Over the past few months, I’ve surveyed more than 30 staffing executives from top companies around the country, asking them to describe their biggest hiring concerns as the economy recovers. The problem that bothered them the most was that their recruiters didn’t know how to really recruit. Since it’s so easy now to find good candidates on the Internet, what it really takes to recruit a top candidate has become a lost art. With just a minor strengthening of the economy, the pipeline of hot candidates will quickly dry up, and companies will once again need to scramble to fill positions. To address this concern, let’s get back to basics. Over the next few articles, I’m going to talk about what it takes to be a great recruiter. To start with, here’s a list of essential recruiting performance objectives. I’ll start talking about the second one today, and cover it and the others throughout the summer. These are the things you need to do to be considered a great recruiter, whether you work inside or outside a company:
That’s all there is to learn in order to become a great headhunter. While I’ll get into more depth in my next article on the topic of quickly convincing a top candidate to consider any job, let me offer some quick advice. Good recruiters don’t sell jobs; they provide career opportunities to top candidates. They get top candidates to talk about themselves within minutes of first contact without ever needing to describe the job. Once you begin talking and selling, you’ve lost applicant control. Recruiters must be the one to decide if a candidate is a fit or not. They can’t allow a candidate to say yes or no, without all of the facts. If you leave it up to the candidate to opt in or out on superficial data, you’ll lose 50-75% of those candidates that could have been converted, and you also reduce your ability to gain referrals. The best candidates?? active or passive?? are very discriminating. They’ll try to make judgments about considering a job based on only a few criteria?? title, company, location, pay, and whether the recruiter calling them is competent or not. When you first call a top candidate cold, you need to accomplish three things: 1) delay the need for the candidate to make an instantaneous judgment; 2) put yourself in the position of determining if the candidate is qualified; and 3) present yourself as a professional. You do this by asking questions, not by selling the job. Instead, first introduce yourself and tell the candidate you’re responsible for filling a senior (or executive) level position for a major company. It’s okay to be vague. Then ask the candidate if he or she would be open to exploring a situation that’s clearly superior to their current position. If you do this right, 99% of the people you talk to will say yes. If you don’t get 99% yeses, you need to work on this part. This takes no more than one minute to present. Then say that you’d first like to ask a few general questions about their background and then you’ll give them a quick overview of the job. Then mention that after this exchange of information, you’ll jointly decide if it makes sense to consider this opportunity in more detail. Seventy-five percent of your candidates will agree to go forward on this basis alone. Then obtain a short profile to qualify the candidate. If the candidate balks by asking about location, pay or anything else, you’ll need some simple countermoves. I’ll get into more specifics on how to do this next time, but for now work on the basic opening introduction. Hiring top people takes exceptional recruiting skills at every step. The first step is getting their attention and keeping them involved. You can’t ever afford to lose a good candidate. Soon the economy will be recovering, and if you read this series of articles you’ll know exactly what it takes to recruit great people every time. In the second edition of my book, “Hire With Your Head,” coming out this September, I thank all those great candidates who went the extra mile. Using these tips, you’ll be able to thank them yourself.