Instead, consider successful recruiting more like a well-planned football drive, where time of possession is key. If you’re not into football analogies, the idea here is that top people don’t make critical career decisions on the first call or after the first interview. And if you try to push too hard to get a commitment you’ll drive the best away. This is equivalent to a turnover.

With a great football weekend ahead, here’s what it takes to turn a successful drive into a touchdown:

1. Don’t fumble the kickoff. On the recruiting playing field this is equivalent to the candidate asking about the compensation first, or telling you she’s not interested. It’s also forcing a candidate to apply for the job before she can talk to someone about it, to get a better idea if the job is even worthwhile considering. For better kickoff returns, add a chat feature today to your career website and let your candidates IM a recruiter. Or add a series of FAQs about each job. When calling a candidate on the phone for the first time, whether the person’s active or passive, you must not discuss compensation under any circumstances for at least the first 10-15 minutes! The goal of the first encounter is to switch the conversation to career opportunity and away from compensation, or any other form of “not interested.” (Here’s an article with more on this critical step.) Rather than sell the job, your goal is to sell the next step. In this case, it’s a 10- minute conversation just to figure out if the job is worth getting serious about. A good kickoff return will give you great field position, and this is just as critical in football as it is in recruiting.
2. Get lots of first downs. While you might have a big 30- or 40-yard play now and then, this should be the exception, not the rule. If you’re relying on big plays to score, you’ll lose a lot of candidates who need to move slowly to digest what you’re offering. Force-feeding information at hyper-speed won’t work. A career move requires time for the person to digest the information. Nurturing the candidate along, suggesting another interview or discussion is how this information is best presented in order to be absorbed properly. This is why selling the next step is so important, rather than forcing the candidate to consider the job, the comp, and the location during the first call.
3. Prevent turnovers. Once you begin a drive downfield, don’t do dumb things that cause the deal to instantly fall apart. Recruiters who don’t know the job and managers who over-talk and sell too soon are two examples of recruiting turnovers. Managers who expect top performers to be excited about the job before they know anything about it are the most turnover prone. Turnovers can also be caused when members of the hiring team ask superficial question or are equally clueless about real jobs needs. Lack of professionalism at any step in the hiring process can result in unnecessary turnovers and the loss of some great candidates.
4. Convert your third-downs. Once in awhile you’ll only have one shot to keep the deal alive. For example, if the candidate says she doesn’t like the manager or the job isn’t big enough and wants to withdraw her name from consideration, you’ll have to come up with a big third-down play. In this case, ask the candidate if she’d reconsider if you made the job bigger, or if you could demonstrate that the style the manager used during the interview isn’t the same as his on-the-job persona. Of course, you then have to prove it if the candidate agrees to go forward, but that’s how you convert third-downs and keep the drive alive.
5. Keep the defense honest. Don’t tip your hand too soon. Overselling the candidate, over-talking, and under-listening are equivalent to telling the defense you’re going to pass on every play. This is no way to win a ball game or hire a top performer. Keep the candidate guessing, mention other top candidates, question the candidate’s breadth of experience, and excite the candidate with projects bigger than he’s handled in the past. This is how you keep the person interested throughout the assessment and recruiting process.
6. Time of possession is key. Don’t rush to close. Not only does the candidate need time to evaluate what you’re offering, you’ll increase your close rate by getting the person to invest more time in evaluating your opportunity rather than the competition’s. I suggest more interviews spread over a few days or weeks, rather than pushing them all into one day. Also add a take-home case study and a Profiles International online evaluation for all your candidates once you get serious. (Email info@adlerconcepts.com for information about the Profiles International online evaluation.) The case study allows the candidate a day or two to evaluate a problem likely to be faced on the job with the results presented in a formal give-and-take panel interview. The Profiles is a one-hour cognitive and behavioral style assessment and provides invaluable insight into the candidate. Not only are the results useful, but when candidates agree to participate in these time-consuming tasks, they’re expressing serious interest and increasing their commitment to you.
7. Know your competition. One size doesn’t fit all. Some candidates are interested in security, others want challenging projects, and some want career growth. Customize your approach depending on the candidate’s needs. We suggest a multi-factor close where the candidate rank orders his job requirements. Some of the items to be considered include work content, job stretch, job challenges, growth opportunities, company culture, compensation, security, the hiring manager, and team. (Send us an email, info@adlerconcepts.com, if you’d like to see the whole list.) With this custom playbook you can change your play calling at the line of scrimmage to ensure your candidate gets the information required to make a well thought-out final decision. Of course, evaluate the candidate across multiple factors as well, so stop the traditional series of one-on-one interviews that are both duplicative and exhausting. Instead, consider tours with debriefing sessions, group interviews, some intense one-on-ones, a take-home project, and a business lunch. Then formally debrief using a broad-based selection criteria. (Here’s the 10-factor candidate assessment form we suggest for this.)
8. Maintain a competitive edge throughout the drive. The key to effective recruiting is applicant control. This means staying the buyer from first contact through offer acceptance and final close. As part of applicant control, your job is not only to advance downfield, but recognize that first downs are earned by getting the candidate to agree to something significant at each step in the process. For example, don’t arrange the first interview with the hiring manager unless you get agreement from the candidate that she’ll be looking at the job as a career move with a modest increase in salary. Use the second round of interviews to gain more concessions, like a possible start date and informal agreement on the benefits package. Set the final offer meeting with the candidate agreeing to formally accepting within 24 hours. This is applicant control, and it essential for closing the best entry-level candidates as well as senior executives.
9. Don’t fumble in the red zone. You must score when you’re within sight of the goal line. Make sure you know where you stand compared to the competition on all critical decision factors the candidate is likely to consider. Giving the candidate the multi-factor decision form mentioned above ensures the candidate is looking at the job broadly, and you’re not surprised by their order of importance. This way during the drive to close you can use each subsequent interview step to cover each of these factors. Caution: don’t present the offer too soon or reveal your hand. You haven’t scored yet.
10. Score. Everything has been a waste of time if a candidate says she’s not interested or accepts another offer or counter-offer. Scoring in the game of recruiting means the candidate has accepted your offer on fair terms and shows up on the start date. The best way to score more often is to test every aspect of the offer before you make it. While it’s important not to fumble the kickoff, it’s more important not to fumble on the one-yard line. Before making the offer formal, review the terms in detail and ask the candidate if she’ll accept it on these terms if it’s formally presented without hesitation. If you sense hesitation, side-step the forward progression and find out the concerns. Then ask the person if she’d accept the offer if the concerns were satisfactorily addressed. Uncovering the candidate’s concerns before you make the offer is essential if you want to make more placements. Of course you’ll need to address the concerns to close the deal, but rushing the offer without knowing if the person will accept is naïve at best, and one sure way to lose more candidates than necessary.

Slow down and make more placements. While you want to move as fast as possible, the best people will not move faster than they can absorb the information. They’ll opt-out otherwise. It’s just like being pushed into buying anything that requires some significant degree of comparison shopping and evaluation. Build this slow and steady process into every phase of your recruiting efforts and watch your placement rate soar.

Fumbles, turnovers, incomplete passes, sacks, and failed third-down conversions are all caused by going too fast. Don’t sell the job, sell the next step.

How Can We Improve Our Ability to Hire Right the First Time?

The two most common hiring traps are hiring in a hurry and hiring the resume rather than the person.

Companies that don’t have succession plans in place or that fail to practice cross-training often rush to relieve the pain of the empty chair. Businesses that ignore the hiring process in the interest of expediting it are far more susceptible to missing important clues that could otherwise prevent a poor hiring decision.

Articles from Harvard Business Review, Spherion, and Kenexa report that more than 65% of all candidates do not prepare their own resumes and more than 45% of job applicants misrepresent the credentials on their resumes with one or more “tall tales.”

A third and very common hiring trap is to hire based on a job description. These typically list a subjective interpretation of required job skills and experience. By highlighting only hard skills, they leave out the most critical elements such as key performance objectives, behaviors, values, character traits, and soft competencies — the defining criteria that lead to effective performance.

There is tremendous pressure on hiring managers to keep their organizations fully staffed and productive. But, how does one meet these demands without falling into hiring traps?

What is an Internal Hiring Process, and How Do We Create One?

If you hire someone you don’t really know, for a position you have not thoroughly defined — chances are neither the person, nor the position will deliver. Hiring the right people right from the start requires implementation of a comprehensive internal hiring process that selects the best and eliminates the rest.

Importantly, it all starts with benchmarking. Whether benchmarking the role, the top performers in that role, or benchmarking key traits of the best performers in the company as a whole, the first step is creating the model of what right looks like. Companies that take the time and effort to do so fully understand not only who they need, but why they need them. These are the companies that excel in the employee selection process and the capacity to build a “dream team.”

What “Right” Looks Like

Before you evaluate your immediate needs, evaluate the company and team. This is called the Internal Human Capital Inventory & Assessment, and involves:

Evaluating your core culture:

• Acknowledge your corporate values.
• Assess the character quotient of your company.
• Identify the non-negotiable character traits or core values for your company.

Evaluating your current team:

• Identify your key players and what innate abilities and traits make them successful.
• Identify what’s working on the team and what isn’t.
• Identify what elements are missing on the team that, if present, would make a positive difference.

Implementing a system for evaluating and selecting new hires and internal promotions:

• Establish a hiring protocol and train everyone on the hiring to use and follow it.
• Create companywide candidate-screening ground rules.
• Create a role-specific hiring benchmark for every role. Focus on the key performance indicators as they relate to the corporate strategy. Then isolate the core functions that the candidate would need to perform. Define the behaviors, values, habits, attitudes, and abilities of the ideal candidate. List the skills and experience required to limit ramp-up time.
• Validate and select the right assessment tools.
• Create behavioral-based interview models for each role in the company.
• Establish a decision-making matrix (a weighted chart with a point value for each part of the puzzle, experience = 5; behaviors =10; skills =7, habits =15, values/motivators =15).

A key question in every recruiting manager’s mind these days is “how will recruiting and talent management be impacted by the economic downturn?”

In fact, it will also be a major topic at next week’s ERE Expo in Hollywood Beach, Florida. If you can’t wait till then, this article will highlight some issues to anticipate and action steps you can take that will increase the probability of your survival and perhaps even prosperity during these tough economic times.

If you are a regular reader of my articles, you know that I warned of the upcoming downturn as early as August 2007. However, if you missed that “heads up” and have been in recruiting for more than a few years, you already realize that there are periodic economic downturns. These downturns quite often negatively impact the recruiting function through hiring freezes and dramatic budget cuts in recruiting as organizations seek to “contain costs.”

However, this economic downturn is different. Traditionally, when the economic cycle peaks and starts its cycle downwards, everything related to business and recruiting declines; events are consistent and relatively predictable.

Instead of recruiting heading straight down, it will be volatile. The demand for talent management services will go radically down, then back up again in short spurts, and then down again. This volatility will require more planning than ever before from the recruiting function.

Instead of planning for one consistent, long, downward spiral with associated layoffs and hiring freezes, organizations will need to prepare for spurts of growth and continuous hiring in some areas while layoffs occur in others. Some might call these actions “right-sizing” the workforce, but that would imply that organizations are much better at forecasting and workforce planning than most actually are.

There are several reasons why hiring will continue:

• The volatility in credit markets
• Globalization
• The need by organizations to continually innovate

The first and perhaps most important cause of volatility will be the chaotic availability of credit and capital. The continued uncertainty related to financial markets will cause oscillations or “spurts” during which capital will be easier and then harder to get. This volatility will cause firms to grow and to hire in spurts.

A second cause of volatility is globalization. In a truly global business world, there will almost always be some degree of economic growth in emerging economies scattered around the world. Because many major US companies now book a majority of their revenues abroad, pressure to keep corporate functions fully staffed will continue despite possible layoffs in production and client service groups.

A third reason volatility will plague the recruiting function is relentless consumer demand for new innovative products. Despite the downturn, consumer demand remains high. When negative news erupts, those in Western societies go shopping!

Because the rate of innovation among competitive firms is unlikely to slow down, firms will still need to rapidly innovate in their products and business processes.

The demand for relentless innovation will continuously alter the skills needed by a firm at any particular point in time. Firms will need to learn how to continuously hire workers with new skills, while simultaneously releasing workers with obsolete skills with surgical precision. Truly strategic firms see economic downturns as an opportunity, in part because it’s now faster and cheaper to “buy” talent rather than to “develop” existing talent.

The Top 10 Advantages of Recruiting During Tough Times

It’s quite common during periods of economic turmoil for CFOs to assume and declare that robust recruiting functions will not be necessary due to a surplus of talent becoming available as more and more firms engage in layoffs, consolidations, and the ceasing of operations.

Well-known and respected firms like Deloitte have already partially downsized recruiting using this failed logic. Despite this negative perspective, there are some positive things that routinely happen during bad economic times:

1. Less competition from other firms. If your firm isn’t well known or doesn’t have a strong employment brand, you will face less head-to-head competition for talent during this time. As other firms reduce recruiting budgets, the recruiting effectiveness of your competitors will decrease dramatically also, giving your firm a competitive advantage. Candidates will be easier to sell because they will have fewer options and counter offers to choose from.
2. More high quality candidates will be available. Not only are more candidates available during times of high unemployment, but higher-quality candidates are also available. Not only will laid off individuals be on the market but you should also target individuals that “survived” the layoffs and mergers because they will have reduced company loyalty as a result of all of the trauma. Taken together this means that innovators and top-performing individuals that could never be “drawn away” from their current jobs are now available and interested in lesser known firms. This surplus along with little competition makes “counter cycle” recruiting a great strategy for “loading up” with great talent, especially in the college market.
3. Weakened employment brands. As competitor firms make the mistake of conducting large-scale “public” layoffs, their employment brand and external image will be dramatically weakened. Thus providing increased opportunities for firms that have maintained or intelligently strengthened their employment brand during this period.
4. Turnover and retirement rates will decrease. As the downturn increases your employees desire for job security, fewer will even consider leaving their current jobs for firms where their lack of tenure will mean little security. This means that it’ll be easier to retain your top talent (and recruiting won’t have to work so hard to find replacements). Conversely, it will be more difficult to draw away top talent working at other firms. The downturn in the stock market and the dramatic reduction in the value of their 401(k)’s will also mean that fewer of your employees will opt to retire as soon as they are eligible, easing any baby boom retirement concerns.
5. Higher quality recruiters will be available. Tough times means that some excellent recruiters will be available for those firms planning for the long-term.
6. The dollar is stronger. The newly strengthened U.S. dollar makes recruiting international candidates much easier.
7. New recruiting technology is available. The availability of social networking and other web-based technologies now makes effective recruiting possible with little or no budget.
8. Capability to explode out of the box. If you successfully defend your recruiting budget, your firm will have the capability of “exploding out of the box” immediately after the downturn is over. This capability will put you far ahead of other firms that have decimated their recruiting capabilities during this time. In order to have that advantage, you will need to calculate and then report the negative impacts of “disassembling the recruiting function” to your executives. That includes costs related to the delays in being able to resume hiring, the increased risk of losing top applicants, the lower quality of hires and the increased startup costs related to reassembling the recruiting function.
9. Tight times make you stronger. A tight budget forces you to focus more on metrics and a strong business case. Both of these should allow you to better identify the most effective recruiting tools and approaches. By eliminating the deadwood, streamlining processes and focusing on the best approaches, you will eventually strengthen the function over-all.
10. Workforce planning will be encouraged. While it’s often a “fight” to convince executives to invest in workforce planning, economic volatility and the pain of laying off talent they fought so hard to acquire almost always convinces senior managers of the need for a strong workforce planning function. Use this “lull” to develop an effective forecasting capability and a “flexible” recruiting strategy that “shifts” during the different economic cycles. Both can help you prepare your firm for the next imminent up or down cycle.

Even if you successfully defend your recruiting budget during these volatile times, it’s critical that you focus your resources on talent-management approaches that are both low-cost and effective:

Using Other People’s Resources

• Employee referrals. The key practice for recruiting during economic volatility should be “recruit using other people’s money.” As a result, employee referrals need to be your number-one focus, because they shift a great deal of the recruiting “work” away from recruiters and on to your firm’s employees. Referrals produce high volume and high quality but during tight budget times, the cost of referral bonuses needs to be reduced. Shift to a drawing approach; instead of giving individual cash bonuses, employees get an opportunity to win trips, vacation time, lunch with the CEO, or other non-cash yet compelling prizes. Some firms like Edward Jones have produced over 50% of their hires from referrals without offering any cash incentives; granted, they have a great brand. You can also make customers, employees’ families, suppliers, and consultants who work with your firm eligible for the referral program. Finally, proactively approaching your firm’s top performers individually and asking them for “names” is another effective referral approach to re-emphasize.
• Recruiting at professional events. Recruiting at local and national professional events again “utilizes other people’s money” because the travel and expenses of the attending employee are covered by their business unit. Develop the expectation that each employee attending these events will bring back “three names” of individuals that would be outstanding recruits. Encourage your executives and superstars to speak at these events, because that exposure might result in some immediate candidates, as well as improving your overall employment brand.
• Social networks. There is a high probability that your employees currently utilize one or more social networks (i.e., Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace) both on and off the job. So why not take advantage of that fact and use it to supplement your recruiting. Start by encouraging your employees to include in their profiles compelling facts and stories about the firm. Next, encourage them to proactively make group connections and to provide you with names of potential recruits.
• Blogs. Many of your top employees probably already write blogs in their technical field. If so, encourage them to talk about the positive aspects of your firm and to actively recruit on their blogs. Encourage other employees that read blogs to use them to also identify top talent.
• Videos. Videos are powerful recruiting tools because they allow you to more effectively “show the passion” at your firm. Consider holding a video contest where employees compete to put together short compelling videos about why your firm is a great place to work. Post the best ones on your own corporate website or on YouTube.

Low-Cost Approaches to Consider

• Boomerangs. The best way to ensure a high-quality hire that perfectly “fits” your culture is to focus on recruiting boomerangs (individuals that previously worked at your firm). During tough economic times, many of these individuals might regret their decision to leave. A simple phone call reassuring them that they would be welcomed back might be all it would take to land proven talent.
• Cut back on full service agency fees and utilize names research firms. It’s always wise to increase the percentage of contingent or contract workers during volatile times. Unfortunately, the agencies that generally provide contingent workers are expensive and their fees are certainly noticeable within a reduced budget. By bringing these services in-house, you can both keep your recruiters busy and maybe even generate a profit by externally “renting out” surplus talent to other firms. Incidentally, if your firm excels at “selling” candidates but needs help in identifying them, now is an excellent time to utilize “research firms” to provide you with the “names” of top talent at competitors. “Names research” firms (i.e., RW Stearns, Technames etc.) provide a relatively inexpensive service when compared to full-service third-party recruiting.
• Utilize interns. College interns are not counted as headcount and are easy to land and many will work for free during tough economic times. They excel at metrics, Internet research, research on best practices, assessing software, and beginning projects that few others are interested in. Focus on HR and management students from local business schools.
• Conduct Google searches. It’s almost impossible for anyone with any professional status to “hide” these days. Key people always have high visibility on the Internet, so utilize low-cost recruiters or interns to identify well-known individuals by running their “Google score.” Names can be found by searching using major technical terms or job titles, along with a firm name.
• Develop a flex plan. Research previous downturns in order to identify whether there are “precursors” within your firm which occur immediately before a growth or cut in recruiting. Also examine the broad industry to see if there are firms which routinely “lead the way” in recruiting related actions. By identifying and tracking these “early mover firms” in recruiting, managers can get a good idea of what will likely happen to you (because your firm has historically been a lagging or follower firm in the industry). Your recruiting plan should also include “labor arbitrage” options that might include geographically shifting the work to where labor is cheaper, outsourcing the work, or replacing work done by people with machines and technology.

10 Recruiting Problems You Might Face During Tough Economic Times

During volatile economic times, some things that used to be easy in recruiting and Talent Management become much more difficult. As a result, it’s important to identify and then focus on these new problem areas:

1. Hiring freezes. One of the first knee-jerk reactions during tough times are company-wide freezes. Although salary, promotion, and budget freezes negatively impact retention, hiring freezes can decimate a recruiting function. Some tips on fighting hiring freezes can be found in my recent article.
2. Stock options are no longer a major motivator. With the stock market constantly going up and down, stock options become less valuable as a motivator both for current employees and for candidates. As a result, you need to shift your sales approach to candidates to emphasize exciting work, flexible work, better benefits, more security, or to focus on cash performance bonuses.
3. Job security is king. Economic volatility makes both employees and candidates nervous about their future. This fear among potential candidates causes them to increase their emphasis on security, which will definitely make “drawing away” the currently employed top performer from their current firm much harder. Recruiting needs to re-examine the information that it provides on job security on its website, in position descriptions and in its offers in order to make it more compelling.
4. An increased volume of traffic. Normally, all great recruiters focus on the employed candidate (the so-called passive candidates). However, layoffs and high unemployment may mean that some high-quality people are now available among the ranks of the unemployed. Unfortunately, if you actively recruit during tough times, the volume of mediocre but enthusiastic unemployed people who will apply for your jobs will also increase dramatically. This high-volume, low-quality flow means that your screeners will be strained and that your selection process has to be more precise to ensure that you don’t mistakenly hire highly enthusiastic people who turn out to be low performers.
5. Relocation issues. Moving people between regions becomes nearly impossible when individuals can’t get new mortgages or sell their existing homes. This problem affects both internal transfers and new hires. Alternatives to consider include focusing on recent college grads who generally rent or consider “narrowing” your recruiting area to a reasonable commuting distance.
6. A loss of trust and confidence. Although your firm might not have been involved, the general mistrust of business that has resulted from the economic turmoil means that both your employees and your candidates will likely now have less trust and confidence in anything that you say. In recruiting, this means that your website must be more objective and believable, your interviews need to be more credible and your offers will need to be stronger, if you expect to convince the cynical.
7. Managers will focus less on recruiting. Few managers have ever really enjoyed recruiting. But their interest in it will likely even decrease further during tough times as the stress from their business workload increases, while their available staff decreases. Their interest in recruiting will decrease because they certainly won’t be doing it as often but also because of the increased frustration that invariably occurs when many of their “active searches” are never be completed because of frequent “surprise” hiring or budget freezes. Their lack of interest in reading resumes and interviews will invariably mean a dramatically slower average “time to fill” at your firm.
8. Layoffs. Although you probably can’t stop layoffs from happening, you should certainly fight to minimize their impact on your employment brand image. Work with PR to ensure that layoffs by your firm don’t become front-page news for potential applicants to see and worry over.
9. Technology budgets. Almost invariably during tight economic times, any budget resources available for buying new technology (ATS systems or new software) are likely to disappear. So either make your purchases immediately or be prepared to live with what you have for a while.
10. Recruiting budget cuts. Almost everyone gets their budget cut during business downturns but there’s no reason for recruiting’s budget to be cut any deeper than others. The key to maintaining your budget is to build a strong business case demonstrating that cutting recruiting has more negative business impacts than the limited cost savings that these cuts generate. Also utilize split samples to demonstrate your impact. When possible, work with powerful executives in growth businesses to get them to “champion” your cause or to directly fund recruiting initiatives that impact their business unit. Also, work with the CFO’s office to quantify the dollar impact of low quality and bad hires, as well as the revenues lost as a result of position vacancies in revenue-generating and revenue impact positions. In finally, focus on winning external recruiting and “Best Place To Work” awards to increase your visibility and credibility among executives.

Final Thoughts

Rather than letting “fear” rule the day, now is the time to anticipate problems and to prioritize your activities in order to maximize your impact.

Volatility in the business also means that recruiting must be flexible and expand its capabilities into areas that increase in importance during tough times. This might mean that recruiters now need to aid in the internal redeployment of employees, in retention, in employment branding, or even helping with layoffs and outplacements. Now is the time to plan ahead and to begin turning “lemons into lemonade.”

Surprisingly, most sales managers make the same bad decisions, regardless of the product or industry.

Here’s the list of where most sales managers go wrong. Start eliminating these error-producing behaviors and just about all of your sales hiring mistakes will go away.

• They think their job is unique. They’re not. There is a common sales process behind each one, that when understood can be used to benchmark any candidate’s past performance against.
• They overvalue first impressions. First impressions don’t predict performance. People with great first impressions are frequently incompetent and people with marginal first impression often have a track record of great success. It’s best to measure first impression at the end of the interview and then determine how the candidate’s first impression affected their performance in consistently achieving quota. From what I’ve seen, the best sales managers don’t worry about first impressions, they worry about the candidate having a track record of achieving good sales results selling similar products, to similar buyers, in similar situations.
• They overvalue their gut or instinct. This is only acceptable when the sales manager has a track record of hiring all top performers who all make quota in combination with very low department turnover. Emotions, intuition, or instinct are poor predictors of on-the-job success. A track record of past performance selling similar products or influencing similar buyers is a great predictor.
• They don’t know the job. Sales is a process that starts with lead generation and ends at closing. Certain aspects of the process are more critical than others. If a sales manager doesn’t know what these are, it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to accurately assess them in the candidate. As a result, the sales manager shifts the decision criteria to first impressions and gut instinct.
• They assume they’re great managers. Most great sales people aren’t great managers, yet this is the person most likely to get promoted. It takes a great deal of work to build, develop, and manage an effective sales team. As part of the assessment process, the sales manager has to assess the fit between her style of management and how each person on the team needs to be managed. This directly relates to Hershey and Blanchard’s situational leadership model.

Flipping this over, here are some things you need to do to achieve better results hiring sales reps:

1. Know the sales process from beginning to end before ever interviewing another candidate.

Whether the sales cycle is 30 minutes long or months, there are some typical steps that ultimately determine how successful the sales rep will be. Breaking your company’s sales process into these steps enables the sales manager to identify the critical drivers and then assess the candidate’s past performance against these. At a broad level most sales processes can be categorized into these big segments:

• Prospecting and lead generation
• Qualifying the lead and conducting needs analysis
• Proving your product’s worth in comparison to the customer’s needs
• Preparing some type of offer or proposal
• Closing and negotiating the offer

Of course, there are multiple variations to this depending on customer need, the complexity of the offering, the type of buyer involved and how the buying decision is made, the dollars involved, budgets available, economic conditions and competitive positioning, to name just a few.

A performance profile summarizes these details in the form of a series of prioritized performance objectives including specific results and time frames. For example, a performance objective for a sales rep developing a new territory might have an objective like, “within 30 days prepare a detailed territory plan including target clients to meet.” A similar performance objective for a outbound telesales person might be, “within 30 days after completing the training convert 35% of all sales calls into minimum $100 orders.”

Once these performance objectives have been determined put them into priority order. The top two or three (out of 6-8) tend to become the critical success drivers. For example, conducting needs analysis with a decision-maker might be relatively easy, with the real key to success being the ability to get past a gate-keeper and arrange the meeting with the decision-maker. It is essential that the members of the hiring team understand these critical success drivers and then hone in on them during the interview. (Here’s more information on how to prepare performance profiles and interview for a wide variety of sales positions.) From what I’ve seen lack of understanding of real job needs is the primary cause of bad hiring decisions, not only in sales, but for all jobs.

2. Benchmark the candidate’s performance against the performance profile by asking about these issues:

• Get specific details about how the person managed the process and how well they did.
• Find out their track record of making quota and how they recovered when things went sour.
• Walk through the sales process at a few major successful accounts and compare this to yours.
• Walk through the sales process where the person was unsuccessful and compare this to yours.
• Find out how the person learned the product line and compare this to yours from a complexity standpoint and the amount of training provided.
• Go step-by-step through all of the team issues including managing and processing leads, orders, and pre- and post-delivery issues.
• Compare your typical buyer to the types of buyers the candidate successfully handled.
• Find out how successful the candidate was working for different sales managers, ask about their styles, then compare these to the hiring sales manager’s style.

3. Benchmark the candidate’s past performance to the performance profile, especially against the critical success drivers.

We use our 10-Factor Candidate Assessment template as a guide to evaluate the candidate against ten factors we’ve seen to be strong predictors of on-the-job success.

For sales, the primary keys to an accurate assessment include a comparison of the sales process, the types of buyers involved, the sales cycle, the complexity of the product and associated terms, and the degree of competition. Of course, the behavioral issues can’t be ignored including persistence, learning the product line, organizational skills, and team leadership, among others, but these are secondary to having a track record of sales success in a comparable situation.

4. Assess managerial fit.

This is probably the most important, yet it is almost always overlooked. A sales manager must be dedicated to training and developing his or her sales team. This requires significant direction, on-the-job training, constant follow-up, the ability to motivate others, and involved planning.

In situational leadership terms these are the classic Director and Coaching styles. A self-managing Delegating style rarely works in sales, especially for a new hire. A Participating style involving territory planning and target account tactics would be appropriate for an experienced sales person who can achieve his goals with limited direction and support.

From what I’ve seen too many sales managers aren’t as involved as necessary to keep their teams on track. If a sales manager isn’t willing to devote 100% of her time to developing and managing her team, even it’s comprised of good people, it will underperform. That’s why choosing the sales manager is the first step in getting the sales hiring process right.

As part of the sales hiring process, we also recommend the use of some type of cognitive and behavioral questionnaire for all finalists. While there are many of these tests around, we’ve been using Profiles International’s for over 20 years with great success.

Knowing that some type of formal test is being used keeps the interviewers more focused, increasing overall assessment accuracy.

Hiring sales people is relatively easy if you don’t get emotionally involved. This alone will eliminate many common hiring mistakes. Regardless of your underlying sales process, the process of hiring great sales people is exactly the same whether you’re selling ERP software or part-time vacation villas. That’s the real secret to hiring great reps.

Wise decisions, considering that only 23 percent of the companies surveyed intend to add full time workers in the next three months.

These are some of the findings reported in CareerBuilder.com and USA TODAY’s “Q4 2008 Job Forecast” released today. The report was based on a survey of more than 3,000 hiring managers and HR professionals and over 6,100 workers in private sector companies nationwide.

The number of companies saying they would be hiring in the last quarter of this year is 8 percent lower than the 25 percent who reported adding staff between July 1 and today. The survey, conducted by Harris Interactive between August 21 and September 9, also found that 14 percent of companies had layoffs during the third quarter. That was 40 percent more than the number predicted in the “Q3 2008 Job Forecast,” a sign, perhaps of the worsening economy.

In fact, in a footnote to the forecast released today, CareerBuilder warns “The ‘Q4 2008 Job Forecast’ survey was conducted before the full financial crisis became known and so may not fully reflect the effects of that crisis.” That helps explain why the survey again found that only ten percent of the companies expected layoffs in the fourth quarter; 63 percent expect no change in their permanent, full time headcount.

“Employers are maintaining a conservative approach to recruitment as they maneuver through a weaker economy that has produced its share of casualties,” said Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder.com. “Certain sectors such as IT and Healthcare are still showing solid job growth while others struggle with reorganization, cost containment and other measures to stay afloat.”

The widespread corporate caution toward hiring presents opportunities for recruiters who, in most industries, will have less competition. The 3rd quarter forecast found that while most companies were not taking advantage of the talent inventory to make changes in their workforce, 26.4 percent were using the opportunity to replace low performers with new talent. Of course, sourcing candidates will be more challenging given that almost 80 percent of workers do not expect to make a job change in the next year. That may be why 24 percent of the HR professionals and hiring managers reported open positions they have been unable to fill.

Do you have problems keeping your internal clients happy? Do you arrive at work first thing in the morning dreading e-mails and phone messages from certain hiring managers? Do you ever have the urge to chase some of your internal clients around the office with a blunt instrument while screaming something like, “More candidates? I’ll give you more candidates you miserable &*%&*,” as they scatter in fear of their lives? Does any of this sound familiar?

If this charming reality is even a part of the story of your recruiting life, you can change that story by adopting a radically innovative mindset and you can do it today. I urge you to consider the following fact: it is not your job to make your internal clients happy. Never was and never will be. You might have thought it was because we were all trained to think that way, but that is not our goal from a business perspective. Our real objective is to present them with two or three qualified candidates who could be hired. End of story. If your internal clients are not happy after that, the problem is theirs, not yours, because you have done your job.

Let’s take a closer look at this concept of “happy.” Consider the following words: “profit, objective, performance, leadership.” The omission of the word “happy” in that group of words is not accidental. That is because those are business-oriented words, whereas “happy” is an emotional state of being. As recruiters, making people happy is not our job. Good, proactive, and effective recruiting is our job. Locating, attracting, and presenting candidates for the positions we are trying to fill is our business, and that is the only business with which we are involved.

Taking it one step further (Sorry I’m on a roll…) Keeping internal clients “happy” is a fool’s errand. Recruiting is difficult enough. Crazy expectations, poor response time, and un-communicated changes in requirements just scratch the surface of the recruiter’s typical day. We roam the halls with this creepy feeling that a good many of our internal clients are not happy. We struggle to do the best we can; we locate and present qualified candidates; yet, we still have this sinking feeling that they are not happy. Forget happy. Just do your job as a recruiter and that will have to be good enough.

With that in mind, let’s see how we can execute on this new way of doing business.

1) Present only candidates who could be hired. In terms of definitions, a hirable candidate is one who has a reasonable chance of accepting an offer if one is tended. For example, do not present candidates, however qualified, if there is no good reason for them to accept the position. Case in point: the comp range on your position is $80,000 and your candidate is earning $79,000 with a raise due in a month. Your commute is 45 minutes and theirs is five minutes; they get four weeks; vacation, you give two. Get the point? You have a candidate who might be qualified but generally speaking, not likely to be hired. All this candidate will do is get a hiring manager excited about someone they can’t have. Honestly, why should they change jobs?

2) Present only qualified candidates. This is a basic, but it bears repeating: never present a candidate who is not qualified. For the more senior recruiters, I know that you can get creative at times and try to present off-label candidates to create an innovative hiring solution, and that is OK. On the other hand, be advised that you really need to know what you are doing to get away with that. You need to have both a good relationship and track record with the hiring manager if you wish to swim in these waters.

3) Understand the position. Once again, a basic that’s worth repeating. Understand all that you need to know before you source your first candidate. You can’t sell what you don’t understand.

4) Understand the candidate. Do interviews that are deep enough to understand not just the candidate’s qualification but what they really want/need in their next position. Take the extra 15 minutes to really know your candidate and you will never be sorry. (See “10 Things Recruiters Should Know About Every Candidate They Interview” for some real depth on this topic.)

5) Never make them wait. Be sure that your internal client never has to wait for you. If you have an action item as it relates to a position, a reference check, a question on their comp, whatever, do it as soon as humanly possible and get back to them with the results. Never, ever, make them wait.

6) Drive the process. You are either a driver or you are a passenger. Be a driver! If the internal client has to contact you to find out what is happening with their position, that is bad. If you contact them to ask what is happening with the candidates you have sent, that is good.

7) Document everything. Phone calls and quick hallway meetings are OK, but getting it in writing is even better. Send a “cc” to yourself on all e-mails and in the event you get verbal instructions, put it in e-mail to the hiring manager to keep it all straight. It is called CYA and yes, it is a sad way to live, but it is one of life’s realities.

8) Worry less about being liked. All of us want to be liked, but recruiters seem to carry it to an extreme. I know because I want to be liked as well as the next person. Do not let your judgment or activities be affected by this malady. There are times you will have to drive hard and make noise to get things done. Better to fill the position and scuff a few egos then fail to fill it and be loved by all. They do not pay us to be loved by all. (Looking for unconditional love? Get a dog.)

I know what you are thinking. Clients need to be happy. No — clients need to have their needs successfully met based upon the parameters established in the beginning of the relationship. If you are a driver, your job is to get them to the airport safely and on time. If you are a recruiter, your job is to present good candidates. “Happy” is an entirely different world whose meaning conjures up images of group hugs and bumper stickers that say “Have You Hugged Your Recruiter Today.” (Creepy huh?)

Personally, I think that internal clients should very happy if you manage to locate two or three candidates who are qualified and could be hired, but that’s just my opinion. All the rest is unnecessary drama; we are not in the drama business either.

The underlying purpose was to demonstrate the point that many important decisions, especially hiring decisions, are based on invalid assumptions, false impressions, personal beliefs, and lack of objective data. (Join this Ning Recruiters Roundtable network to submit your views.)

With this article as a starting point, let me offer some expert advice on how to make really bad hiring decisions:

1. Make emotional decisions and justify them with facts. Most interviewers make quick judgments about a candidate based on the four “A’s” – how attractive, articulate, assertive, and affable the candidate is. Candidates who pass the test are asked easier questions, with the interviewer looking for information to justify the positive impression. Contradictory and negative information is ignored. Candidates who don’t meet the appropriate first impression standard are assumed incompetent, with the interviewer asking tougher questions and seeking only information to prove their initial emotional judgment. Why waste your valuable time? Instead, just conduct a five-minute interview and forget collecting any facts. It won’t make any difference in your final decision, anyway.
2. Do not seek out objective data if it contradicts your beliefs or ignore it if you find some. I remember meeting a very attractive and seemingly quite competent candidate for a VP HR spot, who gave a superficial answer to an HR strategy question. I had to fight with myself about whether to ask a challenging follow-up question which would prove she was unqualified on this important job criteria. After some soul searching, I asked the question, which she flubbed, and she was not presented. The point of this is that it’s very tough to eliminate a candidate you like, and even tougher to seek out positive information for candidates you don’t initially think would fit. So rather than get to the truth, go the easy route, and trust your gut feelings and first impressions.
3. Make sure no one knows the real job. The purpose of the interview is to determine competency and motivation to do the actual work required. If you don’t know what work the candidate is actually going to be doing it’s impossible to assess motivation. Compentency, on the other hand, is pretty easy to figure out with just a rough understanding of job needs. Unfortunately, when you look at the underperformers in your company, you’ll discover most of them are quite competent to do the work, they just don’t find the work they’re doing very satisfying. These are the people that need to be over-managed and pushed to achieve average results. So to make sure you hire more of these people, go out of your way to not tell the person you’re hiring anything about the job until the day she starts. What a surprise that will be.
4. Use skills-based job descriptions to find, screen, and assess candidates. The best candidates tend to have a track record of achievement, comparable (but not identical) skills, and are quick-learners. This is how the best talent is promoted within an organization. Yet, when hiring from outside we use a criteria that eliminates these top performers from consideration, seeking only those candidates who have exactly the right skills doing exactly the same work. The only people who fit this criteria are average candidates. So keep up the average work. While you won’t get promoted, you will get hired.
5. Make sure your ads are hard to find. When top people begin the job-hunting process they tend to seek out former associates, Google for jobs (e.g., “software sales jobs Dallas”), use social networking sites, or conduct some top-down industry research looking for the best industries and companies that meet their needs. If your jobs can’t be easily found by candidates using these techniques, you’ll never see the best people. To continue not seeing any good people make sure you continue to post your ads on the major boards, where the best people look last.
6. Write boring ads that start with the req number. If your ads are found, make sure they’re so boring that they preclude a good person from even applying. You can do this by leading off with the req number, a dumb title, telling the person whether the job is full-time or not, and if you’ll pay for relocation. Then go into a boring description of the job. Then make sure you clearly state that the candidate must not apply unless the person possess a laundry list of skills and experiences that was lifted from some job description written a few years ago.
7. Make sure that interviewers are untrained and can ask any questions they want. Hiring mistakes are no big deal, so why not let anyone interview the candidate, ask any questions they want, and then ask them whether you should hire the person using whatever criteria they think appropriate. To make matters worse, only let untrained interviewers meet your candidates. This will certainly impress those top candidates you see regarding your company’s level of professionalism.
8. Add up the yes and no votes. Here’s a sure-fire way to get the hiring decision wrong…let each untrained, biased, emotional, and superficial interviewer have a full yes/no vote on who should get hired. Then to even out these errors, give a no vote more power than a yes vote, give unprepared interviewers the same voting rights as prepared interviewers, and then add up the votes. To make sure this process works as described, do not challenge anyone’s assessment, just in case the person might get offended. This is more important than the right answer.
9. Force candidates to formally apply before you can even chat with them. Top people, when they just enter into the job-hunting process, have lots of questions and are comparing different companies and situations. One good way to prevent seeing or hiring any of these people is to not let them just talk with a recruiter or hiring manager unless they formally apply first. Most won’t, but if you have some persistent person who still decides to apply anyway, make sure you have him complete a rigorous application process, submit a resume and a statement that everything stated is true. Of course, to make sure a good person doesn’t sneak through this bureaucratic blockade, be sure not to contact the person for a least a week. Collectively, this will show the person you mean business.
10. Focus on compensation and skills rather than career opportunities. Since the best people are more concerned with career growth, the opportunity to make an impact and want to know the broad details about the job before getting serious, we don’t want to give them any of this information. Who knows, somebody good might actually be interested in and qualified for one of our open jobs. Instead, to prevent this from happening, don’t discuss the job at all, first screen candidates only on their skills and then tell them what your comp range is. If there isn’t a fit here, don’t waste your time, just go on to another candidate. You certainly wouldn’t want to ask candidates about some of their major achievements first and see if any of your other openings better match their needs. They actually might be interested in one of these jobs, despite the comp range. Wouldn’t that mess things up?

You can see why these are my favorites rules for not hiring good people. What amazes me is that so many companies follow them and expect different results.

Targeted sourcing is the second step in hiring top performers, as shown in this chart (click to enlarge) illustrating the complete quality of hire process, from Taleo Research.

Most recruiters instinctively return to the same source when searching for candidates, because historically the source has produced a quick response from a large number of prospects with the required skills. But a deeper dive into employee turnover statistics and performance ratings might result in some surprises about the quality of the candidates secured through each source, according to Andrew Carges, vice president of worldwide talent acquisition for Success Factors.

Carges says that he found first-year turnover was high for employees sourced through agencies, during his experience at SuccessFactors and in his previous roles as a talent leader. A closer review as to why those employees left revealed that many had a history of job-hopping, and he concluded that employees represented by recruiters were frequently hunting for new opportunities and had easy access to other positions. Now he evaluates source effectiveness and its impact on quality of hire.

“To drive quality of hire, compare the employee’s first-year performance rating to their hiring source and the cost of hire,” says Carges. “It’s something every company can do to evaluate the effectiveness of the hiring source in delivering top performers and value.”

(See the example of hiring-source analysis provided by SuccessFactors.)

Managers frequently request candidates with previous industry experience because they believe it’s a predictor of on-the-job success. That hiring criteria often limits the sources recruiters can tap to find experienced prospects. A review of the employees’ actual performance ratings and the competencies possessed by top performers might be the first step in shifting the hiring paradigm, which in turn opens the door for new sources of hire.

At R.L. Polk & Co., a review of the company’s top performers revealed that previous industry experience had little correlation to job performance, according to Jay Marshall, manager of talent acquisition. In fact, the requirement accelerated the cost of hire because candidates came from a boutique industry and often had to be enticed with higher salaries.

And at the same time, industry dynamics were changing, forcing employees into more business-facing roles that required different skills. As Marshall dug a bit deeper into what was really making employees successful, an entirely new profile began to emerge.

“When I looked at the behavior behind the performance, it was driven by teamwork,” says Marshall. “The bottom line is that it really altered what we were looking for, and now we look for team players with strong business acumen. That opened up many new candidate sources, and our average cost of hire has dropped $10,000 in the last 24 months.”

Today, Marshall says he no longer worries about how long it takes his team to hire new employees or how much a new hire costs, because by focusing on quality of hire, he has improved all the recruiting metrics at Polk.

The idea here was to increase the likelihood the candidate would not overvalue compensation as the primary decision criteria when selecting one job over another. Since compensation was rarely ideal, broadening the selection criteria this way was a very effective recruiting and negotiating tactic. This week I learned how to make it even better – have candidates rank order the criteria when you first meet them.

As I began to consider this and try it out, I ran across a study prepared by WFD Consulting in a consortium with some major U.S. corporations. Their findings revealed that employees and candidates have varying needs that change over time depending on where they are in their career and family life-cycles. While many companies have addressed these issues in terms of retention, few have incorporated them directly into the recruiting process.

To test this process, give your candidates the following list consisting of these standard job satisfaction factors. After a quick review, have them rank-order the list in order of importance to them:

• Type of work being performed.
• Importance of work being performed, recognition, and impact on the company.
• Career growth and advancement opportunities.
• Hiring manager and ability to be mentored.
• Quality of associates and team members from a professional and personal standpoint.
• Current compensation.
• Benefits.
• Overall job security.
• Long-term compensation.
• Company and culture.
• Company-sponsored learning opportunities.
• Work/life balance, commute.

In the past, I tended to assume a ranking with growth opportunity, the chance to make an impact, the job match, and the hiring manager at the top of the list. For those on the fast track this seemed to hold true over the past 20-plus years, but as the population ages and employee needs differ, it seems important to customize this ranking based on each candidate’s specific needs.

Here are the steps I would follow in using this type of job satisfaction ranking system in the recruiting and closing process:

• Step 1: Once some level of interest is shown in the job, ask the candidate to self-rank the factors. Early-on, if the candidate wants to focus on compensation, suggest that she should look at job satisfaction from multiple perspectives. This is a good way to introduce this multi-factor decision form. Ask the candidate to evaluate her current job on this basis and then ask her to evaluate the best job she’s ever had the same way. This will typically show a striking difference. Then go on to say that she should evaluate your job in this same multi-factor fashion. This alone will allow you to get more candidates interested in what you have to offer. Discuss the order on the list with your candidate from two perspectives. First, make sure the candidate has correctly understood what you’re looking for and is satisfied with the ranking. Next, ask them to justify their rankings. This will help you understand what’s motivating them to look and if you even have a chance of hiring the candidate to fill one of your open positions.
• Step 2: During the interview process have the candidate rank your job on each of these factors. Using this rank-ordered list as guide, provide the candidate the appropriate information in each category. This way, the candidate will have all of the information needed to make a thorough evaluation of your job opening. You might also be able to modify some aspects of the job, if possible, to match your opening to the candidate’s motivating needs. This will go a long way to increase your close rate.
• Step 3: Ask the candidate to compare your job opening to others the candidate is considering using this same ranking scale. Include the candidate’s current job in this comparison. This will help you better understand why the candidate is leaving her current position and what needs to be done to increase the likelihood the person will accept your offer. This information will help you fend off the competition and minimize the chance of a counter-offer.
• Step 4: During the final offer process determine where your company stands in comparison to the competition. As part of the negotiating process, don’t just focus on compensation when putting an offer together. Make sure the candidate considers all aspects of the offer in balance. This type of rank-ordered selection criteria not only makes good sense from the candidate’s perspective when evaluating different job opportunities, it also gives you and your company a head-start by addressing these needs in proactive fashion.

Over the next several months, we’ll be putting together a survey of recruiters, hiring managers, and candidates to better understand how different demographics affect this selection criteria. This will not only help in improving the hiring decision, but it can also be used for onboarding, performance management, and retention.

If you’d like to be part of this, sign-up for my Recruiters Roundtable discussion group. Feel free to comment regarding any factors that have been omitted from the above list and what you’ve discovered as the primary criteria your candidates use when making their acceptance decisions.

While this is somewhat of an experiment, my sense is that it will uncover a new recruiting process that will allow you to better match your job requirements with the candidate’s true motivating needs. In the process, you’ll probably improve quality of hire and make the negotiation less about compensation and more about opportunity, career growth, and work/life balance.

But more than a dozen years later, the problems in finding talent have gotten worse, not better. I’m going to suggest that sourcing is not the problem, and that much of the solution has nothing to do with seeing more candidates.

I equate hiring top performers as a business process similar to manufacturing. My early industry background was in high-volume consumer electronics and automotive components, so this comparison is easy for me to make. In a factory when you have excessive scrap you need to either buy extra raw materials or reduce the scrap rate. This is not rocket science, but somehow the obvious seems to be overlooked when it comes to hiring.

(Note: in this article substitute prospects or candidates whenever you read the term “raw materials.”)

When sourcing is viewed as a factory, with prospects coming in at the receiving dock and accepted offers coming out of shipping, you quickly notice two problems. One, the raw material is incorrectly specified or over-specified, and two, the process used to convert the raw material into accepted offers is based more on emotion than science.

In a factory, excessive scrap is usually due to a combination of bad material specs, inconsistent processes, and weak controls. In hiring, these are equivalent to weak job descriptions, managers who evaluate the wrong things incorrectly, and the lack of metrics.

This requires recruiters to find more raw materials than necessary. This becomes problematic when recruiters over-rely on boring advertising and unsophisticated selling techniques to attract a diminishing supply of coveted raw materials.

To make matters worse, when finalists are selected and offers are about to be made, recruiters and managers stumble through some clumsy closing process either paying too much or losing the candidate to a more professional and astute buyer. When viewed in this light, the idea of buying more raw materials or looking for more candidates makes no sense until the rest of the processes are fixed.

Here are 20 common non-sourcing problems (if you have more than 10, fix your sourcing scrap rate before you look for more raw materials):

• Job descriptions are boring.

• Managers over-specify skills, experience, academics and industry background.

• Application process is too long and top candidates opt-out.

• Managers don’t spend enough time clarifying real job needs.

• Managers refuse to see good candidates, because they don’t have exactly the right background.

• Managers exclude good candidates due to incorrect assessments.

• Managers don’t respond quickly enough when resumes are sent to them.

• Good candidates are unimpressed with our interviewing process.

• Good candidates are unimpressed with the hiring manager.

• Good candidates want to know the comp before talking.

• Passive candidates want to know the details of the job before even talking.

• Recruiters over-rely on skills and experience to screen candidates.

• ATS system is cumbersome to use.

• Candidates increasingly are rejecting offers or accepting other offers or better offers.

• We can’t attract the best people with our comp packages.

• Recruiters can’t smoothly handle most candidate concerns.

• Relocation is a problem.

• We can’t move fast enough to decide & make offers.

• Managers aren’t responsive or involved enough.

• We never have enough time to do it right.

Avoid Preventable Issues

How many unnecessary extra candidates do you need to find to overcome all of the good candidates who were lost for the above preventable reasons? Many of these non-sourcing problems are attributed to weak planning, lack of training, dumb policies, bad processes, and inadequate technology.

When viewed from this perspective, it’s apparent that there is a lot of non-sourcing stuff that can be done to help reduce the need to see more candidates.

But this is still only half of the problem. If you have more than 10 of the following sourcing-related problems, improving your scrap rate will help, but not enough to solve the problem completely.

Sourcing-Related Problems

• The quality and quantity of candidates from job boards is declining.

• We use the same sourcing methods every year.

• Our advertising is boring and out-dated.

• Our job ads are just cut-and-paste versions of our boring job descriptions.

• Ads are hard to find by top people who are casually looking.

• Ads are found, but top candidates don’t apply.

• Our ads don’t describe a compelling value proposition.

• Our ads are filled with disqualifiers and little about what’s in it for the candidate.

• Our ads are written to exclude bad people not attract good people.

• Our career website is difficult to navigate and search for jobs.

• We don’t use web analytics to track response by ad.

• We have not search engine optimized our site or our ads.

• Our ads don’t always come up first on the job boards we use.

• Good candidates say they’re “not interested” early in the process.

• We don’t get enough high-quality referrals.

• Too many voice-mails are needed to get callbacks.

• We make too many cold calls to passive candidates.

• High-potential candidates with slightly different skills would not naturally apply to our ads.

• Our CRM system and resume database is difficult to use and not very effective.

• Our employees don’t proactively seek out great people to refer.

Too many companies try to solve their hiring problems with a new sourcing-idea-of-the-month program. This is like applying a Band-Aid when major surgery is required.

Instead, think big and fix your scrap rate problems first and then start posting compelling ads in exactly the same places. Before you know it, your talent factory will be humming along.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Hiring managers have a bigger fear of failure (making a bad hire) than the person being interviewed, and the consequences of making a bad hire is greater than making a poor employment decision.
• Most hiring managers are excellent at making widgets but they are terrible at conducting interviews.
• 80/20 rule: 80% Compatibility/20% Skill Sets. At the beginning of the interview, skill sets are important, but once the interviewer is confident that candidate’s skill sets will help them sleep better at night, compatibility becomes the primary hiring motivator.

So you have just spent months networking to uncover a highly marketable candidate. You have screened, interviewed, evaluated, checked references, and created a stellar marketing campaign. Because of your efforts, your candidate gets the ultimate compliment: an invitation to interview with your client. You do your standard candidate interview prep: Company, Job Description, and Interest in the job. So why is your sendout-to-hire ratio still low?

Very few recruiters understand that making a hire in this market is more about “risk” assessment than “skill” assessment. Candidate interview preparation should not only be about helping the candidate understand their strengths within the job description; it should also be about helping them understand the psychological battles that hiring authorities go through just to present an offer of employment.

If you want to increase your sendout-to-hire ratio, share the following with your candidates during the interview prep.

Candidate Interview Prep Outline:
• Skill Sets
• Compatibility
• Interest
• Follow Up

Objective 1: Highlight applicable skill sets
Skill sets are the primary concern for the hiring manager at the beginning of the interview, and that quickly transitions to compatibility once the skills sets are identified. If your candidate can’t define their skill sets as it relates to the job, they’ll never get to the most important compatibility conversation.

Candidate Positioning Question 1: Defining their Skill Sets
I’ve researched the company and reviewed the responsibilities; however, please give me an idea of what you need accomplished with this position — say, in the first six months to two years?

This is an excellent question that requires the hiring manager to define exactly what needs to be achieved or accomplished in a specific timeline. Once defined, the candidate should give examples of where they have excelled in those skill sets in the past. (Give real life examples! Don’t just say “I can do that.”)

EXAMPLE:
I’ve been there and I’ve done that and here’s an example and here’s how it affected the bottom line ……

OR: I’ve not been there and done that, but I’m looking forward to adding that to my professional experience. (Then give the hiring manager an example where you had to quickly become the subject matter expert on other skill sets in the past.)

Objective 2: Highlight culture compatibility
As stated above, your candidate should find common ground with the hiring manager, as they not only want qualified people to work with, they also want employees they enjoy working with. People who have the same passions, goals, and work ethics work well together!

Candidate Positioning Question 2: Communicating their Compatibility
As I’ve stated before, I’ve researched the company and position and I find it to be very compatible with my career goals. I would be very interested in how you would describe the company culture, and why you decided to work here?

This allows the hiring manager the opportunity to describe the critical factors they evaluated when they accepted the position with the company. What they outline as “important” should be consistent with your candidate’s career passion as well.

Objective 3: Communicate Interest
Hiring managers rarely make emotional commitments (offers) without knowing they will be received positively. Your candidate should close the interview by letting the hiring manager know they are interested in continuing the relationship (even if they are not sure). It may take several interviews to discover all the facts about the opportunity and your candidate’s goal is to make the short list!

Candidate Positioning Question 3: Communicating Their Interest in Moving Forward
I am confident that what you outlined today is very consistent with my career goals and qualifications; I am very interested in moving forward, what is our next step?

Objective 4: Timely and Professional Follow Up
Instruct the candidate to call you immediately after the interview and while the interview discussion is fresh on their mind. Should they want to proceed or not proceed, you’ll want all vital information back as soon as possible to help guide both parties in the next step.

Remember, time kills all deals. If you can’t get critical information back to your candidates or clients in a timely manner, they may move into “Plan B” and take the second-best candidate or the second-best offer.

Dating and recruiting have a lot in common. Learn how to improve your recruiting efforts by applying the most common dating rules.

Dating rule #1
First impressions are critical.

Recruiting application:
Differentiate yourself. Resist the “I have a great position for you” especially if you have never spoken to them.

Dating rule #2
Don’t believe everything you see. We have all heard stories from people that signed up for an online dating service and were shocked when their date was two feet shorter and 10 years older than the profile.

Recruiting application:
Candidates exaggerate their strengths and skills and down play their weaknesses. Do not assume anything. Prescreen, interview, administer assessments, and call the references before you present the candidate to your hiring manager.

Dating rule #3
Play hard to get. Desperation is the world’s worst perfume.

Recruiting application:
If you make a huge fuss over the candidate and beg them to interview, you will diminish your negotiating power.

Dating rule #4
Be selective. You can not change people.

Recruiting application:
Look for the red flags; don’t avoid them. It is better for you to uncover any candidate weaknesses or issues than your hiring manager discovering them. Your name and reputation is all you have in this business.

Dating rule #5
Prepare for the date.

Recruiting application:
If your candidate has spent 20 minutes on the phone with you and takes time off work to come to interview, and then you ask them “so, tell me what you want to do?” — you are wasting the candidate’s time. You should have notes on the candidate’s resume that you want to clarify, and if appropriate, the company profiles that best match what your candidate’s needs.

Dating rule #6
Don’t talk too much. People who express the “enough about me, what do you think about me?” attitude sit home alone, a lot.

Recruiting application:
The candidate should be doing most of the talking. Assess what the candidate has to offer, what they need, and then set expectations of how you will work together. Let the candidate talk about the interview before you disclose the hiring manager’s view. If you blurt out “they love you, you are the best candidate they have ever met!” — what do you think happens to the candidate’s salary requirements?

Dating rule #7
Follow up with your date.

Recruiting application:
As an industry, one of the biggest complaints we get from candidates and hiring managers is the lack of communication. No news is still considered news to the candidate; make sure you keep your candidate in the loop.

Dating rule #8
Don’t be afraid to end the date early.

Recruiting application:
Prescreen carefully, ask the hard questions, and always tell the candidate the truth. If they are not going to fit into your recruiting focus (skills, salary expectations, location, etc.), coach or make suggestions regarding who may be able to help them in the market.

Dating rule #9
Improve your odds by hanging out where (like) people hang out.

Recruiting application:
If you are recruiting technology talent, sign up and participate in technology activities in your market. Volunteer at association meetings to check members in: you will meet every attending member, every meeting.

Explain to people you meet that there are two types of people you would like to be introduced to: those who are leaders in their field and are looking for an opportunity and those who are leaders in their field and are not looking for an opportunity right now. You are an expert in your market, so people who are not looking now would still benefit from knowing you and the people in your network.

Dating Rule #10
They will not buy the cow if they are getting the milk for free.

Recruiting application:
When you agree to represent a candidate, you are entering into a business agreement. You need to set clear expectations of how the process must work. If the candidate will not agree to the terms, they are not committed to you, so turn them loose.

After you complete a work-history review, ask the candidate to describe a significant major accomplishment. Then ask these follow-up questions to better understand the person’s actual role and the significance of the accomplishment:

1. When did it happen and how long did it take to finish?
2. What was your specific role and who was on the team? As part of this, please draw a work chart describing the people you worked for and those who worked for you. Also, describe those you worked with, inside and outside your department, or company.
3. Describe the environment and culture. I’d like to know how decisions were made, the systems you used, how your boss managed the team, and what you liked and didn’t like.
4. What was the actual impact you made? Please provide specific details and facts.
5. What were the two to three biggest challenges you faced on this project? Walk me though step-by-step how you handled the most difficult one.
6. Describe the technical skills you used and those you learned. Give me some examples of how you applied these.
7. Give me two to three examples of initiative, where you went the extra mile, or where you exceeded expectations.
8. What did you like most and least about this project?
9. Give me a specific example of the biggest problem you had to solve, whether it was handling something technical, a team issue, or meeting a tough schedule.
10. What recognition did you receive for this?

While these questions can take at least 15 minutes, they provide the interviewer great insight regarding the candidate’s abilities to handle significant accomplishments. Then ask the same questions for a few more accomplishments over different periods and connect the dots. By repeating the questions for different accomplishments, the interviewer can quickly observe the person’s consistency, performance, and growth over time.

To increase assessment accuracy, have other interviewers use the same questioning process, but have them focus on different job factors and time frames.

For example, one interviewer can focus on team accomplishments, while another focuses on technical accomplishments, while a third focuses on both from earlier jobs.

Organized properly, this segmenting process provides the hiring team a balance of detailed information to better predict the candidate’s competency and motivation to handle all job needs. (Here’s a formal debriefing form we use to gather and evaluate this information.)

Here are some other ways to re-phrase the “most significant accomplishment” question. Remember to follow up each accomplishment using the fact-finding techniques above.

1. (Review the candidate’s resume and pick a project that occurred before or after the one initially described.) Please tell me about your most significant accomplishment when you were at (company).
2. Please describe your most significant team accomplishment, where you were a key member of the team.
3. Please describe your most significant management accomplishment, where you built and managed the team to achieve a significant task.
4. Please tell me about the biggest project you’ve handled where you had the least amount of experience or skills. This will help me understand how you’ve handled projects that were way over your head.
5. Tell me about an accomplishment where you took on a major leadership role, defining the project, getting the resources, and successfully completing the task.

You can use this type of questioning to describe the job to the candidate by describing one of the critical performance objectives as an opening to the accomplishment questions. Here are some examples:

1. One of the major objectives for this position is to accomplish (describe the specific task). Could you please tell me about your most significant comparable accomplishment?
2. A typical problem you’d be expected to handle on this job is (describe a common but significant problem). Please describe something you’ve handled that best compares with this type of issue.
3. A specific challenge we’re now addressing on the job is (describe). Please tell me about something you’ve done that is most similar to this.

You can use this same type of questioning to look for gaps in the candidate’s background that your position fills. For example, if the person has not managed as big a team, ask something like this:

This position has a staff of 10 people through two supervisors. Since you’ve only managed six people directly, the job might be a bit of a stretch management-wise. To determine if the gap isn’t too wide, please tell me about how you built and developed your team and how you organized and tracked their activities and performance.

This technique is called the push-away, and if the candidate is strong, she’ll attempt to convince you why she’s competent. This is a powerful recruiting technique that can be used to demonstrate that the gaps represent growth opportunities.

As long as the gaps aren’t too big, it forces the candidate to sell you, and in the process sell herself on the merits of the job. This helps shift the decision to accept the offer based more on the opportunity it represents, rather than the compensation.

With the one-question interview, you now have the facts, details, and examples you’ll need to persuade a client to meet a top candidate who doesn’t quite fit the job description, but can meet the performance expectations of the job.

You also have the evidence you need to defend a fully qualified candidate from a client who is making a superficial assessment. To minimize both risks, prep your candidate to ask questions that enable her to respond with a summary of her accomplishments.

Video Overview

After you watch this quick video overview of how to prep a candidate, you can also read some articles on this topic.

If you use the one-question performance-based interview from now on, and prep your candidates properly, don’t be surprised if you make more placements with fewer candidates.

By asking themselves these questions, he says, you can reduce the number of people considered “applicants.” This can help employers better comply with the rules. (If you can show that you hired 20 women out of 25 applicants, that’s generally better than saying you hired 20 women out of 25,000 applicants.)

Anyhow, the three questions:

Are you front loading your “willingness questions?” An employer, Silberman says, “need not ‘consider’ candidates not willing to perform the job,” such as people who (depending of course on what’s needed for the specific job) aren’t willing to travel, work overtime, work weekends, or work at a specific salary. An employer could set up a special email address for applicants, he says. When candidates send in a query about a job, an employer could set up an auto-reply email asking them such “willingness” questions. If candidates get weeded out, the employer, Silberman says, doesn’t need to consider them to be “applicants.”

Are you strategically using data-management techniques? An employer can arbitrarily decide to consider the first, say, 20 people who applied for a job. If there are 20,000 other applicants who the employer didn’t consider, that’s generally fine, Silberman says. An employer can do the “last in the door” method (consider the most recent applicants for the job) or “first in the door” (consider the first people to apply), or randomly choose a certain number of people to consider.

Are you properly designing and using “basic qualifications”? You shouldn’t require an accounting degree, for example, for an HR job, if it’s not necessary. You shouldn’t require a college degree just because it’s a common practice to do so in job ads; there should be a reason for such a requirement. Qualifications should be objective, such as “two years’ experience” and should not be comparative, such as “one of the top 10 accountants in the city.”

The bottom line, Silberman says, is that when it comes to compliance with the job-applicant rules, what matters is not just who you’re hiring but who is being considered in your pool of applicants.