1. Instead of going to a career fair to find your next top tier hire, get your manager to realize that great people have to be recruited. “If you needed another QB like Tom Brady, would he stand in line at a career fair, or answer a want ad online, in the paper, or on your website? No, you have to call his agent who gets him interested and to the table to talk. I’m that agent.”
2. When a hiring manager and HR want to make a lowball offer because the recession has made everyone more desperate, but your candidate is employed, here’s what you say to get them to reconsider low-balling. “When a kid is getting ready to go out high in the draft, do you think about what the lowest package is that he will consider? No, you make him the best offer you can afford to make or you pass on the pick. No one who is good is going to be happy or accept a low-ball offer.”
3. When a manager wants to look around at all resumes and candidates on the planet even though the very best candidate just interviewed and wants the job: “It’s kind of like picking a starter instead of second string. When you see someone who is going to be the key to your bench, you don’t hesitate to look around in case someone else might be better; you add them to the team in the first string. Just because he is first doesn’t mean he isn’t the best.”
4. When a manager wants to change the position or add unrealistic job functions to a new role: “It’s not like there aren’t people like Deion Sanders who can play offense and defense and the entire length of the game. It is just extremely rare to find someone who will do both. It would be better to find a great cornerback than an average cornerback who can also return a kick.”
5. Instead of letting a team do too many jobs for too long and asking them to double that for the “good of the company,” consider this: “Even the best players need to feel like they have back up, have time to recover, and like to play one position very well. Do you think that you may risk losing your best players if you play them too long?”

I know a lot of people who will think it is very funny that I would ever remotely write about football because I don’t give a hoot about it. And I also know that managers don’t want to be talked down to or reduced to silly analogies. But there is some truth to the fact that language and cultural barriers account for the majority of miscommunications. Finding the common ground in what interests them may be the entry point toward showing them what you got.

It’s hard to argue against the statement that social networking (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) is an extremely hot topic in business. But I have yet to find a single CFO or senior executive willing to fully fund a comprehensive social network recruiting strategy based merely on the fact that it’s a hot concept.

Even when budget is made available, most organizations need to develop measures to help direct spending into the right efforts that will provide them with the highest recruiting impact and ROI. There is no escaping it: making a compelling business case must become a priority for social network recruiting champions.

In this article, I’ll provide an outline of the four basic business case steps covering how to secure funding during these tight economic times.

Business Case Step #1: Identify the Potential Benefits of Social Network Recruiting

Provide targeted executives with a list of potential benefits and then simply have them select the ones that (if proven) would be compelling enough to positively influence their decision. Have them eliminate benefits that, whether true or not, wouldn’t influence their decision.

With that guidance in hand, design a process that focuses on proving only those benefits that were selected as highly compelling.

The following is a list of 20 potential benefits and business impacts that can result from effective social network recruiting. They are grouped based on their general level of impact on cynical executives:

Highly Compelling Benefits

• Hire quality — the program may result in hires who perform better on the job and have higher retention rates.
• Candidate quality — those who frequently use social networks may be the highly desirable early adopter; this source may identify higher-quality candidates who can then be presented to hiring managers (including those who are more technically savvy and more innovative). Note: even the simple act of listing the primary source (that generated the resume) on the top corner of every resume will, over time, educate hiring managers and eventually lead them to demand that recruiting shift their emphasis toward the sources that appear most frequently on top of the resumes that end up on a hiring manager’s short list.
• ROI — the dollar value of the program’s benefits may far exceed its cost, and the resulting ROI may be significantly higher than other recruiting programs.
• Vacancy days — because of the high usage rates and the short response times on some social network communications channels, revenue-generating, and key positions may be filled faster, resulting in fewer costly vacancy days in key positions.
• Higher offer acceptance rates — using social networks to attract and communicate with candidates may result in higher offer acceptance rates among finalists.
• Hidden candidates — it may identify qualified candidates who cannot be found or successfully messaged using other sources.

Often compelling benefits

• Employer brand — using social networks may increase your visibility and may significantly improve your “we get it” leading-edge employer brand image among targeted prospects (even if the image-building it doesn’t result in immediate applications).
• College impact — because of the high social network usage rates among college students, it may directly impact the number and the quality of college hire and entry-level candidates.
• Communications responsiveness — because there is less spam and in most cases you must be invited before you can send a message, using social networks to communicate may result in higher response rates and/or in more immediate responses when you send messages to prospects and candidates.
• Message impact — messages sent over social media channels may be perceived by the receiver as being more authentic or have a higher level of credibility and believability than traditional corporate mechanisms. The relatively low cost of sending messages over social networks may also allow your firm to increase the number of messages that it can afford to send. Together, these two factors may result in more effective messages that directly increase applications.
• Job visibility — using social networking sources may ensure that your job openings will be seen and read by a larger number of qualified candidates.
• Candidate diversity — it may provide your firm with a higher percentage of qualified diverse candidates in managerial and professional jobs.
• Global candidates — it may provide your firm with a high number of qualified candidates who reside outside of your headquarter’s country.
• Cross-fertilization — the methods, tools, and approaches that are developed using social networks for recruiting may be directly transferred to other business functions like marketing, customer service, product development, etc. So these functions may find that their social networking results will be directly and measurably improved as a result of the collaboration.

Occasionally compelling benefits

• Candidate volume — social networking sources may provide your firm with a high volume of qualified candidates.
• Lower dropout rates — you must build relationships with your “friends” in order to maintain them as part of your social network. Fortunately, social networks make it easy to build relationships quickly. Once built, it’s not surprising that this relationship may result in more applications, but it may also lower the candidate dropout rate throughout the hiring process.
• Competitive advantage — using social networks may provide your firm with a significant competitive advantage over other talent competitors. The net result may be that you can win more head-to-head battles with competitors over top talent.
• Benchmarking and learning — the time that your employees spend building relationships that may lead to recruiting successful candidates may also help gather benchmark information and improve employee learning.
• Increase sales — because using social networks directly improves your visibility and your firm’s “we get it” image, it may also influence the sales of your consumer products among those that equate product quality and being a desirable employer.
• Cost per hire — the recruiting-related transactional costs may be lower compared to other sources.

Business Case Step # 2: Identify And Counter Additional Resistance Issues

Merely convincing decision-makers that the program has significant benefits isn’t enough on its own to get funding. Unfortunately, almost all executives have some often-powerful preconceived issues that must be successfully countered. In the case of using social networks, these roadblocks almost always include issues related to:

• Employees “wasting” numerous work hours on social networks.
• Protecting the release of company information and secrets.
• Maintaining a single corporate message when you can’t control what your employees say on the Internet.
• Privacy-related issues.

At the very least, demonstrate to the COO, CFO, CIO, PR, and the corporate counsel that their potential concerns are overblown.

Start by showing that other benchmark firms that are allowing their employees and recruiters to use social networks are realizing benefits far greater than the potential costs. Next, present external research data that shows how employees use social networks for professional purposes. While studies that determine what percentage of social network traffic is professionally versus personally relevant are rare, informal studies among organizations piloting looser controls on social network activity found between 40%-65% of activity posted during work hours was professional in nature; the majority either requesting or sharing information from/with peers.

Additionally, show skeptical managers that you have developed a formal process for identifying, countering, and burying undesirable information on the Internet. Educate them that, in a connected world, they have already lost complete control of what is said about their firm, and that strategies that involve doing nothing are tantamount to giving up entirely.

Show the naysayers examples of what’s already out there. Show them how having numerous active employees on social network sites, talking positively, will directly counter the existing negative information and actually increase the number of positive messages that people can easily access.

Business Case Step # 3: Use Logical Arguments to Gain Agreement on Some of the Remaining Benefits

After narrowing the list of potential benefits to the most impactful ones, make every attempt to get executives to accept the likelihood of some of the benefits based exclusively on logical arguments. Whether you write a report or provide a PowerPoint presentation, minimize the number of benefits you have to prove with hard data.

With social network recruiting, executives might accept your professional judgment on benefits like its effectiveness on college recruiting; the value of cross-fertilization; the availability of global candidates; and the employer branding impacts.

Business Case Step # 4 – Prove the Remaining Benefits with Data

Out of the 20 possible benefits that you started with, you are likely to have to prove the actual impact of at least five of them with data. I will outline each of the five data collection methods in the remaining bullet points. Please note that the methods are listed from the least convincing to the most convincing data collection method.

Using existing data

• Provide benchmark data — in some cases, executives will agree that a program will likely provide the level of expected benefits based on external research data. The data might come from consulting firms or industry associations. However, the most convincing research data generally comes from either direct competitors or from firms that your executives admire. The goal is to convince executives that if, for example, using social networks at IBM reduced time to fill by 38%, a similar result could be expected at your firm.
• Look for existing internal efforts — on occasion, especially in large firms, you will find that some group, facility, or region has already tried your new approach without corporate approval or knowledge. In the case of social networks, you would attempt to identify and then use the results produced by any “rogue” group as an indication of the benefits or results that a company-wide effort might obtain. Because the data is internal, it is more likely to be accepted than external benchmarking data.

Limited data collection required

• Use your own employees as a baseline — assume you are trying to prove that social networks provide the capability of identifying “hidden candidates” who could be found in other sources. Start with a list of your own top performers in a particular job and then search traditional sources like job boards, attendees at professional conferences, and Google searchers to see what percentage can be located. You then do a search of their names on social network sites. By comparing the two results, you can find out whether your best employees who are “hidden” or not available on traditional sources can in fact be found on social network sites. You can use a similar approach to identify whether social networks contain more diverse candidates. You can use a third-party to see if messages to your own employees have a better response rate if they are sent via social network channels (compared to traditional voice or email).

Providing new data

• Run a small pilot sample — in order to gather performance data to prove that a program produces certain benefits or results, it’s sometimes necessary to run a small pilot project. Pilot projects are widely used in other business areas and they have a high rate of credibility. In the case of social networks, you could suddenly allow a single recruiter to begin using social network tools and you would then attempt to identify any improvement in their performance (comparing their baseline performance to their performance after using social networking tools). You can also run a pilot on a single job to see if the baseline performance on key metrics improves. If you have the resources, you can run a pilot in a complete business unit or facility and then compare the before and after results. Unfortunately running pilot projects may require some level of approval and it will cost some money (but much less than a full-scale rollout).
• Use a split sample — the most convincing form of proof that doesn’t require a companywide implementation is to use a split sample. It’s the same approach that is used by drug companies to convince regulators that their product is effective. For example, say you wanted to prove that social network recruiting produced higher-performing hires than traditional recruiting methods. You could start by identifying a team of recruiters who recruited exclusively for a single job family. You would randomly separate this small team of recruiters into two groups. Nothing would change for the control group, while the second group from the team would be trained how to use social network recruiting tools. They would be required to use social network recruiting as a major segment of their recruiting for all of their jobs over a six-month period. The initial on-the-job performance of their new hires after three and six months would be compared to the performance of the new hires from the recruiters in the control group. If the performance of the social network recruiter group was significantly better, you could say with a high level of credibility that using social networks improves the quality of hire. Continuing to measure the performance differential over time would provide additional data to support the program’s ability to improve the quality of hire.

Final Thoughts

Managers of recruiting functions seem to struggle continuously to obtain more budget and resources.

Most, unfortunately, rely too heavily on building relationships in order to maintain or increase their funding levels. If you’re tired of the up-and-down funding cycle, maybe it’s time to master the science of building an effective business case. It’s sad that recruiting is still struggling to prove what we already intuitively know (i.e., that recruiting top talent into key jobs has a huge dollar impact).

We have one of the largest impacts and ROIs of any function in the corporation, but we fail miserably at presenting it in such a way that a CFO would find it believable.

They craft powerful employment value propositions that lay out the selling points of the company, group, and position — as well as the present and future opportunities for growth.

They communicate clearly, asking direct and purposeful questions, listening critically to responses (spoken and implied), and remaining nimble enough to respond to unexpected issues as they arise.

They set clear expectations for candidates and hiring managers on process steps, compensation issues, and potential roadblocks such as counteroffers.

They are persistent, consistently reconfirming the primary issues throughout the process with candidate and hiring manager, and continue sourcing efforts even when a good candidate is in play.

They have a keen sense of timing, knowing when to move quickly and — just as important — when to slow the pace to accommodate a candidate’s decision-making.

Unfortunately, too many recruiters view closing as a standalone process that kicks into gear only after the interview team identifies its front-runner. In fact, the opposite is true: successful closing begins before a candidate has even been identified, and it touches every step of the process.

Let’s examine (and I’ll go into more depth at my breakout session this September) some of the ways you can bring a closer’s mindset to each step of recruiting:

Role Definition

Develop a compelling employment value proposition that focuses on your company’s advantages, emphasizing selling points your competitors for talent cannot match.

• Make the case for your company’s stability by pointing out steps the firm is taking to thrive in today’s economy.

• Don’t lose sight of intangible advantages which are important to many people, including on-site exercise facilities, proximity to public transit, or continued education programs.

Resume Review

Carefully examine the candidate’s history for potential obstacles — and address them during the interview process.

• Geography matters. Someone who has spent a lifetime in Little Rock may have a tough time adapting to living in New York City. Be prepared to probe how realistic the candidate is being about their ability to adjust to the move.

• Organizational culture matters. You may be familiar enough with a candidate’s current organization to know that a move to your company will demand significant adjustments. Don’t shy away from discussing these issues.

• Resigning is tough. A candidate who has been with one employer for a long time may have difficulty overcoming company loyalty and ending valued working relationships. What’s more, specialized expertise that makes a candidate attractive to you may foreshadow a relentless counteroffer from the current employer, who also values that expertise.

• Little things matter, too. Even “trivial” changes such as giving up an impressive title or shorter commute can become barriers for a candidate weighing a major career and life change.

Phone Interview

Your phone interview should be comprehensive enough that the rest of the process simply adds footnotes to the candidate’s file. If you later find yourself surprised by the candidate’s motivations, strengths, weaknesses, concerns, compensation expectations, etc., you probably need a more thorough phone interview.

You can guide the process by asking the right questions. For example:

• Don’t end the call until you have a clear understanding of why the candidate is interested in making a change, and what it will take to secure the move. And be sure to revisit this issue with the candidate throughout the process.
• If the candidate hasn’t made a compelling case for change, don’t shy away from posing direct questions such as “Your company is the leader in our industry: why would you consider joining us?” or “Why would you leave a firm that has provided you such good career and compensation progression?”
• On the pivotal topic of compensation, shift the burden to the candidate. Ask: “Do you feel your employer compensates you fairly?” (and follow up with “Why/Why not?”). Play to your company’s strengths with questions such as “Do you feel your company effectively rewards good performance?” or “Does your current firm encourage career advancement in a structured way?”
• Explore whether the candidate has sought other people’s perspectives. Ask questions such as “What does your family think about relocating to Austin?” or “Have you sought any advice about the prospect of changing jobs?”

Finally, ask if the candidate has been inquiring about “inside” opportunities with the current employer that meet their career objectives. (If not, you have a counteroffer waiting to happen.)

Interviewing

Once the candidate is ready to meet your interview team, take time to prepare the interviewers:

• Assign each member of the team one or more of the selling points from your employment value proposition. This will give the candidate a rounded view of your company.
• Tell the interviewers what you’ve discovered about the candidate’s motivation, and encourage them to discuss it further with the candidate.
• Prompt the interviewers to address potential deal-killers. An in-person reaction to a question such as “What might your current company do to keep you?” is invaluable.

Perspectives and impressions can evolve. Check in often with the candidate throughout the interview process, to make certain the role matches the candidate’s professional, financial, and personal goals.

Offer Development

As you prepare a formal offer, avoid unwanted surprises by thoroughly outlining their current compensation in greater detail than you may have done earlier in the process. Take note of anything the candidate might consider remuneration: pay, benefits, parking, stock, perks, and the like.

Conversely, identify anything the candidate might consider a financial sacrifice or takeaway: additional commuting costs, taxes or distances, waiting periods for benefits, potential “paybacks” for leaving an employer, etc. Even if you don’t make up for everything, the candidate needs to know that your offer is based on a thorough analysis of all available information.

Finally, before you test-close the candidate, check with the hiring manager to get a clear understanding of how far they are willing to stretch the scope of the role, compensation, and any other issues that might matter to this particular individual.

Test-closing

Test-closing offers a final opportunity to eliminate unwanted surprises, while creating a “cushion” between the candidate’s expectations and your offer. Advise the candidate that your firm extends offers only when there are no open issues, and the candidate is fully prepared to make a decision.

Focus the candidate on the non-financial components of your offer. Remind the candidate they already know most of the offer — the company, the job, the opportunity, and co-workers. Take the candidate back to the motivations you discussed during the phone interview, and reaffirm that this role represents the best opportunity for career growth.

Next, talk through the remaining variables — everything except salary. Share details on benefits, time off, relocation, continued education programs — and even target bonus. Find out if the candidate has unanswered questions, additional people to meet, or follow-up with or other concerns.

After you’ve covered everything else, let the candidate know your objective is to make one financial offer — and to do it right. Refer to your earlier conversations about compensation and pose direct questions such as “If the offer is $X or above, are you accepting?” During this critical step, your goals should be to:

• Eliminate ambiguity: If the candidate tells you “I was hoping for a little more than $X,” respond with “Does that mean you would reject an offer at $X?” or “If we were able to come in at $Y, are you accepting?”
• Gain the candidate’s permission to accept an offer at a specific dollar amount. That amount should be what the candidate wants, but below what you believe your offer will be. This “cushion” is crucial to maintaining excitement at the point of offer.

Finally, help the candidate anticipate a possible counteroffer. Ask questions such as “What happens when (not “if”) your boss says she will expand your job duties and beat our offer?” Close with the direct but open-ended question “Is there anything that can stop you from joining us?”

Offer Extension

On the heels of your test-close, the offer extension is simply a matter of calling the candidate to congratulate them on landing their new job. The only surprise to either party should be that the compensation is a little higher than the candidate expected.

Of course, there will be times when you won’t have an immediate acceptance. In that case, ask questions such as “What is holding you back from making your decision?” and “Are you planning on speaking with your boss or other companies about our offer?” or “Should we still expect your answer by Friday?”

Too often, at this stage, candidates tell us to “try again” — and we do! Never revise an offer that has been extended without a firm commitment that the candidate will accept without condition. If a candidate asks you to adjust an offer in any way (compensation, start date, title, etc.), your response should be “I’m not saying I can do anything, but if we make this change, do I have your assurance that you are accepting?”

Resignation

We all know there is a big difference between an acceptance and a hire. Even after a candidate accepts, there is still work to be done before you can call it a “close.” In a sense, the resignation is the most crucial step. This is because if it does not go well, you not only have an unfilled role, but have wasted a lot of your company’s time and effort. There are some things you can do to get past this final step which build on your past conversations about the resignation.

• Help the candidate control the resignation. The candidate needs to understand and embrace the idea of notifying the boss of a decision, as opposed to starting a dialogue.
• Role-play with the candidate. Discuss how the boss might respond. Pose questions such as “What happens when (not “if”) your boss asks what she can do to keep you?” and “What will you do when she asks you not to tell anyone until she has a chance to speak with management?” or “What happens when she offers to allow you to work from home two days a week?”
• Create a sense of accountability. Have the candidate call you immediately after resigning, to let you know how it went.
• Maintain contact. In addition to your own outreach, schedule “spontaneous” calls for interview-team members to contact the candidate during the important time between resignation and start date.

A Few “Closing” Words

Strengthening your closing skills allows you to directly contribute to the performance of your company by landing their most desired candidates. The best way to improve your technical recruiting abilities in this area is to experiment with new methods. Start by working some of these techniques into your standard approach to each step of the process. The effectiveness and value will show up in your acceptance rate, days-to-fill rate, and best of all, the appreciation from the business you support by contributing to their next outstanding hire.

In reality, most current approaches are relics from years of tradition, loosely defined, poorly integrated, and barely managed.

During this installment, I will build upon the goals and key elements of more effective second-generation programs discussed in Part 1 by focusing on the benefits of adopting second-generation approaches and methods to increase program participation rates.

Despite the current economic lull, consumers and top talent around the world expect organizations to continue innovating. No matter how well-staffed you may be, talent shortages or gaps will arise due to unexpected turnover, retirement (yes, a few people are still retiring), introduction of new technologies, and global expansion.

Now is the ideal time to restructure and re-engineer your internal movement processes to help mitigate the risk of key talent shortages. Fortunately, making such processes more effective is a relatively easy task.

The Definition of Intraplacement

As mentioned in Part 1, “first-generation” internal movement programs traditionally relied upon voluntary application by employees to jobs posted internally, except for a relatively small percentage of executives participating in rotation-based executive development programs.

Under such programs, internal movement really meant the permanent movement of individual employees into vacant jobs. This very narrow approach leaves out numerous developmental opportunities that are more in line with how work actually gets done today (i.e., projects).

If you’re attempting to re-engineer your process, start with a name change (i.e., Intraplacement) and a broader program scope.

Consider defining your new program as “an integrated set of corporate processes that are designed to proactively increase and broaden the options for re-assignment of critically skilled individuals based on rapidly changing business need projected talent ROI.”

The primary goal is to measurably improve employee productivity and innovation by increasing “right assignment” placements (i.e., right person, with the right skills, in the right assignment or job, at the right time).

The nature of the assignments may be part-time, temporary, seasonal, or permanent. Assignments may focus on individuals (i.e., individual movement) or groups/teams (i.e., redeployment).

Additional goals may include improving retention, accelerating leadership-development, driving best-practice sharing, improving recruiting, and intra-function cooperation. Intraplacement borrows and adapts its strategies, processes, and tools directly from external recruiting.

The Benefits of Adopting Second-Generation Internal Movement Systems

There are many reasons why firms should invest in Intraplacement. Improving internal movement can positively impact a broad range of business and HR issues, including sudden business problems, seasonal surges in workload, workforce productivity, employee retention, development, and individual motivation.

I) Business benefits and impacts

• Business results. Effective systems improve business results especially in the areas of sales, product improvement, and customer service.
• Increased productivity. Because highly skilled innovators and top performers are placed in “the right job,” the effectiveness of these individuals is multiplied.
• Better business-cycle fit. In larger organizations, some parts of the business are in different lifecycle stages (i.e., seed, start-up, established, expansion, decline, and exit). Proactive and targeted movement better ensures that an individual is placed in a business cycle where their skills and interests are a better fit.
• Increased innovation and idea generation. Moving individuals into new situations provides them with an opportunity to “view things as an outsider” and to propose new approaches that insiders might not see.
• Best practice sharing. As more individuals rotate between business units, the likelihood that best practices will be shared rapidly increases. Increased internal movement can result in the cross fertilization of ideas between previously isolated business units.
• Increased agility and flexibility. Having the capability of moving talent from areas of low return to areas of high return increases organizational agility, as well as the ability of management to shift resources as needs change.
• Better understanding and cooperation. By rotating individuals between disparate business units, individuals from both units can learn to better understand and appreciate the perspective of others. For example, purchasing professionals can better understand the problems faced by the individuals who have to operate under purchasing guidelines if they occasionally rotated into those business units.
• Improved contacts and relationships. Increasing internal movement allows individuals to build their contacts and to strengthen their relationship with individuals outside of the direct team.

II) People-management related and HR-related impacts

• More talent is available. Because individuals are proactively selected and moved faster, there are more and better qualified individuals available to managers with sudden or new strategic needs, than when individuals self-select themselves for movement.
• Higher retention rates. Rapid movement minimizes frustration and burnout. People working in their “ideal job” are unlikely to find a superior opportunity outside the firm.
• Leadership development. Multiple on-the-job learning opportunities are likely to develop leaders faster and more effectively because the development assignments will include opportunities to lead more teams under a variety of circumstances.
• Increase motivation and excitement. Not only is the individual more excited because they have a chance to grow, but each permanent internal movement also provides an opportunity to “back fill” that position, further motivating others to strive for promotions and transfers.
• Increased learning. As individuals move more frequently not only will they gain more knowledge but they will also develop mechanisms for learning faster when they enter future situations.
• Increased technical skill development. Moving between diverse projects provides an increased opportunity to develop current technical skills and to learn new skills.
• Increased exposure for top talent. Increased movement across broader areas allows more managers a chance to work with top talent. This provides individuals with more opportunities to be coached by multiple managers while giving individual managers a chance to observe and assess talent they might someday want to add to their organization.
• Reduced time to fill. Transferring people internally allows you to just fill jobs faster; assessment can be done more quickly because you already have a great deal of information about a current employee’s skills, performance, and weaknesses. Because few internal candidates reject internal offers and it takes them less time to accept, the overall hiring process takes less time.
• Decreased time to productivity. Your current employees already know the culture, the company jargon, and they already have a range of contacts. As a result, internal transfers and promotions can begin the job sooner because they don’t need a great deal of orientation, and they don’t need to give notice before they begin learning.
• Lower cost of hire and salary. Internal searches don’t require expensive external advertising and other recruitment costs. External reference checks are not needed and interviews can often be shorter. Internal candidates generally have no other external offers, so there is less likelihood of a bidding war and they are less aware of market salaries.
• Lower “job failure” rate. Because you’re hiring individuals who already know the culture, the job failure and termination rate is generally lower with internal transfers. External hiring costs are significantly higher than the cost of internal transfers.
• Improved employer brand image. Having a high-promotion-from-within rate generally improves your external brand image as a good place to work because you focus on the needs of your current employees. The increased security that it offers to current employees can also help your image.
• Allows for more entry-level hiring. By filling most jobs internally through transfers or promotions, you allow the firm to do almost all of its external hiring at the entry level. This is a good thing because entry-level jobs are cheaper to fill, have a larger candidate pool, and give the firm more time to train and assess “unknown” external hires while they are in jobs where they can do less damage.
• Decreased need for layoffs. Having a large percentage of your workers with a broad set of skills as a result of frequent movement means they are more capable of moving into new jobs or business units. This added capability and flexibility means that more workers can be transferred rather than laid-off from business units that need to be reduced or shut down.
• Individual employee benefits. Workers get more opportunities for development and learning as well as a faster overall career movement because they are proactively placed in the “right” job.

Before you implement any new process, identify the benefits that a firm can receive when the process is operating perfectly. The manager in charge of the process should set a specific program goal for each benefit. They should also identify a key metric for measuring and for assessing whether that benefit or goal was actually met.

Ways to Increase Program Participation

Despite this impressive list of benefits for both the company and the employee, you might still encounter some difficulty in getting managers and employees to fully participate in an Intraplacement program.

Some of the successful approaches for increasing participation that you should consider include:

• Business case. Work with the CFO’s office to demonstrate the ROI and business case to individual managers you want to participate. Make sure they clearly see the impact of participation to their own business results and career advancement. If possible, show how quickly an under-performing manager can improve under the program.
• Program champions. Get a senior executive, CFO, or key business unit manager to “champion” the program as a spokesperson. Let them use their visibility, political power, and influence to spread the benefits of the program. Encourage top-performing managers and employees to speak about the program.
• Recognition. Hold a recognition lunch or dinner sponsored by the CEO for all of the managers and employees who participated in the program. Plaques and certificates can also be handed out.
• Rewards. Making program participation and developing talent part of the bonus formula and promotion criteria will get the attention of your managers. Give lower priority or limit participation by managers who abuse the program.
• Communications. Sending periodic reminders to managers in the communications format they prefer can be effective, if you don’t overdo it.
• Reports. Including “ranked” program participation rate metrics in your standard financial reports not only makes your program more visible but it also serves to “expose” those managers with minimal participation. At the same time, it encourages low performers to ask those at the top of the list how to do better. Also show the correlation between program participation and meeting business results.
• Assignment design help. Provide direct help to managers in developing highly desirable project assignments and their descriptions. Provides samples of excellent (and weak) assignment descriptions, and offer coaching for those managers struggling with the process.
• Leadership development. Work with the leadership development program to make your process an integral part of the development program for new leaders so that they learn how to use it. Make the number of successful rotations that an individual employee has completed a key selection criterion for identifying high-potential employees.
• Top-quality replacements. One of the key reasons why managers are reluctant to participate is because they fear losing productivity when one of their key people rotates out. As a result, if you want to encourage managers to “release” their employees, even for a short period of time, you will need an effective “backfill” process that helps the manager to quickly replace their “lost” skill set. This might include a process for identifying those employees a manager is likely to lose and a process for training replacements.
• How-to materials. In addition to developing program materials that explains the process, these materials should be “pre-tested” with a sample of hiring managers in order to make them clearer and easier to understand. These materials should be available in a variety of formats.

Next Week in Part III: Common Problems Associated With Internal Movement Programs

Author’s note: I am putting together a guidebook tentatively called The Job Rotation, Internal Movement and Stretch Assignment Handbook. If you have job responsibilities in these areas and are interested in volunteering to be an initial reviewer, please contact me at JohnS@sfsu.edu.

Unfortunately, the questions are rarely asked, resulting in inefficient, ineffective practices.

Do not pose these questions periodically; incorporate them into your approach to build an engaging candidate experience, a more compelling offer presentation, and ultimately, a more productive hire.

Questions for Candidates (Aimed at Improving Offer Acceptance)

• What criteria will you use to evaluate and rank offers you receive? When you’re targeting currently employed individuals or talent likely to receive multiple offers (I would argue that is the only talent you should be targeting), it’s important to focus your recruiting process not only on assessing the candidates skills, but also on determining the factors that will weigh heavily in their decision-making when the process is complete. By identifying the decision criteria early on, you can improve how you position the opportunity you are recruiting for by maximizing the talking points around factors you can realistically deliver and readjust expectations around those you cannot. Too many organizations push through the process only to make a generic offer according to a template that doesn’t address the candidate’s expectations.
• What three things would make this job superior to your current one? If you are truly targeting top talent, chances are a good percentage of the candidates who make it to the offer stage in your process are going to get a counteroffer from their current employer. Failing to identify what factors would make the new opportunity better than their existing opportunity is setting the stage to focus solely on money should an offer battle ensue.
• Who will you consult prior to making a final decision about an offer? Research shows that individuals generally don’t make important life decisions without consulting close friends, colleagues, or relatives. Not knowing who will have your candidate’s ear makes it nearly impossible to predict what issues the candidate’s advisors may bring up. This makes it even more difficult to provide relevant information throughout the process that arms the candidate with positive information to remedy any possible negative issues that could arise.

Questions to Ask During Onboarding and Orientation (Aimed at Improving the Recruiting Process)

• Can you list the most compelling factors that led you to accept our offer? Once the deal has been signed, candidates, now new hires, have less motivation to couch their responses to questions in an effort to improve their chances of getting what they want, in essence, they are more honest. One of the best questions you can ask during this phase of the relationship deals with identifying what about the company, the job, or the benefits was so compelling that the candidate accepted the offer. Identifying what is and is not compelling (the next question) can help you refocus how to communicate about opportunities moving forward. You can talk up the good stuff, while minimizing focus on the not so good stuff.
• Can you list your concerns and any reasons that almost led you to say no? Again, this reversal of the previous question helps you identify what elements need to be either addressed or dropped altogether from your sales approach.
• What part of the process worked the best? What part was frustrating? If you want to improve the candidate experience, identify the aspects of the recruiting process that both engaged and frustrated candidates. Use this information along with statistics about candidates dropping out of the process voluntarily to determine what steps in your process need to be refined in order to convert more talent.
• What caused you to apply for the position? If you want to identify how best to allocate your sourcing spend, you need robust metrics to tell you what messages are driving people to apply and where they came into contact with the message (i.e., the source of hire and branding points that led to interest). Many organizations attempt to collect this information via their recruiters, but the data is often corrupted by lack of adherence to source coding policies.
• What other firms did you seriously consider or receive an offer from? This question is important for two reasons. First, it helps you identify your talent competitors, which often includes organizations that do not compete directly with you on the product or service front. Second, it helps you identify offer elements from other organizations that talent of interest to you find compelling.
• Who else should we recruit from your previous employer? Truly great talent loves working alongside other great talent and generally leverages some influence over colleagues they respect and value at their previous employer. Asking this question not only helps you target future recruiting efforts, it subliminally prods the new hire to actively position the organization as a great next step when they talk to former colleagues. If they’re enthusiastic, you might also ask for their help in recruiting the top individuals via the referral program.

Questions to Ask During Onboarding (Aimed at improving the Management of New Hires)

• Why did you quit your last few jobs? If you want to reduce future turnover, learn what was frustrating enough to cause your new hire to start looking for a new job and eventually quit their previous job. Once you identify these reasons, it’s wise to make sure their current manager knows what they are and develops a plan to prevent similar issues.
• Help me understand what motivates you and what your manager could do to help you be as productive as you can be? Asking new hires early on what motivates and frustrates them can provide you with an arsenal of information a manager can use to manage workforce productivity 1:1. While it would be great if managers would accept ownership for doing this naturally, numerous studies show they don’t!
• Where would you like to be career-wise in three years? This question helps you understand early on what expectations and future job aspirations may influence on-the-job behavior and likely tenure. By identifying what timeline a candidate/new hire has in mind, you can work to make sure you deliver career advancement opportunities in line with their expectations (i.e., before they start looking for someone else to deliver them). Also, ask what they would like to learn, which can be used to structure development and retention efforts.

Questions to Ask Candidates Who Dropped Out of the Process Pre- or Post-Offer

Delaying asking these questions for a period of three months significantly increases the likelihood of hearing an honest answer. If necessary, use a third-party vendor to capture this information as former candidates will have even less motivation to lie.

• Why did you drop out of the process? For those who dropped out of your hiring process early, ask them to list the reasons why they dropped out. Frequently, you will find that your recruiting processes are too slow or too frustrating to engage top talent.
• Why did you reject our offer? Most candidates will provide an answer to this question when they turn down the offer. More often than not, that answer has to do with money. Saying it is the money is an easy out — it doesn’t require as much courage as saying the hiring manager was a jerk, the job sucks, or the company doesn’t provide the right resources to enable employees to do the job they were hired to do. Several studies that have compared offers ultimately accepted by talent who turned down other offers reveal that rarely is the money difference significant. Other studies reveal that if you delay asking the question for several months, you are more likely to get an answer that doesn’t focus on the money.

Final Thoughts

The single-most important activity recruiters can do to improve recruiting effectiveness is to gather information that helps explain why the process is working when it is, and why it is not when it isn’t. By embedding these questions in your recruiting process, you can gain the information needed to radically improve the effectiveness of your efforts.

With this sobering news in mind, I offer those of you in all quartiles this short, 10-point personal evaluation guide. While some of them are a bit crazy, they’re based on comparing your performance to the best in the business. It will tell you quickly whether you’re in the top 25% and how to stay there.

If you’re not in this double RIF-proof group, you’ll find out what you have to do to get there. For those of you doing any pre-RIF assessments, it will help you figure out who goes, who stays, and who’s worth saving. What a crazy idea! (Note: your comments are being collected on my Recruiter’s Wall blog.)

Using Adler’s Crazy Metrics as the New Recruiter Scorecard

The world of recruiting continues to evolve faster than most of us can adapt. To see where you rank in the new age of recruiting, evaluate yourself on each of these factors on a zero- to 10-point scale.

This has been designed for full-cycle recruiters and it’s based on a curve, so you need to score around 65-75 points to be in the upper quartile.

1. Voice Mail Return Percent. If you’re calling passive candidates (those not looking) you should be in the 70%-80% range here. This is worth a full 10 points. Average in the current economy is about a 20% return rate and is worth about 3 points. You only score points here if you’re calling people who are fully employed or where your personal influence is the key to getting them interested. (Note: see point 3 for how to increase your voice mail return rate.)
2. Number of Days Looking. Getting people as soon as they enter the job-hunting market is a huge competitive advantage. So start asking your active candidates how long they’ve been looking. If you’re the first recruiter or company they’ve spoken to, give yourself all 10 points, but only if you had anything to do with pulling this feat off. You get a big donut if the candidate says they’ve already accepted another offer, they’ve got other offers pending, or if they’ve been in the market for more than two weeks. Give yourself 5 points if most of your candidates found your ad in the first 5-10 days of their search. If you had nothing to do with making sure the ad was found, that it was compelling, or in causing your candidate to respond, you don’t get any of these points. Instead, give them to the person who pulled this off.
3. Referrals Per Call. To score all 10 points on this factor, you need to average 2-3 worthy referrals per call. Someone is worthy if they are highly qualified and a strong candidate for your open job, or personally knows someone who is. An average score (3 points) on this factor is about one decent referral per call. I have a personal rule that has enabled me to increase my personal productivity by 300%! It goes like this: first, don’t call anyone who will not call you back! Second, don’t call anyone who’s not a top performer. Third, only call worthy prospects. The only way to pull this is off is to get 2-3 worthy referrals on every single call you make. (Here’s a networking tips article for help on improving your score here.)
4. The Maslow vs. Money Index. Here’s an article summarizing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s must-read material for recruiters. The key point here is that good candidates don’t take new jobs primarily for the money. They take them for some combination of growth, opportunity, a chance to learn new skills, to do something important, or to increase their personal satisfaction. Unfortunately, most candidates ask “what’s the money?” early in the courting phase, putting most recruiters on the defensive. Good recruiters quickly shift the conversation to Maslow-related ideas, suggesting that the primary reason a person should select one job over another is because of the opportunity for growth and personal satisfaction it represents, not the money received. (Caution: this will only work as long as your comp is reasonably competitive.) Score all 10 points if you handle this money question smoothly all of the time, and zero points if you stumble all of the time. Give yourself 2-3 points if you can convince a fair percent of your candidates to reconsider, independent of the pay.
5. Not Interested Conversion Rate. This is the percent of candidates who initially say they are not interested in your job opening but who reconsider. You score all 10 points if you phrase your questions in such a way that everyone says they’d like to talk with you about your open opportunities. Score zero points if you walk away from most of these candidates without some type of clever rebuttal. The key to good recruiting and scoring high on this factor is applicant control. You know you have it when you — the recruiter — determine if you’re interested in the candidate, not the other way around.
6. Partner vs. Vendor Ratio. If you’re a partner with your hiring manager clients you have a better understanding of real job needs, you’re more influential, they’ll see candidates who are a bit off the mark based on your recommendation, they’ll trust your judgment, and you’ll make more placements without wasting time. A vendor-like relationship with a client puts the recruiter into a subordinate and less-influential role. The recruiter typically has less knowledge of real job requirements, the hiring manager refuses to see candidates who don’t meet the exact requirements, and the manager won’t reconsider candidates he or she has incorrectly assessed. Divide the percent of your clients who are partners by those who are vendors (Note: 50/50 is equal to one and is worth 4 points.) A good ratio here is two, meaning two-thirds of your clients treat you as a true partner, so give yourself 7-8 points for this.
7. Unsolicited Referral Rate. If you regularly get great referrals without asking for them you score high on this factor. Great recruiters are known in their niche market and top people want to connect with them. Give yourself all 10 points if at least 50% of your placements are made from these unsolicited referrals. If you get 4-5 strong unsolicited referrals each month, whether you place them or not, give yourself 5 points on this factor. You get a big zero if you don’t get any good referrals, unsolicited or not.
8. Technology Utilization Factor. Whether it’s being an ATS geek, a Web 2.0 aficionado, a search optimization fanatic, or a CRM guru, recruiting in today’s era requires significant technology expertise. If you still advocate a tech-free environment, you earn a big zero on this factor. Googling for resumes is not a big deal anymore, so you get nothing for being good at this. If you’re training others in using the latest recruiter-tech stuff take all 10 points. If no one laughs at your lack of tech-expertise, score 5 points here.
9. Advertising Efficiency. To get all 10 points on this factor, you have to make sure your ads are found and at least 50% of the people who find them click through. This means you need to use reverse engineering to select the best boards and make sure your ads are so compelling top people are intrigued enough to respond. If you just post your traditional job descriptions on boards that have not been vetted, your score is equal to the number of great people who apply — zero!
10. Gauge of Persistence. Recruiting top people is never smooth. People always have concerns. Candidates always have other offers. Managers always want to see more candidates. Pushing through these issues is at the heart of great recruiters. If you can convince most of your candidates to reconsider, get your managers to see and hire people who don’t meet the exact requirements, and are constantly pushing the process forward, regardless of the challenges, you deserve most of these 10 points. Take them all if your candidates and clients thank you for persevering. You don’t deserve any points here, if you complain about all of the challenges involved, procrastinate, or make excuses about your lack of results.

Free BONUS ADD-ON: Buyer vs. Seller Quotient

Divide the percent of the time your strong passive candidates are selling you (meaning you’re the buyer) by the amount of time you’re selling them (i.e., 50/50 is equal to one and worth 5 points). If you sell more than you buy, you get 1-2 points, and if you buy a lot more than you sell, you get 7-8 points. Good recruiting is about getting a strong candidate to sell you on why he or she is qualified for the job. They’ll only do this if they believe your job represents a strong career move for them. This is also referred to as applicant control and is a core competency of every top recruiter.

New-age recruiting is about influencing people who have multiple opportunities to consider what you have to offer. While there is more technology now available to find people, this is now the easy part. Getting on the phone, recruiting them, and networking is now the real skill involved with being a great new-age recruiter. That’s a crazy idea, isn’t it?

Fortunately, if you have the courage to shift your approach you can still produce significant results using recruiting approaches that require little or no money. I am sure you are probably thinking that the old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true, but I am sure you also realize that there are exceptions to every rule (after all, ERE.net is free!).

Over the course of my career, I have compiled hundreds of innovative steps that recruiters and line managers have taken to reach top talent when other solutions simply were not working or they didn’t have the money to fund them.

I recently put pen to paper and completed a new book entitled 1,000 Ways to Recruit Top Talent, which as the name implies, offers numerous recruiting ideas, all of which have been used successfully.

The following is a checklist of some of those ideas that require little or no budget to implement. These approaches also work during strong economic times but they are especially appropriate during a major business downturn.

I) Recruiting Tools that Use “Other People’s Time”

If you’re short on recruiting funds and on hours in the day, the best approaches to consider are those classified as “OPT” approaches that use employee time and budget resources of other departments:

1. Recruiting at professional events. Ask your firm’s employees to recruit at local and national events, trade shows, awards dinners, and seminars they are planning to attend. This is a superior approach because your employees can easily approach potential candidates as “equals” and because their time and travel expenses are already being paid by their business unit or other sponsor. The key to successful event recruiting is to develop the expectation that each employee attending such events will bring back three names of individuals who 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 improvement of your overall employment brand.
2. Social networks. Having recruiters spend endless hours building profiles on social network sites can be expensive. Instead, shift some of the responsibility to your employees because there is a high probability that your employees currently utilize one or more social networks already (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) both on and off the job. 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.
3. Blogs. Recruiters can write effective blogs but it’s probably also true that many of your top employees probably already author blogs or are active participants in blogs relating to their field. If so, encourage them to talk about the positive aspects of your firm and to actively recruit on their blogs. Encourage other employees who read blogs to use them to also identify top talent.
4. Boomerangs/corporate alumni. The best way to ensure a high-quality hire who perfectly “fits” your culture is to focus on recruiting boomerangs (individuals who previously worked at your firm). During tough economic times, many of these individuals might regret their decision to leave but be hesitant to approach you about attempting to return. A simple phone call from an employee in their former department reassuring them that they would be welcomed back might be all it would take to land proven talent.
5. Videos. Videos are powerful recruiting tools because they allow you to more effectively “show the passion” at your firm. Rather than paying vendors to develop these videos, consider holding a video contest where employees throughout the firm compete to put together short, compelling videos about why your firm is a great place to work. The employees will do it on their own time and surprisingly, they may find many compelling features to display that you weren’t aware of. Post the best ones on your own corporate website or on YouTube.
6. Proactive employee referrals. 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 employees. Referrals produce high volume and high quality, but during tight budget times the cost of referral bonuses needs to be avoided. The best way to do that is to directly approach top performers that work in areas where you’re hiring and ask them to provide you with a handful of names of top people. Next ask them to make some contacts for you to begin the relationship recruiting process. Most employees are willing to do this work without an expectation of a referral bonus. Also consider expanding your referrals to allow referrals from customers, strategic partners, vendors, consultants, suppliers and retirees.
7. Ask past references for referrals. Individuals who served as references for previous top hires will often help out again in your search for new candidates if they were asked. Start identifying recent hires who have turned out to be exceptional. Call their references back, thank them, and then ask them who else they may know who is exceptional and could possibly be interested. Because these individuals have given good references once, it is highly likely these new names will also be of high quality. Most references are more than willing to help without an expectation of reward.
8. Traditional referral programs. During tight economic times you might need to shift away from individual referral bonuses and towards a “drawing” or lottery approach. This is where employees get a statistical opportunity to win trips, vacation time, lunch with CEO or other non-cash yet compelling prize. You can also make customers, employee’s families, suppliers and consultants that work with your firm eligible for the referral drawing program.
9. Hold a name-gathering Rolodex/PDA party. If you need help in sourcing or identifying top candidates, involve your employees who are likely to know the best and brightest in helping you put together a list of possible candidates. Rolodex parties are informal departmental or business unit meetings were top performers are brought into a conference room, given ice cream or treats and are then asked to “download” and share the names of the very best individuals that they know at other firms from their personal contacts. Those names might be stored in a Rolodex, a PDA, mobile phone, or email-based contact manager. Regardless of where the information is stored, the very best names are gathered at the party and are then targeted by recruiters to fill current and future job openings.
10. Chat rooms. Chances are that your best current employees are already active on Internet listservers, forums and chat rooms. Encourage them to talk up the firm and answer questions highlighting your best practices and technology.
11. Media coverage. Encourage managers and top employees to make themselves available to the press because the coverage can help attract candidates. Also encourage them to write articles in professional publications that highlight the firm’s best practices and technology.
12. Recruit at company events. Consider company sponsored business, PR, product and sales events to also be recruiting events, where you might be able to identify potential candidates.
13. Mentors and mentees. Mentoring relationships can be very strong. Take advantage of that by asking your employees if they are a mentor (or a mentee) of someone at another firm. If so, ask them to help you recruit the best ones.

II) Sourcing — Low-Cost Approaches for Finding the Names of Potential Candidates

If you’re looking to identify potential candidates, here are some sourcing approaches that will cost you little or nothing:

1. Ask candidates during the interview. Ask the best interviewees for the names of other good individuals they know during the interview. If you ask enough interviewees, you will get a pretty good list of top names.
2. Ask new hires during onboarding. Ask all new hires on the day they start who else is good at their former firm. Ask them to help you recruit any of the identified individuals that they know well.
3. Almost qualified – Re-look at “finalists” from previous hiring efforts for roles in a given job family to see what former candidates may now be more qualified.
4. Conduct Google searches. It’s almost impossible for anyone with any professional status to “hide” these days. Key people always have high online visibility, so 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.
5. Turned us down. Re-visit finalists who, in the past, rejected your job offers. Try a new approach and attempt to resell them. If they say no, ask them if you can contact them again later.
6. A find-you-again profile. Ask your current employees “how would I find you again?” Ask them what business and social events they attend, magazines and journals that they read, TV shows that they watch, etc. Use this information to identify the sources that are the most likely to produce results.
7. Retirees. Some retirees have second thoughts about leaving the world of work, while others are willing to work as “fill-ins,” so keep in touch with those that you might like to have return.
8. Community groups. Encourage leaders of community, service and church groups to make referrals and to let you speak at their events.
9. Contests. Technology firms like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and others are utilizing online technology challenges to identify the best problem solvers in the world. Finance companies are using “case contests” to identify teams of MBA graduates with the ability to rapidly apply their learning.
10. Clubs and organizations. Firms are beginning to realize that if you want risk-takers, you recruit at rock-climbing clubs. If you want people with discipline, you recruit former Marines. Several pharma organizations have begun hiring ex-cheerleaders as salespeople because of their discipline and their ability to get people’s attention. Pockets of labor usually share at least one extracurricular interest outside work. One hospital organization in Illinois found that nearly all pediatric nurses’ frequent arts and crafts supply stores regularly and began targeting crafts clubs and training classes in such venues as sources.

III) Selling Candidates — Tips on Convincing Candidates to Say Yes to an Interview or a Job Offer

1. Job descriptions. If you have a hard time getting individuals to apply, a dull job description is a common reason why. Rewrite your job descriptions to make them more like marketing pieces. Identify the WOW factors that you have and the features that excite your current employees. Put them in your job descriptions and make them compelling.
2. CEO calls. Have your firm’s CEO call top candidates directly and encourage them to sign on. CEO calls are incredibly effective.
3. Same-level calls. Many individuals make a habit of not returning recruiter calls. Instead, have someone at their professional level call them and you will get as much as a three times higher response rate. The reason for this is “professional courtesy” and the opportunity to learn.
4. Peer interviews. Many organizations have found that they get a significantly higher acceptance rate if candidates are interviewed primarily by the individuals they will work directly with. Because peers know the job, they can be more convincing and at the same time, more believable than hiring managers.
5. Side by side offer sheets. Provide your hiring managers with a single sheet that shows how your offer compares favorably with offers from competing facilities. This helps improve offer a acceptance rates.
6. Contact them on the right day. Constantly seek out information about top individuals that might “all of a sudden” be unhappy because their boss/friend just left, a merger has been announced, they didn’t get a raise, they got a bad performance appraisal or other “triggering event”. Contact them right away and close the deal.
7. Select a hiring team. Some managers just aren’t good salespeople (recruiters). Identify the employees that are good recruiters and salespeople and let them do most of the hiring. Give them recruiter training and reward them for their efforts. Because they do a lot of hiring, they will naturally be better at it than a single manager that only does hiring once or twice a year.
8. Free training. Offer top candidates you have pre-identified any vacant seats in your training classes in order to build a relationship and to assess their capabilities.
9. Involve them. Ask top individuals to help you “assess” a new idea or program, then build the relationship to the point where they know you well enough to accept an offer.
10. Sell sheet attached to your application. Attach a “sales sheet” to your hard copy application forms that highlights the best practices and features of your firm.
11. Promise them an interview. Guarantee potential recruits an interview. Consider giving them a reward (a $10 coffee card) or a free meal if they show up for an interview.

IV) College Recruiting Tips

1. Interns as on-campus reps. Ask your college interns/ part time staff to serve as recruiting representatives when they return to campus. Ask them to visit campus events and to provide you with the names of the best and what it takes to convince them.
2. Grad assistants. The grad assistants of top professors not only know the best students but they are very good at convincing them to accept your new opportunities. Officers of professional student organizations are also excellent talent scouts.
3. Use last year’s hires as sourcers/recruiters. Ask last year’s college hires to help you identify and recruit this year’s crop
4. Ask college professors. Ask college professors to be referral sources. Identify the best and begin selling them more than a year before graduation.
5. 2-years-out college hires. If you haven’t had a lot of success competing for students graduating, try re-contacting those you wanted but couldn’t get two years out of school. You might find recruiting them now is a lot easier as their preferences changed when they become more experienced.
6. CEO talks. Having senior executives speak on campus and give presentations and classes have unusually high impact on recruiting.

V) Other Miscellaneous Approaches

1. Create a hiring consortium to share costs. Consider going together with a group of similar firms to share recruiting ad and/or career-fair costs.
2. Win “best place” awards. Although it takes a major effort, winning a place on local or national “best place to work” type employer branding lists will have a dramatic impact on both the quality of your applicants and your offer acceptance rates.

Conclusion

There are literally thousands of approaches that have been used by recruiters to reach top talent. Some approaches are more mainstream and as a result have been monetized by entrepreneurs who saw an opportunity to make money.

But the majority of approaches are simple, low-cost, and wildly effective when used in the right way. What works for the manager of the local tire and lube shop probably wouldn’t work for the software startup, but there are at least 100 innovative approaches that would.

The key to being a successful and innovative recruiting leader is trial and error; not random trial and error, but educated trial and error.

Look at the characteristics of the audience you are trying to recruit and identify approaches that make sense for that population. Top talent is used to being barraged by recruiters using mainstream approaches, so when you try something different you most likely will slide right past all the barriers they have erupted!

Listen here

Unfortunately, many recruiters and recruiting leaders choose an opposite path, becoming more conservative in their approach. When markets head south and fear about economic issues grip the populace, consider a counter-cyclical recruiting strategy that sends a clear message to everyone inside and outside your organization that talent truly means something to your organization.

One controversial yet extremely public, effective outside-the-box recruiting approach you might consider is “proximity recruiting.”

You Must Do Internet and Physical Recruiting

Even with the tremendous growth of Internet recruiting, not everyone is actively surfing the Internet looking for a job or combing through their email in anticipation of your generic form letter introduction.

Reaching a greater percentage of the population relevant to your job searches often requires using at least three channels to reach them, one of which should be physical. The underlying concept of physical recruiting is a simple one, just as robbers target banks because that’s where the money is! Recruiters need to target physical locations where a large number of potential hires can be found.

While nearly everyone in recruiting is familiar with the dreaded job fair, there are numerous other approaches to physical recruiting that are far more effective and fun. One such approach is “proximity” or event recruiting. Proximity recruiting at professional events (tradeshows and seminars) is clearly becoming more mainstream, but one location in particular really elevates the visibility of your efforts and qualifies as “outrageous.” The location? Across the street or in the parking lot of talent-competing firms in trouble.

Proximity Recruiting with a Taco Truck

If you have been paying attention to the business press lately, you are probably aware that Internet giant Yahoo! was planning to lay off approximately 1,000 employees worldwide, the greatest percentage of which would come from its Silicon Valley headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

What you may not know is that despite a multi-year trend of notable voluntary exits by key employees, Yahoo! is still considered by many to employ some of the greatest engineering talent in the industry. This talent is extremely valuable to hundreds of upstarts working on next-generation technologies.

Yahoo!, like many organizations planning a reduction in force, kept its plans secret until the day when the axe actually swung. Because employees knew pink slips were coming, but no real guidance was offered as to who would be impacted, more people were concerned than would actually be cut.

Seizing on that fear and the actual swinging of the axe, Tokbox, an upstart enabling free voice and video calling over the Internet without any software download, engaged a proximity recruiting strategy that some may consider outrageous.

While pink slips were being handed out, Tokbox executives were setting up a taco truck across the street from Yahoo’s corporate campus, offering employees affected (and anyone else that wanted to chat) a hot lunch and information about employment opportunities.

Their approach was a simple one. They leased a taco truck and driver for the day, set up across the street in plain view, and offered a hot lunch to any Yahoo! employee who wanted to talk. Company executives were on hand and the atmosphere was light.

In order not to make anyone overly nervous, the conversations were kept short. While proximity recruiting has become more common in the Silicon Valley, Tokbox’s efforts still garnered a great deal of press both on the Internet and via the mainstream news media, earning them hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free PR and employment advertising.

Other Proximity or Event Recruiting Opportunities

If you are not ready to offer free food or display a banner, consider additional proximity recruiting approaches:

• A van with a recruiting banner. If there was a most commonly used form of outrageous proximity recruiting, it would have to be the use of the recruiting van (usually with a large banner) that is parked within easy view of a large corporate site or a commuter site frequented by target talent. The “banner van” parked across the street approach has been used both in high-tech and healthcare to target firms that are currently going through acquisitions, union problems, and workforce reductions.
• The “across the street” bar, restaurant, or gym. Almost any firm with a large number of employees has a bar or restaurant close by where a significant number of the site’s employees go for a drink or meal with a colleague. These locations are packed with employees wearing IDs, who incidentally, often have their guard down. Health clubs and gyms are also great spots to target.
• Award events. You’re almost guaranteed to meet the best and brightest at events that offer awards or prizes for excellence and innovation. Not only should the recipients be targets but you should also look at award presenters as both potential targets and as referral sources.
• College recruiting approaches. Because college students love to attend events, proximity recruiting should be a major part of your university recruiting effort. Place a “banner van” key across the street from college campuses. Consider recruiting at campus club meetings, at college sports events, at music concerts, on the beach during spring break, and even at both on- and off-campus college poker events.
• Conventions. If you’re trying to hire a nurse, it only makes sense to recruit at a bar inside or outside a nursing-related convention, or where nursing continuing education is being offered. Here again you have the advantage of almost everyone having a name tag with their own and their company name on it.
• Clubs and groups. If you are seeking individuals with certain skills or attributes, consider recruiting at clubs, societies, or organizations where individuals with these attributes are common. For example, if you’re looking for risk-takers, target rock-climbing clubs. If your search includes disciplined individuals, consider military groups, math societies, and music groups.
• Hotels where company events are held. When you think about it, companies do send their very best people to meetings, seminars, and events. Occasionally, corporate events are announced on the hotels marquis for everyone to see, making it easy to schedule your next pub crawl. This time of year, immediately before a firm’s holiday party gets underway, is another time to begin building relationships with potential targets.
• Corporate training centers. Many firms send their best employees to corporate training. Because a good deal of corporate training can be long and dull, there is a high likelihood that a large group will go out for cocktails in the host hotel or at a nearby bar. So, if you have large corporate training centers near you, consider them prime targets.
• Shareholder meetings. The bar across the street from the location of the annual shareholders meeting will almost always include a number of company employees and leaders. Go before or after the event to make contacts and build relationships.
• Miscellaneous. Firms have practiced “proximity recruiting” at other events and sites including wine festivals, home shows, in shopping malls, and at charity events.

Final Thoughts

If you are put off by the concept of boldly “raiding” other firms, you should realize that “stealing” another firm’s customers is already an accepted and common practice. Both sales and recruiting are competitive functions where the most desirable targets have already been captured by your competitors. As a recruiter, your job is to provide your coworkers with the best teammates that can be found anywhere, period.

No matter what you do, you can never successfully recruit a firm’s employees unless the firm that the employee currently works at has already failed to offer them opportunities that are superior to yours. If you are even slightly hesitant about raiding firms like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Citigroup etc. that have clearly failed their current employees, don’t be surprised when you are replaced by a recruiter who is more aggressive, bolder, and more willing to try something new.

Many companies are not prepared to go through the offer step of the process. As a result, they damage the relationship with the candidate. This leads to one of two unfortunate conclusions. Either they lose the candidate or the candidate comes on board, but with scar tissue. Applying some of the best practices from the sales world into a sales talent screening program helps to avoid that scenario.

The offer stage of the hiring process parallels the proposal phase of sales. Best practices in sales say that you don’t present a proposal until a thorough needs analysis has been completed. If a sales person is presenting a proposal to a prospect, he has acquired the information needed to design a solution, has discussed budget, has a full understanding of their solution requirements, and has set an expectation on pricing. This is certainly the case if the salesperson is going to be successful in winning the account.

Looking at this process in relation to the offer stage of the sales talent screening program, many of the same best practices from sales hold true. During the screening program, information needs to be gathered from the candidate to determine their financial requirements. Unfortunately, many sales talent screening programs focus exclusively on screening the candidate for fit, but do not consider the needs for the offer phase of the process. This leads to a last-minute scurry to mine the information from the candidate, or they design the offer blindly. Neither of those are best practices for the offer stage.

In sales, it is said that if you are going to lose, lose early. This prevents you from making a huge investment in a relationship that will not generate revenue. The parallel to screening sales talent is understanding the financial requirements of the candidate early enough to stop the process before over-investing in the relationship. There is no point in continuing a process with a candidate who requires a compensation level 25% above what you can offer. This probably seems logical, but hiring executives rarely focus on this as a de-selection element early in the process.

Just like discussing pricing with a prospect, the financial-needs discussion requires finesse. The candidate knows that you are asking questions about their financials, just like a prospect knows a sales person is fishing for budget information. The better-skilled salespeople tell their prospects, “I don’t want to waste your time by getting you excited about a solution that will not fit in your budget constraints…”

In much the same way, this discussion can be had with the candidate, “I don’t want to excite you about an opportunity that might not be a match for your financial needs. As you look at making a change in position, what thoughts have you given to your compensation requirements?”

With continued finesse, you can dig further into the mix of salary versus commission. Some candidates may rebuff this discussion as they feel the information will be used against them. In some instances, they are justified for having that concern. Hopefully, that is not the case in your company. We’ll come back to this point later. The bottom line is that the two goals of this phase are to gather information that allow you to formulate an offer and to de-select those candidates whose requirements exceed your financial package.

In sales, the proposal phase should not be like a magic show. The prospect should not be shocked by what is included in the proposal. In essence, the proposal is the documentation of what has already been discussed. No surprises. The same holds true for candidates. The time to review the compensation plan details is not after they are hired, or even at the offer stage. The compensation plan should be reviewed at the point where you have a genuine interest in pursuing the candidate and they have a complete enough understanding of the company that they will be able to comprehend the compensation plan.

One of the core requirements associated with any process is that it is measurable. The offer phase of the sales talent screening program should be measured statistically to determine effectiveness. The key statistic is number of offers made versus ones that are accepted. If the acceptance level is less than 80%, the process should be reviewed by asking the following questions.

1. At what point of the process are the candidate’s financial requirements reviewed?
2. When it is known that the candidate’s financial requirements exceed the package, is the candidate removed from the process?
3. At what step is the compensation plan reviewed with the candidate?
4. In what level of detail is the compensation plan reviewed with the candidate?
5. How often is the initial offer to the candidate rejected, and subsequently, negotiated successfully?

The last question in the list above ties back to my opening position about damaging the relationship. Again, this ties back to lessons that can be learned from sales. Many years ago, a procurement training specialist shared a pearl about the counsel he gives to salespeople who ask about pricing strategy. He said, “Provide us with the best pricing that you feel comfortable providing and either way you are happy.” This always puzzled salespeople so he explained further. “If you provide your best pricing and are selected, you are happy because you won the account. If you are not selected because we found lower pricing elsewhere, you are happy because you would not have been happy at that price point. Again, either way you are happy.”

Consider this when making an offer to the sales candidate. Develop an offer based on what was learned from the candidate that represents the best offer you are willing to make. Early in the process, tell the candidate that you don’t negotiate offers, but rather put your best offer on the table upfront. It demonstrates a professional message to the candidate and reduces their fear of attempts to lowball them. When companies negotiate offers, while they may “win” the candidate, they damage the relationship. This person is onboarded with the worst scar tissue of all, a lack of trust. The salesperson will always be on the lookout for the company to try to cheat them.

As with any component of the sales talent screening process, preparation is the key to success. Organize your team and design a process that achieves your desired results. This will allow you to create longlasting, fruitful sales marriages.

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.

But a successful negotiation doesn’t mean coming out on top with a low-ball offer that gets accepted. That can cause the candidate to get turned off and in the worst-case result in the candidate walking away. Even if accepted, it could leave the candidate with a sour taste in the mouth and essentially starting off with a negative attitude toward the employer. An overly generous offer on the other hand is a waste of the employer’s resources and can upset internal equity. Getting it right is not easy as few recruiters are trained in negotiating.

The number of books that have been written on negotiating can fill a large room — several thousand are in print. But an easier approach can be discerned from recent research at Northwestern University. A study by Prof. Adam Galinsky and his colleagues suggests that a powerful way to influence the outcome to be closer to a win-win situation is to view the situation from the candidate’s perspective — also know as the perspective-taking approach.

What this means and how it works is explained below, but the research has demonstrated that recruiters using such an approach consistently achieve the highest level of economic efficiency, without sacrificing their own material interests. They produce a better overall outcome for both sides.

Getting Inside the Candidate’s Head

The perspective approach means try to get inside the candidate’s head. To achieve an understanding of the candidate — their motives and likely behaviors — consider the world from their viewpoint. Basically, put yourself on their side of the table. This is not as ridiculous as it may appear. The research demonstrates that recruiters adopting such an approach achieve the best possible outcome close to half the time.

To be able to do this well recruiters need to do their homework before arriving at the negotiation. First, have an understanding of the likely issues. These always fall into three categories.

1) Distributive: issues for which the parties’ preferences are diametrically opposite. For example, the candidate wants a higher salary and the recruiter wants to pay a lower one.

2) Compatible: issues on which the parties’ preferences are identical. For example, the job location.

3) Integrative: issues on which the parties have different high and low priorities. For example, bonus and vacation time. The candidate may care more about the bonus amount because of a belief in her own ability to earn it. The recruiter may care more about getting the candidate to accept a smaller amount of vacation since that represents guaranteed income.

The solution to the disagreements is not to split everything down the middle, but rather to try and maximize the joint outcomes. That requires having a good idea about what makes the candidate tick — taking their perspective. Recruiters need to make an effort during the interview process to gauge what is important to a candidate. An assessment can help to fill out the picture, but even without that it’s important to pick up cues about what drives a candidate. That does not mean to ask questions that are unrelated to the job, but to probe for what a candidate considers important or not.

Head not Heart

There is a danger that a recruiter attempting to take the candidate’s perspective may end up empathizing with them — that is, show compassion for the candidate’s situation. Successful negotiation, especially where economic outcomes are involved, do not require having an emotional connection with the other party. The research demonstrated that empathizing recruiters achieved the poorest individual outcomes, and the gains went almost entirely to the candidates.

It’s better to “think for” than to “feel for” the candidate. It is more beneficial to get inside their heads than to have them in your heart.

Conclusion

Taking the perspective approach is easier said than done. It requires serious effort to try and understand a candidate, based on a lot of information that may not be readily available to the individual handling the offer negotiation. The more people who are involved in the selection process, the harder this gets, especially since most interviewers do a poor job of documenting what they learn about a candidate. Recruiters may also be constrained by the extent of flexibility they have in negotiating particular issues.

That being said, the Galinsky research does show that a failure to take a disciplined approach to an offer negotiation will produce a poor outcome for all concerned. Ultimately, organizations that fail to recognize this will suffer the consequences of losing good talent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So much emphasis has been placed on prospecting or sourcing potential candidates that recruiters are not taught the basics of the sales process that follows the sourcing function. Having listened to thousands of third-party and corporate recruiters over the past 15 years, my sense is that less than 10% of recruiters understand basic sales principles.

Although the terminology may differ, the following are the critical steps to every successful sales professional or recruiting professional.

1. Developing the Relationship: This is the time that the warming-up events occur before the serious selling begins. This includes how you introduce yourself and how you begin the conversation. Candidates have stated that it’s during the first two minutes of the call that they form crucial initial impressions that influence the rest of the recruiting process.

2. Creating/Identifying the Need: Every sale involves identifying a need that the candidate is often unaware of by asking questions. This is much more than a simple collection of data. Identifying or creating the need is the most important of all selling and recruiting skills. Recruiters who are the most effective during this investigative stage are most likely to be the highest performers. Recruiters with poor investigative skills generally create candidates who ultimately do not accept the position once offered.

3. Preventing/Overcoming Objections: Although objections are inevitable in any sales process, the key for successful sales professionals/recruiters is actually preventing objections. By asking the right types of questions in step 2, many objections that would have arisen in the process are addressed before the candidate has an opportunity to bring them forth. Keep in mind that some objections are inevitable, that they are often training responses, and that most are emotional and not practical.

4. Filling the Need/Providing Benefits: Identifying the need is considered the most crucial skill in sales or recruiting; filling the need is the second-most critical step to ensuring success. Often recruiters and sales professionals alike pay little attention to step 2 and focus solely on step 4. Like many sales professionals, recruiters often focus on what is commonly known in sales language as their “product knowledge.” They have an in-depth understanding of the organization they are recruiting for, they understand every detail of the position and its function, and they completely understand the requirements of the role. Armed with all of this product knowledge, these untrained recruiters contact potential candidates and attempt to “tell” them about every benefit of the position and company they represent, never addressing the real needs of the candidate. This is a common mistake that is made by most sales professionals and is illustrated further in this article.

5. Advance/Close the Sale: In recruiting and sales, advancing the sale is the final objective throughout every step of the process. By filling the need in Step 4, you are in a position to advance the sale to the next step. In recruiting, closing is most commonly compared to presenting the offer and gaining acceptance from the candidate. At this stage recruiters often focus on the practical aspects of the offer being made: compensation, benefits, perks etc. Effective recruiters and sales professionals alike understand the importance of re-emphasizing the emotional drivers identified in Step 2 of the sales process prior to presenting the practical aspects of the solution.

Although these 5 steps are critical to the success of every recruiter, most focus and are trained only on steps 1, 4, and 5, skipping the most important step: Identifying the Need.

Recruiters like to tell about the great position, company, and opportunity that they currently have without having asked any questions to identify the needs of the potential candidate. This “telling” versus “selling” approach continues to be prevalent among the majority of recruiting organizations, minimizing the benefits of sourcing tools, branding, and recruiting technology available today.

The profile of today’s recruiter must also change. An effective recruiter should be seen as a sales professional who exemplifies the ability to develop candidate relationships, identify candidate needs, overcome or prevent objections, fill the candidate’s needs, and advance the sales process. Recruiters need to be given the appropriate training to move from “telling” about their opportunity to “selling” their opportunity.

It seems that nearly every recruiter, at some point in his or her career, has been forced to present an offer that was an insult to the candidate and an embarrassment for the recruiter.

In the first part of this series, I addressed actions that can be taken prior to initiation of the recruiting process and in the initial stages of the recruiting process. Now my attention will turn to actions that can be taken during the offer phase of the recruiting cycle and a listing of non-monetary offer components that often don’t receive the focus they should.

Things to Do During the Offer Stage

The way you design the offer stage of the recruiting process can have a dramatic effect on offer acceptance. Some things to consider include:

• Offer them a salary re-opener. A salary re-opener three or six months after they start is a powerful tool. The reason that this works is that neither they nor you can really know how good they are until they actually start work.
• Make the offer in person. Anyone who understands psychology knows it is harder to turn a request down in person than over the phone. In addition, it’s easier to make arguments that overcome their concerns or to ask for more time when offers are made in person.
• Same-day offers. If you do a good job exciting the top candidate during the interview process, it’s a good idea to make the job offer before they walk out the door. After they go home, they have more chances to hear negative feedback from colleagues, friends, and family, as well as to receive other job offers or counteroffers from their current boss. Some even offer “exploding bonuses” to spur action, which decrease in amount the longer an applicant “mulls over” the offer.
• CEO calls. The single-most successful offer closing tool is having a CEO call and ask them to “join us so that you and I build this company together.” A passionate and personalized call from a senior executive (generally someone they didn’t meet) works almost without exception. A handwritten note from the CEO attached to the offer letter is also a nice touch.
• Coworker calls. Having employees ask the candidate directly to “join the team” can be compelling because it shows that their peers “want” them. The request should be done relatively soon after the final interview and with some level of excitement. Sometimes a phone call right after the offer is actually received can also be effective.
• Influence the influencers. Improve your chances of getting family support by sending them information about the company. Sometimes a simple gift or a sample of the company’s products sent to the home will also make a difference. Talking to references and mentors about the positive aspects of the company and the job can also help improve your acceptance rates.
• Total comp? Be careful when you throw around the term “total compensation” because to many candidates, that’s a red flag meaning that they’re not going to get to take home pay that they really want. If, however, you offer benefits, relocation, performance bonuses, stock options, or other things that do have significant economic value, make sure that repeating them is part of the offer process.
• The offer-letter format. Another reason why offers are rejected is the form and format of the offer letter itself. Letters with a lot of fine print are turnoffs. Letters that leave out key “promises” that were verbally discussed during interviews will invariably frustrate the candidate.
• Post-deal information gathering. Getting a candidate on board is not the end of the offer process. Identify what went right, lessons learned, and what went wrong. After a delay, ask candidates who rejected your offers “why” and ask the candidates who accepted what factors led to acceptance. Also, give each of the finalists, the manager, the recruiter, and the new hire a satisfaction questionnaire to identify where during the process they were treated well and where they were not.
• Make them a great “non-monetary” offer. Sometimes a title, working at home, a dress-down atmosphere, the opportunity to work on a “wow” project, great equipment, rapid learning, the fact that you are a “green” and socially responsible firm, or that you provide an opportunity to make a difference in people’s lives is more powerful than money.

Elements of Non-Monetary Offers

While few studies exist to determine whether the emphasis placed on compensation during recruiting is candidate or employer driven, a number of studies do prove that consideration is given to a multitude of others factors, few of which have been formalized by organizations as a component of the employment offer.

Non-monetary aspects of an offer can be grouped into four categories:

1. The Job Itself

• An opportunity to do “the best work of your life”
• Choice of challenging projects
• Spending a majority of time doing what the candidate is good at/ likes
• Promise of job rotations and stretch assignments
• A chance to supervise or lead
• Opportunity to take risks, make decisions and stretch their brain
• A chance to work with/on the latest technology

2. Flexibility

• Choice of schedule
• Choice of team members or co-workers
• Ability to work at home periodically
• Opportunity for self management
• Chance to pick their own title
• Opportunities for more pay based on results
• Job-sharing opportunities

3. Their Manager

• A process for honest, frequent two-way communication
• Opportunities for being recognized and rewarded for their performance
• Periodic meetings with management
• Personalized motivation
• An opportunity to make decisions
• An individualized learning plan to keep them on the leading edge of knowledge
• A self-development plan or budget

4. The Company

• A firm that is socially responsible and environmentally friendly
• A well-respected product
• A focus on innovation and risk-taking
• Opportunities to be mentored by a senior person
• Work/life balance opportunities
• Opportunities for rapid internal movement
• Showing them their work will “make a difference”
• Opportunities for internal exposure and public recognition
• Open access to company information
• Opportunity for increased (or decreased) travel
• Job security and stability
• Opportunities to sponsor their work visa application

Conclusion

Having to present offers that are going to be perceived negatively on their financial merits alone is an experience that recruiters have always had to endure, and one that will likely continue, but it doesn’t have to impact your offer acceptance ratio.

Organizations need to become more adept about making offers in a way that doesn’t focus the attention on compensation to begin with. Hopefully, you will find elements in each stage presented here beneficial.

I recently overheard several people talking about an employment offer one of them had recently received. The candidate, who has received three promotions in three years with her current company, was so under-whelmed with the offer that she was insulted and happy to discuss her disgust with others.

The offer, from a well-known company, required the candidate to take a drop in title, relocate to a city with a significantly higher cost of living at her own expense, and all for a $1,500/year increase in salary. Having spent a month chatting on the phone and in person with the company, this candidate was frustrated. Unfortunately, this situation happens all the time.

Do you work for a company that pays below-average compensation for your industry? Do you get embarrassed when you have to present offers to candidates that you know they will perceive as ridiculous? These situations are never fun, but there are some things you can do to increase offer acceptance rates when great pay is not an option.

Putting Your Mindset in Check

Before you start recruiting, realize that low pay is not as big of a problem as you might think if you know how to take the spotlight off of compensation. There are millions of people who work in poorly paying jobs but are satisfied and engaged. For instance, almost everyone in education, government, the military, childcare, and not-for-profit organizations work for far less money than they could get if they worked in other industries.

Huge segments of the population are willing to work for organizations that pay poorly, provided there are other aspects of the offer that are more compelling. Although many individuals turn down offers by saying, “It’s the money,” in many cases it really isn’t the money, or at least, not the money alone.

The real reason people reject job offers can be identified by simply calling candidates who rejected an offer three months later (after they have found another job and the pressure is off). More often than not, you’ll find it wasn’t the money, but rather that they were treated poorly during the recruiting process.

There are three recruiting process points to focus on if you want to solve the “low salary” problem. The first deals with actions to complete prior to starting the recruiting effort. The second focuses on things you can do during the recruiting process, and the third focuses on what can be done during the offer process to improve your chances of garnering an acceptance.

First, Things to Do Before You Start Recruiting

Design your recruiting process in such a way that you don’t set yourself up for failure. If you recruit from the ranks of the fully employed during positive economic cycles, you will consistently encounter issues with offers that are below or near the candidate’s current rate of pay. Unless, of course, the candidate is fleeing some extremely negative situation and does not have an opportunity to shop for the best offer.

If you exhaust all attempts to improve the compensation structure, here are additional actions to take:

• Develop a sales sheet. Survey your current employees who love their jobs, and use these reasons in recruitment materials. Provide this information to hiring managers so they can focus conversations on the non-soured aspects of the company. Quite often, job security, a fun atmosphere, and employee involvement come ahead of compensation in many applicants’ decision criteria. In short, don’t try to be something you’re not. Instead, sell and be proud of what you are.
• Rely heavily on referrals. Referrals work especially well in low-paying environments because your own employees are likely to do a better job of selling the non-monetary compensation aspects of the job and company. Employees are also good at screening out people who wouldn’t fit the environment, and the referring employee (if encouraged) often will help “sell” the candidate during the offer process.
• Be upfront about not wanting “compensation first” individuals. It might seem counterintuitive, but it’s actually a good idea to let people know upfront that your company seeks people who “care about the work” and that you purposely do not hire individuals who have compensation as their primary focus. It’s a fact that people who put money first are harder to manage and are a greater retention risk. Southwest Airlines and Ernst & Young are particularly good at this approach to recruiting.
• Cost of living comparison. If you happen to live in a low-cost living area, do some calculations in order to show candidates that even though the pay might be lower, the “relative pay” might actually be higher because housing, transportation, and other expenses are relatively low in your area.
• Build a relationship. If you can, pre-identify targeted candidates and build a relationship with them over time. Candidates are less likely to be shocked when they hear about the lousy pay and are more likely to trust you when you say the excitement of the job overcomes the low-pay aspect. Consider giving targeted individuals samples of your products to evaluate, or even involve them in a project as a consultant on nights or weekends so they get to know your team well.
• Seek out candidates with a hook. Target your recruiting to individuals who have some tie or “hook” to your local area. Quite often, individuals with family ties, those who went to school in the area, or those who used to work for your firm (boomerangs) are more willing to accept a low salary for that chance to return home.
• Quality of life. If you live in an area that has a low crime rate, lots of amenities, great schools, short commute times, or wide, open spaces, put together a convincing argument as to why your area is desirable, regardless of the pay involved. Put this and other positive aspects in all recruitment communications.
• Promotion rates. The MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas isn’t shy about communicating the rate of promotion are much higher than equivalent properties in big cities like New York. If this is true for your organization as well, demonstrate that while starting salaries are low, in just a few short years they would be making more money, have more responsibility, and a better job title than they would have had at another organization.
• Target low-pay industries. Focus your recruiting on individuals working in low-paying industries like education, government, retail, or healthcare. They already know what it’s like to work for low pay, so it won’t be a shock when they find out you pay below the average. Also look at individuals who volunteer a lot of their time, because they are more likely to put “making a difference” ahead of money. You might also target retirees and Gen Y and M candidates, because quite often, they put their profession, flexibility, and other factors before money.
• Target companies in turmoil. Seek employees at companies that are in economic trouble and people who have been laid off, because those individuals generally learn (at least in the short-term) to regard job security and stability over pay.
• Build a great employment brand. Although it’s a long-term strategy, by winning awards and “being talked about” in the media as a great employer, you can double your application rate, while simultaneously attracting individuals who want to work for your firm so badly that the amount of money they get paid is a secondary issue. Consider Google, Pixar, Apple, Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, or Timberland.

Second, Things to Do During the Hiring Process

During the hiring process and before the offer is made, take the following steps to increase your chances of getting an offer accepted:

• Don’t insult them. Ask them before the start of the interview process, “What is the minimum salary you need to accept an offer?” Also, ask them to identify any deal breakers like title, travel required, weekend work, etc., so you know in advance what you’re up against.
• Identify job-acceptance criteria. Be direct and ask them to list and rank their job-acceptance criteria. Use these criteria to guide your interview and offer process. If they put salary as number one, realize upfront that your chances are much smaller to win them over. If you’re really bold, ask them to outline their “dream job” and then try to meet each of the non-compensation-related items in your offer.
• Peer interviews. When coworkers interview applicants without managers present, candidates are more open with their concerns and coworkers are better able to make convincing counter-arguments because they hold the same job.
• Two-year projections. Everyone wants to know where he or she will be in a few years, so give concrete examples of how previous hires have actually progressed. Explain where they might reasonably expect to be in two to three years after they join your firm.
• Side-by-side comparisons. Managers are generally bad salespeople (to be kind), and they need ?sales” help. They generally need aid in the form of information that tells them what candidates generally expect and what the competitive job market is offering. A “side-by-side” benefits sheets for use during the interview process that demonstrates what the competitors are offering can highlight why your firm is clearly superior.
• Seek feedback during the interview. Periodically ask the candidate during the interview process, “Are we close?” or “Do you see any roadblocks?”
• Who would you like to talk to? Ask them, by title, who they would like to talk to during the interview process. By providing them some choice, you might excite them but also give them the opportunity to gather the information they need to say yes.
• Sell. Spend at least half of the time during the interview selling the candidate.
• Be selective. Only let people with the best “sales skills” sit in on your interviews.

Next week: In Part II, the third section will feature an overview of what can be done during the offer presentation process to increase acceptance rates and a list of non-monetary offer components that often go under-discussed.

It’s the million-dollar question in recruiting that almost no one asks. It’s a simple question, and one that car salespeople around the world ask: “What is it going to take to get you in this car?”

Regardless of industry or geography, every salesperson worth their weight in salt asks some variant of this question at some point early on in the sales cycle.

While many of the best have learned to ask this question in a less-direct way, they all do it because it helps improve their closure rate by enabling them to narrow and focus their “pitch” on customers’ specific buying criteria.

The million-dollar question that must be a formal part of the recruiting process is, “What criteria will you use to determine whether to accept a job offer?”

While a number of exceptional recruiters have become very adept at gathering and leveraging the answer to this question, the vast majority fail to embed this customer-profiling element into their formal process.

Without this activity, the candidate experience cannot be managed to the candidate’s expectations, which decreases the probability of a candidate accepting an offer down the road. If you think of recruiting as primarily a sales function, what could be more basic than identifying your target’s “buying criteria” and using it to guide your sales approach?

How to Use The Information

Once you know a candidate’s criteria, use it in the following ways:

1. Screening out. Obviously, if their acceptance criteria include things your firm can’t or won’t offer (i.e., the option to work at home), you can then screen out candidates early on in the process.
2. Crafting your sales pitch. Once you know the candidate’s decision criteria, focus your approach on what the candidate needs (unfortunately 99% of corporate-recruiting processes are focused on making HR’s job easy, rather than being “candidate centric”).
3. Getting managers to change the job. If it’s obvious that you can meet most but not all of the top candidates’ expectations, use the areas of “disconnect” to work with the manager to modify the job in order to increase your chances of getting a top candidate to say yes.
4. Put together a “what candidates expect” database. If you asked this question of every candidate, you could identify the general criteria that candidates use to select a job. You could also train your recruiters on what to expect and what sales pitch is appropriate for each of the most common criteria. Use the information to change the content of job descriptions, your website, and the “pillars” of your corporate employment branding. You could also use it to determine any variations in job-acceptance criteria among the different X, Y, or M generations. Corporate recruiting should segment this data into job families and geographic regions, as well as between college and experienced hires.

Top Performer Criteria Is More Complex

One important thing to remember is that when you ask unemployed candidates about their acceptance-decision criteria, their answer is likely to be short and simple. In contrast, currently employed top performers are likely to have longer decision criteria.

I call this “job-switch criteria,” and it’s critical to ask what criteria candidates will use to decide if switching jobs makes sense whenever you’re trying to recruit more desirable currently employed top performers. If you can identify the job-switch criteria of currently employed top performers, you have added real value to the recruiting equation! Incidentally, I would still ask about acceptance criteria with all unemployed candidates. Don’t expect the answers to be as complex.

When to Ask the Million-Dollar Question

Just like in marketing, it is essential that you know your customers’ “buying criteria” before you attempt to make the sale. The golden rule here is the earlier the better! Remember that after you get the information, it’s critical to document it in a way that is accessible to all who will interact with the candidate.

Ask this question in the following places:

• Your corporate career site (candidate profiling feature).
• On your written application for employment.
• During any pre-screening activities (phone screen, Web screen, face-to-face meeting).
• Via e-mail prior to any assessment activity.
• As the ice-breaking question in a formal interview.

Getting the Answer Indirectly

If you want to be subtle, ask them to outline their “dream job” using a structured set of information categories and use it to sell them. You could also get at the information by asking the following:

• What frustrates you about your current job?
• What could your company do to improve your current job situation?

Or, simply ask for their input on the following:

• References.
• Other decision influencers (colleagues, friends, professors, and family).
• Focus groups or surveys with other recent hires in the same or similar job family.
• Focus groups with employees from other firms (this is usually done at a trade fair or job fair) to identify their criteria.
• Published general market research studies.

If you’re finding that candidates are not reluctant to provide you with their job acceptance criteria, ask them to rank or weight the factors so that you can see which are most critical in their decision-making.

Incidentally, during the on-boarding process you should ask all candidates why they accepted the offer, and also whether they had any concerns that caused them to nearly decline. Use this information to improve your sales pitch and to “validate” whether the information you’re getting on their job-acceptance criteria is similar to the criteria that they actually used to make their decision.

Remember, wherever possible, to categorize the answers from these surveys and focus groups by job family, location, and demographic factors. These “general” decision-making factors change over time as the economy and the competitive job market change.

Don’t Forget To Use the Information

Remember, the purpose of identifying job-acceptance decision criteria is to provide recruiters and managers with specific information that will help improve the organization’s closure rate. Doing the work and keeping the answers a secret will not work, nor will knowing the information and failing to consistently act on it.

If managers don’t use the information, or do not accept the candidate’s reasoning as valid, it will not work. To be successful, have a process for getting feedback as to whether the information was helpful and how the process of gathering decision criteria can be improved.

Incidentally, if you come across reluctant candidates, run. It’s a bad sign if candidates can’t identify their own decision criteria before making a critical decision like pursuing a new job.

I am sure that you have been there. You have a candidate you’ve been working with for a few weeks and you have built a solid relationship.

The candidate has been on a couple interviews with the hiring manager. Things are going well as the candidate and the client are each delighted with the thought of going forward.

There is the distinct aroma of an offer in the air, great things are going to happen, and you are one happy recruiter.

Now comes the bad part (honestly, you knew this was coming, so follow the unhappy bullets):

• You get into the office one morning, call the candidate, and leave a message. Three hours go by and no returned call. This is interesting. You normally get a return call within about an hour or so.
• You send an email; no response. The candidate is Blackberry-enabled and emails are normally returned almost instantly; very strange.
• The day is over and you make a call to the candidate’s home, but the spouse says the candidate is out and will not be back until late tonight.
• The morning has arrived and you are thinking about the candidate as you drive to work. Something is not right; you know it because you have been doing this for too long to not feel it. You try to deny the feeling but another call to the candidate is not returned until later that night. You are no longer the happy recruiter, as the candidate starts the conversation with my least favorite words; “You know, I’ve been thinking?”

The bottom line relating to this bit of misery is that somewhere along the merry road of the hiring process something changed in the candidate’s life and you did not know about it. It could have been personal, professional, or anything in between, but to quote the title of Joseph Heller’s great second novel, “something happened.”

Unfortunately, whatever happened acted as a catalyst to alter the value proposition you were counting on to close the deal. As a result, the candidate’s interest is greatly diminished.

To make matters worse, not only do you not know what has changed, you are still not even aware that something has changed in the first place. As a result, you have been blind-sided and now you scramble to save the deal. Perhaps you will and perhaps you won’t, but either way, this is not a fun way to start the day. Let’s see how we can do better in the future.

What Has Changed in Your Life?

Good recruiters ask a ton of questions during the initial interview, and this is of course a basic necessity if you wish to be successful. (See 10 Things Recruiters Should Know About Every Candidate They Interview.) On the other hand, many recruiters fail to recognize that the world changes day to day and changing circumstances can impact the candidate’s life during the hiring process.

The objective is to not just get to know that candidate from a static-interview perspective as the process starts, but to carry on the dialogue as the interviewing process continues to its endpoint because ignorance is not bliss, and what you don’t know can certainly hurt you.

As a result of this insight regarding the nature of changing circumstances, it is imperative to ask the candidate, often and with great consistency, the following question:

What has changed in your life since last we spoke?

Life is not the notes we take during an interview. It is an ever-changing series of events that transform and shift candidate needs, priorities, and requirements on a regular basis. If we do not know what is going on in the candidate’s life that can affect the deal (agency-speak) or hire (corporate-speak), we will not have the information necessary to maximize the possibility of closure.

Maximizing the possibility of closure is one of the things that separate great recruiters from those who are mediocre. (By the way, do not even think that the candidate will simply volunteer what has changed without you asking the question, because that is high-risk. Why gamble if you can just ask?)

Here are just five things that have changed with candidates I have worked with, causing me to either lose the deal or go half-crazy trying to close it:

1. The candidate’s spouse was laid off. The candidate can’t change jobs, as stability is key right now.
2. The candidate has been given the project of a lifetime. It makes no sense to change jobs now, as that was the main reason he was looking in the first place.
3. The candidate was given a raise and a promotion. There’s no sense changing jobs at the moment, maybe next year.
4. The candidate’s boss, whom he hated, was transferred. Life is good, so why change jobs?
5. The candidate stopped into a Saab dealership and fell in love with a 900s convertible; now the long commute is fun. (Who could make this up?)

As you can see, the number of things that can change in a candidate’s life are infinite, and if you do not know what they are to the best of your ability, you will not be armed with the information you need to develop a new game plan and a new capture strategy.

Strangely enough, asking the question, “What has changed in your life since last we spoke?” is not the invitation to bad news that it can seem to be on the surface. It is not looking for trouble. It is a way of checking the solidity of your deal by trying to see if any new information or circumstances have arisen.

Asking this question can help to close more deals because even if the news appears to be bad, at least you now know what you are up against. As a result, you can go to your client or hiring manager and tell them of the change and work together to develop a new and creative plan to land the candidate.

Let’s look at four examples:

1. The candidate’s wife was laid off? Perhaps there is a position at the client’s company.
2. The candidate has a new and exciting project? Perhaps you can give them an even better one.
3. The candidate was given a raise and a promotion? Let’s look at compensation structure and titles to see what can be worked out to create a situation that is better than the one the candidate currently has.
4. The candidate bought a new car and now loves to drive endlessly? (You tell me; I lost this one. But you get the picture.)

Will this work all of the time? Of course not. Will the candidate level with you every time you ask that question? Of course not, but it will never work if you do not know what possible changes you are up against since the initial interview.

I can almost guarantee you that if you employ this question on a regular basis with every candidate who is moving toward an offer, you will close more deals. Closing more deals is what great recruiters focus on doing.

The purpose of this “On Becoming a Great Recruiter” series is to give recruiters hands-on tactics to hire great people, one search at a time. Over the past seven weeks, we’ve covered the entire recruiting process from the beginning to almost the end. In Part 2, we described how to use performance profiles rather than job descriptions when taking the assignment. In Part 3, we described what it takes to write and position ads that compel the best to apply. Part 4 focused on finding top passive talent using tools like ZoomInfo to identify and network with the best around. In Parts 5 and 6, we described how to conduct a performance-based interview that was not only simple to use and more accurate than traditional behavioral interviewing, but it also gave recruiters the information needed to defend candidates against managers who make superficial assessments. Part 7 focused on negotiating and closing offers on opportunity rather than compensation.

This week, we need to make sure that all of your hard work doesn’t fall apart at the last moment by having a candidate renege after accepting your offer. To minimize this problem, start by summarizing the big reasons people turn down offers:

• They accepted a counteroffer.
• They accepted a better offer.
• They didn’t think your compensation was enough.
• They didn’t think your job was big enough.
• They decided not to relocate.
• They didn’t have a really clear idea of actual job needs.
• They didn’t want to leave all of their friends and associates at their current company.
• They started thinking that the hiring manager was weak.
• Their friends and advisors convinced them your offer wasn’t worth taking.
• They used your offer to get a better offer.

Here are some things you can do to address the reasons listed above, both before and after you make the offer. If followed, you can potentially reduce the chance of people backing out at the last moment by 50 to 75%: 10 Ways to Prevent Offers from Falling Apart

1. Don’t make the offer until all potential reasons for reneging have been formally addressed. You should never make an offer formal until every detail has been agreed upon. Testing offers properly (Part 7) will eliminate at least half of the potential problems with counteroffers, money concerns, and the perennial “I have a better offer.”
2. Be the last company to make the person an offer. If your candidate has other opportunities on the table, assume yours is being used to get a better offer somewhere else. To prevent this, you’ll need to delay your offer until it’s the last one the candidate receives.
3. Prepare a side-by-side job comparison. If you have prepared a performance profile (Part 2 and more articles) before taking the assignment, you’ll be able to compare your candidate’s current job with all of the other opportunities he or she might receive, including yours. Make sure most of the focus of this comparison is on the key challenges described in the performance profile. Done properly, your job will stand out since it creates a more compelling employee value proposition. Caution the candidate against over-valuing vague promises and generalities.
4. Get the hiring manager 100% involved. Hiring managers must take a major role in recruiting the candidate in partnership with the hiring team. It’s less difficult for a candidate to leave close friends and long-term associates if he has already experienced some type of personal relationship with the new group. Why not have the hiring manager call and meet with your candidate and prepare the job comparison described above?
5. Make the offer an event, not a transaction. Make the offer something special. For instance, don’t just send a letter. Have the hiring manager deliver it personally, possibly with a few key members of the team.
6. Make the offer about the job, not about the money. If you can’t differentiate your job by describing its challenges, key growth opportunities, and how important it is to a major company initiative, all you have left is the money. So make sure when you take the assignment and prepare a performance profile that you ask the hiring manager, “Why would a top person want this job?”
7. Get the person involved in the job before starting. Right after the offer has been accepted, have the hiring manager give the candidate a relevant and important mini-assignment. This could be something like asking the candidate to comment on the capital budget for the new project. It will give the candidate real insight into the job while providing a convenient way for the hiring manager and the candidate to dialogue a few times before the candidate actually starts. That process can help minimize second thoughts.
8. Conduct a thorough pre-relocation dance. Turning a job down using a “Can’t move” excuse after the offer is extended/accepted (Part 7 described how to make these concurrent) is verboten. Relocation involves a number of critical steps. The most important is that the whole family visits the site, they find a possible neighborhood to live in, and the kids have met some new friends.
9. Create friendship-making opportunities during the selection and recruiting process. It’s commonly known that having a friend at work is an important part of on-the-job satisfaction. Use this concept to your advantage by creating opportunities for the candidate to meet with some peers during a lunch or dinner interview when the discussion is more casual. That will also give you a glimpse into another side of the candidate’s personality.
10. Visualize the resignation process. Now that you’ve eliminated the competition using these steps, you’ll need to ensure the person doesn’t take a counteroffer. The most important part of this is walking the candidate through the emotional roller-coaster associated with saying goodbye to a group of people she has worked with for a few years. Make sure the candidate visualizes the process and rehearses how she’ll say she’s not interested in discussing a counter-offer, especially since she has already signed a letter of acceptance with your company. If she has reviewed the performance profile in great detail, she’ll also have the confidence to overwhelm her current boss’ lame arguments about why the new job isn’t as good as the one he’ll create for her.

Don’t ignore the importance of keeping the deal closed. An offer turned down at the last stage means that the entire process needs to be redone. This will cost you at least four to six weeks in lost on-the-job performance, delaying other searches the recruiter can’t handle and increasing frustration on the part of everyone involved. From what I’ve seen, few recruiters handle this critical end-game process well, so spend some extra time here. This is the final article in our “Becoming a Great Recruiter” series. If you follow every step as described in every article, there’s no doubt you will become at least 30% to 50% more productive. The ball is now in your court. You know what to do; now go do it. If you’re a recruiter, try a few of the techniques described on just one assignment. As you become proficient, continually try more of the techniques until they’re mastered.

You’ll soon be performing at a much higher level. If you’re a recruiting manager, start tracking your team’s performance – especially focusing on sendouts per hire per assignment. This metric captures candidate quality, time to hire, and client satisfaction. Watch the trends improve as you train your team in these techniques. Soon, you’ll see improvement throughout the team. Collectively, this is how to make hiring top talent a systematic business process. Better, it’s how you make sure that everyone is committed to making hiring top talent #1. And that was the whole purpose of this series of articles.