(In this article @ before a name denotes a person’s Twitter name.)
@ValentinoBenito guested on the Recruiting @Animal Radio Show on Wednesday, June 15 and he was regaling the crowd with tales of his past recruiting successes.
Early in the interview he made the broad statement that “Recruiting is pretty straight-forward.”
“Uh-oh,” I thought. “He’s going to rile some up in this crowd.”
What I didn’t expect was for him to explain what he meant so succinctly.
Usually, guests who come on the show and blither on and on about how successful they are get ripped to shreds and given low scores in the one half hour AfterShow that @Jerry_Albright hosts.
That didn’t happen with “Tino.”
It seems a ways back he was tasked to hire engineers on an historically large defense project and one of the companies the customer wanted to see lots of engineers out of was Boeing.
The great need meant that he couldn’t be too picky — he was grabbing engineers with generally correct experience by the bushel.
The customer knew the correct experience resided at Boeing.
They were smart because they were competing for people with other firms who were working on the same huge defense project and they recognized that they were in the midst of a war for talent in which speed was essential to beat the competition.
He was given the green light to offer people (from Boeing) jobs ON THE SPOT.
Owning this opportunity gave him a great advantage and made him swift of foot.
He could beat out the competition on any given day.
Few companies allow their recruiters this latitude.
There’s good reason to allow your recruiters to make “on the spot” offers to candidates.
If there are companies you admire — companies who have shown up (time and again) on the resumes of your better employees –it’s a pretty good bet that others who work for these companies would make good employees for you. Especially if you’re hiring in a discipline similarly aligned to theirs, like engineering.
I have often said that, in recruiting, identifying the target companies one sources from is half the battle.
What I mean is if you choose your target companies carefully and you source carefully inside them the people you identify will (most likely) be well suited to fill your open position(s).
It’s not rocket science.
Companies spend millions of dollars hiring (and training) the right people.
If their philosophy and ambitions align with yours poaching those people from those companies represents no transgression in civil law.
For those of you for whom the word “poaching” raises hackles on your spine let me be clear:
I am not recommending you “poach” with the intention of destroying another company.
If your intention is to hire the best people for your own company then have at it!
There’s a difference.
Commerce is not for the faint-hearted.
Getting back to the hiring-on-the-spot subject of this article:
Arm your recruiters with the ability to offer jobs immediately to candidates out of specific target companies that you admire.
Don’t be afraid to do this.
Recruiting is pretty straight-forward.
*A target company is a company you send a sourcer into to find people on the inside who hold specific titles or who are doing the job you want done for you.