Bringing Clarity to Recruiting

We’ve had three client meetings on-site in the last few days.  All three of these meetings were tremendous and remind us about why we do this.  It got me thinking: what makes a great client for American Workforce?

1.  They understand that people aren’t widgets that can be manufactured.  Some weeks might produce 5 qualified people who could be great in a role.  Some months might produce no one! 

2.  They realize that the cost of a mis-hire is a lot more damaging to their company than trying to hire too quickly or trying to save money on the front end by cutting corners on talent assessment. 

3.  They only want to hire amazing people.  Really, for them it isn’t just lip service.  They’ve analyzed their needs, they’ve built an environment that makes it incredible for people to work in, and they’re willing to be patient until the perfect A-Player is identified. 

4.  They “Aim High in Steering”.  Remember Driver’s Ed in High School?  You’ll drive your car into a tree if you are staring at the steering wheel.  When you can look down the road and understand what your needs are going to be 3, 6, 9, 12 months out you’re much more likely to get exceptional people instead of just the ones that are looking for jobs on that particular day. 

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Adding to the previous thoughts on salespeople and how difficult it is to hire predictably in Sales, I was recently forwarded these statistics (based on assessing 350,000 sales candidates) that were produced by Dave Kurlan, the Founder of the Objective Management Group.  You might want to be sitting down before reading this if you’re a Sales Manager.  If you’re a business owner, definitely sit down!

24% of all candidates will not prospect - at all! 
Only 1% of all hunters have the complete Hunter Skill Set.
Only 8% of all candidates could be considered Hunters (and don’t you typically hire salespeople to prospect?)

Why?  Salespeople who dislike prospecting dislike it for a reason.  They have beliefs and fears that cause anxiety and physical reactions to even the thought of prospecting. So some won’t do it at all, some will have difficulty getting started and some will have difficulty finishing.

45% of all candidates will not close - at all! 
Less than 1% of all candidates have the complete Closer Skill Set. 

Why? Salespeople confuse asking with getting.  Most salespeople know how to ask for the business but very few salespeople know how to get the business when prospects resist.  As with hunting, there are beliefs and fears that impact their behavior and when salespeople aren’t comfortable saying the words you’ve taught them, they substitute words that make them more comfortable.  What makes them comfortable?  

Presenting features and benefits, actions that don’t put their prospects on the spot, that don’t create stalls, put-offs, objections and excuses, that they absolutely don’t want to deal with.

Bottom line: unless you have a recruiting, assessment and interviewing process that really helps you identify what really drives a Salesperson you’re likely going to end up, “Interviewing and offering a role to Brad Pitt but Borat will show up for the first day on the job” (Thanks K. Scheible for a tremendous word picture). 

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I’ve been asked a lot in the past few weeks the same question: “I really want to do a scorecard for my interviews but I don’t know how to make them?”.  I started looking into how these Hiring Managers were going about the process and I realized that it’s not the end result that has been elusive but rather the starting point. 
When creating a scorecard don’t start with a job description and hope you can create a good one.  Instead, write the Performance Evaluation Plan for the prospective employee at their 1 year review meeting.  By honestly assessing the results you hope to achieve by hiring someone you end up with a number of things (in addition to the basis for a scorecard).  You get (a) the metrics for bonus-based compensation (b) the foundation of a much better Job Description (c) a solid way of working backwards to see if an employee is really “getting it” in their first 30, 60, 90 days in the job. 

Here are some examples of real “Responsibilities” that we’ve seen on Job Descriptions and how they would have been written better if someone had started at the Performance Evaluation and worked backwards: 

CONTROLLER - Large Construction Company

Key Responsibility:  Ideal candidates will have strong leadership, communication and organizational skills.

If they worked backwards it might look like this instead:

Performance Review:  Possess the organizational skills necessary to reduce the closing of the books each month from 18 days to 7. 

New Job Description Requirement: Track record of implementing structure and organization to an existing accounting system that resulted in significant reductions in the amount of time it takes to compile, reconcile and close the books each month.

CALL CENTER MANAGER - Publicly Traded Phone Company

Key Responsibility:  Staff Recruitment, Training, Hiring and Development

If they worked backwards it might look like this instead:

Performance Review:  Implement employee retention programs that will reduce our turnover from 300% per year to 100% (a net reduction of 66%) and establish a quantifiable system to allow us to reward our top performers for their day to day behavior while tracking customer satisfaction.

New Job Description Requirement: Experience Recruiting, Training and Retaining employees at a high level through the implementation of high quality talent assessment with a focus on improving the customer experience and staff retention.

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It’s a couple of years old but I’m a huge fan of Guy Kawasaki and I was recently reminded of his blog post while I was reading other information online.  It’s from his personal blog called How to Change The World.

He called it The Art of Recruiting and he makes a number of great points including: Hire Better Than Yourself (which is so much harder than most people are willing to admit) and Check Independent References.  

We get asked a lot how you can go about checking independent references.  The easiest way that we’ve found is to utilize the  Topgrading technique of career history review.  Included in their career history form is something called TORC which stands for Threat of a Reference Check.  By simply asking the question, “And who was your manager there?  And what will they say when I call them?” you can get a lot more information out of someone.  A simple example of how this works: I was on the phone with a candidate this morning who was sharing with me all of the wonderful things he had accomplished in his current role and couldn’t even think of a weakness he had until I asked the aforementioned question.  Suddenly I’m hearing about the deadlines that he missed and the way he and his manager never really got along. Don’t be afraid to push hard on someone whose career history you’re not really buying in to. And check references…

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We have thousands of job seekers sending their resumes in for every single position we have open at any given time (and sometimes, there are a lot of positions). You aren’t doing yourself any favors by sending in your resume to jobs you are not qualified for. In fact, you are probably lessening your chances of actually getting a job that would truly match what you are looking for.

Because of this, we’d like to offer up 3 Things You Can Do To Improve Your Chances with Us:

1) Cross check your qualifications: If you are going to apply for a job, please read the ad and try to determine if you really have the skill set necessary to fill the job. Just because you may have some of the same keywords in your resume that the job posting has, does not mean you are qualified for the job. Having experience as a medical claims coder in a hospital does not make you qualified to be a doctor.

2) Include your contact information: We often see this with technical applicants. They will not include their location and contact information in their resume. Full disclosure is the key here. Please don’t make us guess if you are in our search parameters. Also, if you want the job, make it easy on the person reviewing your resume to be able to contact you for an interview. Making them chase all over trying to find a way to get a hold of you will just cause frustration on their part and could eventually make them mark you off their list of potential candidates.

3) Include Dates: Again, full disclosure is best when it comes to relevant information within your resume. When we see a resume that does not have the dates listed within their employment history, it often means that the applicant has something to hide. Either the person has a jumpy, job hopping work history or they don’t have the required years of specific experience. Either way they are not being open about their work history, which makes us question their intentions in the first place.

If you are considering sending your resume in for a job you are truly interested in, look your resume over and make sure it has all of the important details listed. Making a few small changes to your job search and resume strategy can make a large impact on your results.

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I’ll admit, this isn’t original content. This came from the Spoonfed newsletter, a quarterly update on what is happening inside of the company Spoonbend . Tina Schweiger (the Founder) is one of my favorite people in Austin and she offered these tips for 1st Time Job Seekers who are hoping to break into the Graphic Design world:

1. DO Build a portfolio website. DO NOT email me a giant PDF. I don’t want to open it.

2. DO NOT have any broken links [on your website], “coming soon” or strange navigation.

3. DO NOT call. Mail me something cool! That way I can see your craft too.

4. DO NOT ask if “we’re hiring.” Offer to schedule a portfolio review appointment instead. (AMWF Note: there is always room for an A-Player at a company. Asking for permission to send in a portfolio or resume is always a bad move.)

5. DO NOT pad your portfolio with freelance work just because it’s paid. It is OK just to have student work in your portfolio. Often little flyers and small freelance projects bring the quality of the portfolio down because the concept usually isn’t as thought out.

6. DO NOT feel entitled to anything. In this economy, be willing to take internships, production jobs, anything to get your foot in the door.

7. DO NOT leave your MySpace page with drunken party photos around for prospective employers to see. We will google you.

8. DO NOT send long rambling introductions by mail or email. State why you are right for the job, what you can offer the company, and what sets you apart from all of the other applicants in the sea.

9. DO NOT flip through your portfolio too quickly in an interview. Let your interviewer drive.

10. DO NOT have typos anywhere.

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A topic we often have to go over when we talk with our smaller clients is one that warrants more attention. The common thought is that Recruiting falls under Human Resources as part of their domain. However, in our experience, Human Resources is ill-equipped to handle recruiting for a number of reasons:

1. Human Resources is typically focused on everything but revenue creation for a company. Recruiting, while a cost center, is critical to revenue creation for companies.

2. Human Resources tends to skew towards the softer side of human relationships. They’re the people that you go to for help with your maternity policy or if you’ve got a problem with an addiction. That “soft side” has absolutely no place in recruiting and, as we’ve stated before, clients who allow gut reactions to influence their hiring decisions are setting themselves up for failure most of the time.

3. Human Resources typically lacks strategic vision and drive. Recruiting not only requires strategic guidance, it often must craft strategic initiatives to meet the future needs of the company. If you’re in Human Resources and you disagree, we suggest you read this article before defending your “strategic stance”.

It’s been said that Dandelions share about 70% of the same DNA make-up as a Human Being. We feel that Human Resources and Recruiting are related in the same way and if you’re asking your Human Resources department to handle Recruiting you may not end up with the results you’re looking for.

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As our economy continues at its sluggish pace, we’re seeing more and more people coming on to the job market. As these job seekers approach us, a number of things are really standing out that are concerning.

1. They’re depressed - when you’re on the phone with a Recruiter or Hiring Manager, put on a happy face. Nothing is more exhausting than trying to have a solid conversation with a person who sounds like they’ve given up.

2. They don’t know what they want to do - spend some time, especially if you got a severance package, and put what you liked and disliked about your last 3 or 4 roles side by side to help you determine what would really make you happy in your next role. You might also consider reading a little to make up your mind. One of our favorites is Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson.

3. They aren’t making job seeking a full time job - you simply have to. To take a job search seriously is more important than anything else you can do. Research extensively before an interview. Enhance your depth as a person by reading business books. Refine your resume. Network.

Getting laid off isn’t fun for anyone but just doing these three simple things above can make a huge difference in both the amount of time that you are between jobs and the quality of the next job you land.

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I met with a prospective client last week and they handed me 15 open positions that they needed to have hired immediately and shared with me that they just didn’t feel like paying a recruiter 30% of the salary was worthwhile. As I dug in a little further I found that this company had already tried everything they could that was free (Craig’s List, et al) and they hadn’t had anyone proactively apply to their jobs. They had been doing this for 4 months and now their needs for 12 of the 15 people were at crisis level. They weren’t happy with me when I told them that we couldn’t help them.

Why?

We’re not firefighters.

If your company has been waiting for months and hoping that you’d find a bunch of highly qualified applicants through your free job postings (or even Monster postings for those big spenders) and now you’re in a crunch - get ready to pay a hefty fee. There are two wise old sayings that I’ve heard over the years that really apply to this situation, “Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to start digging a well.” and “People whose homes are on fire rarely worry about fixing the dent in their car”.

At American Workforce, the process is what we’re good at. We’ll build a candidate pipeline before you need it so that you’re not forced to hire people who happen to be on the market that week because you’re out of time. Sure, recruiting like this takes longer and, often, costs a little more than if you were to do it yourself. But seriously, would you rather pay someone to proactively make your house safer and then monitor it to ensure it doesn’t catch on fire or sit and watch your house burn to the ground as you negotiate with the fire department over the cost of water?

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I found myself with a prospective client two weeks ago talking about what would likely become a $10,000+/month budget for assisting with their recruiting challenges and I asked, innocently, “What else have you done internally to beef up your referrals from employees?” The response I got was pretty scary: “We think we have a great place to work and we hope that our employees would want their friends to work here.” When I pressed him a little further about an employee referral program that compensated people for bringing in their friends’ resumes his answer stopped me in my tracks, “I could never talk to our COO about that, there’s no way he would ever put that in our budget”.

It’s been a week since my meeting and I’m still so frustrated by this conversation that I’ve actually started to research the statistics on how much of an impact a properly run employee referral program can have on a company. Fortunately for me, ERE.net had an article today that saved me a lot of time. The stats on AMBank are simply amazing. 75% of their employees are now coming from internal referrals. 75%! I bet if you took that to your COO you’d get your budget approved….

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