotion is a positive performance track record and a demonstrated ability or high potential (versus just interest) to take on additional responsibilities and succeed.

Here are five actions that organizations can take to prepare internal candidates for promotion:

1. Have a formal (or at least an informal) succession plan. Identify individuals in your organization who can fill current senior positions should the incumbent retire or leave, or new positions that are created due to growth, new product or service introductions, or new projects critical to the success of the company.
2. Implement a management development program to provide future promotable candidates the opportunity to take on additional and more challenging responsibilities. A management development program will serve to identify employee strengths, preferences, values, and potential derailers (risk tendencies) that will enable a best fit for positions available.
3. Introduce a valid and meaningful 360-degree evaluation. This will ensure that the candidates identified for promotion are truly qualified and not just good at managing up and managing their image.
4. Provide the future promotable candidates with a mentor to help guide them through both the tangible and intangible aspects of achieving success within the company.
5. Provide the newly promoted employee with coaching support to support the transition from a functional and technical focus to a manager with broader responsibilities.

Once the candidate is selected and promoted, their transition must be supported. It is reckless to assume that a candidate promoted from within the organization will automatically succeed and needs no further attention. Yes, they know the organization. But do they know how to manage and perform at a new level within the organization? Promotion doesn’t result in instant competence. A mentor or a coach are excellent ways to support the transition and prove to be a good investment.

Some candidates, however, will not have had the advantage of participating in a management development (i.e. “grooming and growing”) process. Some may never have held a management position. Some may have agreed to a promotion reluctantly.

Creating a formal talent integration process for newly promoted managers is a wise business practice.

Talent integration involves:

1. A formal transition plan to help the manager/executive integrate into the new position. Formal and purposeful discussion between the new manager/executive and their immediate supervisor on how best to work with each other and to define clear expectations regarding job performance and expected results.
2. Internal mentorship to help the manager/executive better understand how to deal with peers, how organizational politics work at the managerial level, and “how work gets done here” from a manager’s perspective.
3. Coaching (best done with an external/neutral executive/performance coach) — to help with the transition, especially for developing the management skills required in the new position (i.e. technical/clinical person being promoted to manager)

Recently highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, 26% of managers aren’t trained to manage, according to the Rasmussen Report. Now consider the even greater likelihood of this when technical people are promoted to management. For internal promotions to be highly successful, a rigorous internal promotion process must be established and a formal transition integration process must be put in place. The cost of not doing so is simply too great. Unless your funding and talent are abundant and not a concern, you can’t afford not to.

The typical hiring questions that come up are:

• Who do we hire?
• Where do we find them?
• What should we pay them?
• How do we retain them?

While these questions are important, there are two issues that must be addressed first: alignment and transformability.

Alignment addresses the passion and skills the person brings to the organization, and their fit within the organization. Transformability is hiring the person not for the job as it exists today, but as it will exist tomorrow. Addressing the alignment issue without considering the transformability issue will likely result in hiring the wrong person.

Alignment has three components: passion, skills, and fit. In selecting an employee, gauge their passion for the work and for the challenge it represents. Identify the skills needed to support the continuing growth of the company. It could be marketing, sales, operations, or financial skills. Lastly, evaluate how the person will fit into your organization. Fit essentially is how well the person will cope with the “way work is done around here”: with the personalities, the pace, and the customers.

Alignment is important, but in isolation of the second component — transformability — insufficient to ensure that the right person will be hired. You are not hiring for the job as it exists today; you are hiring for the job as it will likely exist 12 months from today.

Remember, we are talking about a fast-growing company, and one of the characteristics of a fast-growing company is that things change — fast.

Think about the last time you changed jobs. While we all like to believe we hit the ground running, most of us took some time to assimilate into the new job, to the way work gets done, to what is and is not acceptable, and to a myriad of other issues resident in a new organization.

Now consider this: you just start feeling comfortable in your work environment (that is, you have assimilated) and you come to work the next day and the job has changed. Your skills are no longer what are required because what is required now is different. This is a fact of life in fast-growing companies.

So when you are thinking about hiring, and you are a fast growing company, think about how the job will look 12 months from now. Think about the skills that will be required, and start looking for candidates who fit the future, not just the current, job requirements.

When talking with candidates, tell them what the job is today, how you expect it will change over time, and that you are looking to fill the job as it will likely exist in the future, not as it exists today. This way, you are being honest.

Some candidates may seriously wonder if you know what you are doing. Others will be energized by the idea that the job will change and they will not only have a chance to grow, but they will be expected to grow. Fast-changing job requirements are not for the faint of heart or bureaucrats. This kind of job ambiguity isn’t for everyone, but if you consider alignment and transformability as you start the hiring process, you are being honest with both yourself and with your future employee. The probability that you will hire and retain the right person increases significantly.

Here are nine questions to consider when interviewing for a fast-growing company:

1. Did the candidate show passion for the work and the challenge?
2. Did the candidate demonstrate an ability to tolerate ambiguity?
3. Did the candidate possess general knowledge and skills? Were they intelligent?
4. Was the candidate prepared for the interview and did they have interesting ideas about the job, the company, and the product or service?
5. What is candidate’s work history (results) and experience with different roles/jobs?
6. Did the candidate demonstrate an ability to “think on his/her feet”?
7. Is there a cultural fit?
8. Did the candidate present well (read: executive presence)?
9. Did the candidate challenge you and your thinking during the interview with a good questions or another way to look at an issue?