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What every Recruiter Can Learn from Spaghetti Sauce

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

I was introduced to this great video clip by Malcolm Gladwell the other day. Malcolm Gladwell is the best-selling author of “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”. In this talk, he explains what every business can learn from spaghetti sauce.

As I watched it, I realized not only what every business can learn from spaghetti sauce but also what recruiters can learn from spaghetti sauce.

A core message (amongst many) in his presentation is the concept of “embracing the diversity of human beings”.

He shares how back in the 70’s, spaghetti manufacturers like Ragu and Presto were all trying to make the “perfect spaghetti sauce”. What they failed to understand is that there is no “perfect spaghetti sauce” because all of us have different tastes, likes, etc.

This core message applies to candidates. I think all too often organizations spend too much time and money trying to come up with a core brand image or theme of why individuals should work for their organization. They are trying to create “the perfect image” which will entice everyone to want to work for their organization which as Malcom illustrates . . . is not possible.

With that said, I find most recruiters spent way too little time embracing the diversity of candidates and identifying and understanding what is truly important to a specific candidate and then communicating how their organization can (or cannot) meet those objectives/needs.

Outlined below are some simple questions you can ask (we embed these in our Candidate Pre-screen/Interview process) to help identify a candidates true motives, needs, wants, concerns, etc.

What is the biggest concern you have in your position right now in relation to your future?

  • On scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you in your current position? What would have to change to make it a 10?
  • Have you spoken to your manager about making these changes?
  • What are going to be your 3 most important criteria you will use in your decision to accept or not accept a position?
  • (Depending on the answers above) What would a new position have to offer you that would get you to leave your current one?

The information gathered by asking these questions is critical for:

  • Developing rapport with your candidate
  • Ensuring your organization (as well as the position) is a great match for their needs
  • Gathering the intelligence critical to successfully “closing the candidate”

If you are not spending at least 5-10 minutes understanding “what type of spaghetti sauce they want or like”, your probability of luring top talent to your organization is greatly diminished.

The other point I believe recruiters can take from this video is that people (and in this case, hiring managers) often don’t know exactly what they want. Malcolm made this point by revealing that when interrogated about their spaghetti preferences, no one ever said “Extra Chunky” and yet, what do you think is the most popular type of spaghetti sauce? That’s right – Extra Chunky! Often we, as recruiters and HR Managers, expect the hiring manager to tell us what type of candidate they’re seeking for a certain position. The truth is, most hiring managers don’t know! The better question to ask is, “What needs to get done?”

We all know that people with different sets of skills and different backgrounds can be successful in the same types of jobs, yet we continuously try to narrow the scope of candidates we review to the point that we are certainly passing up people who could be excellent. Too often the discussions between recruiter /HR manager and hiring manager focus on personality traits or soft skills instead of the business problems to be solved with the hiring of this new individual. The hiring manager will spend a lot of time talking about the fact that they want someone who is energetic, driven, dedicated, etc., etc…..sometimes to the point that they say, “I’ll know it when I see it!” While personality traits are certainly part of the hiring process, in the end it’s all about results. Our job as recruiters/hr managers is to guide the hiring manager through their thought process to determine the necessary experience/skills the candidate needs in order to get the job done and then quantify each aspect so that we understand the level of expertise needed for each. Some sample questions we like to ask hiring managers include:

  • What isn’t getting done currently because this position hasn’t been filled? (i.e., what precipitated the need for the position?)
  • How will you know if the candidate has the right level of experience with… (I ask this question regarding every skill or type of experience the hiring manager states as a requirement. They often haven’t thought through this yet and this is a wonderful question to help them start formulating the questions they’ll want to ask in the interview. I also ask them for sample questions I can use in my screening to make sure I’m able to gauge whether or not the candidate has the right level of expertise in each area.) I follow this question with, “And how will the individual be using this skill/experience in the job?”
  • We all know that you can have two candidates with the same number of years of experience and one is very good while the other isn’t. What will the right candidate need to have accomplished in their past position(s) to give you the confidence they can succeed in this position?

Working through these questions with the hiring manager helps all involved to get away from envisioning just one type of candidate (spaghetti sauce!) that can fill the position and be open to the fact that there may be several candidates from a variety of backgrounds who can get the job done (and maybe even bring some new perspective to the company!)

While the video of Malcolm is a little lengthy (18 minutes), I think it is a great one to watch!

I hope you had a nice holiday weekend!

EMBRACE THE DIVERSITY OF HUMAN BEINGS!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Candidate Pipeline, Candidate types, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Developing an Effective Recruiter Training Program

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Perhaps one of the most neglected functions for on-going development is the recruiting function. Most organizations hire recruiters based on previous experience and then expect them to apply that experience into their culture and hiring processes with minimal instruction.

The majority of training for recruiters is focused on technology training, whether it’s the applicant tracking system, the candidate database, performance management, or HRIS system. These are just the technology elements of the job.

A career recruiter will bring a strong foundation of skills in sourcing, screening, creation, and closing of candidate offers, etc. Those coupled with technology understanding are the fundamental skills any recruiter will need to be successful.

However, there are a few things that a company will need to provide in order to make the recruiter successful in your company environment:

  • What is the detailed employment value proposition that makes your company more attractive than your competition?
  • Within the department or group of jobs that the recruiter is aligned to, what are the aspects of that department or job that makes it more attractive? What are the pitfalls?
  • What are the opportunities the recruiter can “sell” that differentiates your company from another?

Here are some best practices in developing an effective recruiter training program:

Design your program to address gaps in the competencies of your recruiters.

First, you need to gain an understanding of the fundamental competencies that are most important for your recruiters. If you looked at your most successful recruiters, which competencies or behaviors set them apart from the others? Do they know the business for which they recruit better than their peers? Are they better “closers”, securing more hires per offer than their peers? If you don’t have a sense of this, then consider creating a Success Profile.

Conducting a series of focus groups or interviews with your recruiters, and the subsequent analysis, creates a tool that acts as a roadmap to management and all recruiters demonstrating the traits and competencies of your best recruiters. Once this is complete, you can then analyze the gaps within the rest of your department. Once you have this gap analysis completed, you can then design the elements of your program. These program elements would address gaps that exist in your current staff, not teaching them something they already know.

Use an external party to train.

The biggest mistake a company can make is to have their staffing or HR executives act as coaches to the people they manage everyday. The executives are to act as everyday coaches and developers of the talent, but in a forum such as this, the executive’s supervisory capacity can conflict with his or her role as a trainer.

In addition, the external party can bring best practices outside of the company’s environment that have worked across multiple organizations. Finally, an external party creates a more open environment, in which dissenting opinions, everyday issues, and other frustrations can be voiced in a “safe” environment.

Have a plan to evaluate success.

It can be as simple as a training evaluation form that is completed by attendees at the end of the course, or a focus group conducted after the session. The key is to gain a sense from the attendees that the content mapped to the competencies you planned to address in the training. This will entail setup on the front end and analysis of the results of the evaluation forms/focus groups, but this is a key step.

Commit to on-going training & effectiveness.

Establish a focus group with recruiting leaders 3 months after the training program to determine the effectiveness of the program and address any remaining areas for improvement. Commit to providing the same training program as on-boarding for ALL new recruiters that enter your organization. Finally, plan to update your training every 6 months and launch the program once a year for all recruiters.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Candidate Pipeline, Candidate types, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Relationship Recruiter, Talent Aquisition, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Thoughts from the road!

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

Over the last few weeks, I have had the opportunity to participate in numerous industry events allowing me to talk “shop” with many talented staffing professionals.

 As always, these events allow me to learn from others and provide me time to incubate thoughts/ideas that often turn into future strategies. 

 Some interesting thoughts/ideas from my travels:

  • Ideally, I think most would agree that hiring people based on competencies (versus skills) will drive better hiring decisions. Unfortunately, because it is not easy to assess someone’s competencies, we most often hire based on skills.  With internal candidates, we should have a more accurate understanding of past performance, candidate competencies, etc. allowing us truly to focus the hiring decision based more on competencies versus skills.
  • Probably only 5 to 20% of all hires need some type of direct sourcing activity. Do you understand the positions that will NOT be filled by active/internal candidates before you dedicate time, money, and resources on active/internal strategies that take precious time away from direct sourcing activities?
  • Shally Steckerl challenged the thought that one’s internal website is a “source of hire” – rather, it is a destination.  Think about it.  Most often candidates search for jobs via ‘google searches’, job boards, sites like www.simplyhired.com or www.indeed.com, SEO/SEM, social networking, advertising, etc. If one source of hires is your website, you probably do not truly understand how your candidates ‘found’ your opportunities. 
  • For those of you that have multiple license agreements with large job boards, how many of your recruiters actually use them on a regular basis?  Many companies have saved money by cutting back on licenses!
  • David Lord had some interesting statistics on retained executive search firms. 
    • The submitted candidate to hire ratio for retained search firms was 6.5 to 1 in 07 and 5.2 to 1 in 08.  Is this more efficient than your internal team?
    • 4 out of 10 retained executive searches fail!  WOW!   
  • While most executives see recruiting as “essential”, do they really perceive it to be strategic to their organization? One way to shift their thoughts is to answer the question, “How does recruiting solve corporate problems?”
  • Here’s an idea – Create an annual report for your 2009 recruitment activity/ performance. Present the report to CXX level.
  • To truly create an effective Talent Relationship Program, you need to get hiring managers involved with the ‘relationship management’ activity.
  • If your sourcing team does an effective job of identifying/sourcing quality talent for key job families over time, your sourcing team will spend less time “identifying” talent and more time developing relationships with the talent found!   
  • Create questions to ask your hiring managers:
    • What positions are most critical for changing the market value of our company?
    • What positions are less critical and really only need good people? 

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Relationship Recruiter, Social Media, Sourcing, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

52 reasons why someone should join your organization!

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Regardless of the economic conditions, top talent is always in demand, difficult to find and even tougher to hire!

Critical to your success is developing – - and articulating – - a positive brand regarding your company, the culture, and the career opportunities that exist within your organization.

We recently did a pretty cool exercise with a company that resulted in some awesome marketing material and recruitment collateral.

At a recent HR/recruiter meeting, we posed the following questions to the entire staff:

  • What truly are your candidates’ motives?
    • Why would they leave their current organization and join yours?
    • Why would they select your organization versus your competitor’s?
    • What is important to the candidate in accepting a position with a new company?

Then we asked them to articulate 52 reasons why someone would want to join their organization versus the competition

Now when we started the exercise, we started getting the same canned marketing clichés that EVERYONE uses:

  • We have a dynamic culture.
  • We have excellent benefits.
  • Our employees are #1.
  • Blah, Blah, Blah….

So I encouraged the team to develop articulate, granular statements that would convey flashy adjectives like “great”, “excellent”, “flexible”, etc. without using the same words everyone else uses. Instead of saying, “We have excellent benefits”, explain or quantify why they are excellent.

Phrases started to come out like:

Great Benefits

  1. Cutting edge, innovative healthcare program
  2. 100% preventative healthcare coverage
  3. Health Savings Account; Triple Tax Savings!
  4. 50% match on 401k/retirement plan up to 6%
  5. Healthcare coverage as low as $1.00/week!

In the end, we were able to craft 52 reasons why to join this company under the following categories (note – this is a manufacturing company):

  • Company Stability
  • Career Path
  • Great Benefits
  • Ongoing Education
  • Work Schedules
  • Trivia
  • Innovation
  • Face behind the Face
  • Global Expansion
  • Safety 1st
  • XYZ family

 
So did you figure out why we challenged the team to come up with 52 reasons why a candidate would join their company? We ended up creating a customized playing card deck with these statements on each card.

Talk about a cool branding tool. This organization currently uses them at a job fairs, gives them to employees, etc.

The response has been amazing. Many fellow “job fair” recruiters have asked how to get their hands on such a customized branding tool that candidates will use (especially college grads).

Employees have commented, “I didn’t know all these things about our company!”

This organization has gone even farther with these statements to hang them in hallways, cafeterias, etc.

The statements have become great reminders about the company they work for and the great things it has to offer.

If you are interested in obtaining more information on performing this worthwhile exercise and/or examples of these playing cards – - please contact me!

Posted in Bradley Savoy, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

What motivates you to maintain intensity and passion day in and day out to achieve the perfect day, week, or year?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

In continuing our theme of “game changing” tactics of elite recruiters…It’s something we all struggle with, the balance of consistently maintaining the passion for what we do each day as recruiters.  For folks like me that have been doing this for years, it’s a constant struggle.  I have been in the game long enough to know what to do and how to do it, but I’m human, and we’re prone to make mistakes.  It’s honestly probably every day that each of us struggles with keeping the passion alive.  We need to maintain our passion for the profession in dealing with candidates, hiring managers, internal business partners, etc.  Everyone has different needs and wants and personalities to manage.   
 
I’ll share here a few techniques that have helped me over the years.   
 
1. Planning and time management  - David has written some great articles on this, from managing your time for sourcing  to managing your CIE’s (calls, interruptions and emails).  We also spend a great deal of time in your educational programs talking about the Perfect week and Perfect Day.  If you’d like to learn more about what we teach here, just contact me.  

To me, the key to time management is not the systems I use (Outlook, CRM tools, ATS, etc.) or the processes, but the discipline that needs to be applied.   I have always prided myself on completing my task list each day before I end the workday.  I allow myself exceptions to this, but only once per week.  So if I have 5 to-do’s on Tuesday and I only get 3 of them done, then I have to make up the remaining 2 to-do’s in the next couple of days.

2. Become focused and single minded – When I plan my days, either the day before, or the morning of, I know I must maintain a single minded focus on the task.  For example, I learned long ago to close, literally close, my email box or real time communication systems when I am on a call with a candidate, hiring manager, or client.  We all know it’s way too easy to have an email come through that upsets you and completely throws your focus from the task at hand.  So for me, no emails stay open during important phone calls. 

3. Warm up and cool down each day! – I have found that a quick launch leads to a long-term psychological effect to a productive day. Sure I do the requisite cup of coffee and peruse the emails at the start of my day too, but I only give myself 20-30 minutes for this – I literally time myself.  Once that time has passed and the coffee’s gone, I jump in, and all the way in.  If I start with a high intensity of activity right away, I’ve found that it will continue throughout the day.  When you work out, you start with a quick warm up to get the blood flowing.  It’s the same approach here.  If I start with a good warm up, it will continue.  Whether it’s a day of cold calls, meetings, or data entry, the approach is the same.  Warm up, start strong, end strong.
 
I also like to end the day like I end a workout, with a nice stretch.  As the day winds down, I try to avoid emails and jumping online to read the news.  I prefer to get out of chair and do some simple stretches.  Neck, shoulders, whatever.  The key is to have some simple blood flow and breathing to wind down.  Try it for just two minutes today, and you’ll see what I mean. 
 
4. Have a positive support system – Finally, I believe in support mechanisms.  I like to talk with colleagues about their day, and share war stories.  I also like to discuss the day with people outside of our profession.  Whether it’s your friend, your partner, your plant or your pet, talk with someone that has a fresh perspective on the challenges you face.  They don’t bring the jaded view we can have sometimes of our work, and can offer fresh perspectives that we haven’t thought of.

Practicing some or all of these techniques will definitely enable you to maintain your intensity and passion in your work, and I know you’ll see and feel the impact in your productivity.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, Candidate Pipeline, Changing Role of the Recruiter, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Relationship Recruiter, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Time Management, Transactional Recruiter, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The most important Service Level Agreement?

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

In our recent post, the Backlash is Back, we promised to discuss “game changing”, low tech techniques/tactics (we call them web 0.0) that Elite Recruiters execute flawlessly 95% of the time!

To kick off that discussion, last week Bradley provided thoughts and ideas about being a Strategic Business Partner and the importance of defining the staffing process and setting service level agreements (or SLAs) with your hiring manager.

To me, the most important Service Level Agreement you can set with your hiring manager to manage initial expectations and improve and maintain excellent customer service is – - Requisition Received to “first submittal”.

Defined: This is the time that occurs between you as the recruiter receiving and qualifying the requisition from the hiring manager to the time you send over the first pre-screened, qualified candidates for consideration (or a pre-determined # or slate of qualified candidates).

9 times out of 10, when you ask a hiring manager the question during the intake session – - “when do you need this person” . . .

They respond – - “yesterday” or “ASAP”.

And probably 9 times out of 10, recruiters walk away from that discussion without setting an expectation of when the hiring manager should start to see quality applicant flow from them.

Will you have candidates to interview in 2 days? 10 days? never?

I wrote an article on this subject last August that I thought you might want to check out.

In addition – - if you are interested in an example of a Staffing Process Service Level Agreement and how we have this question defined in our Intake session, please email us.

Have a productive, Perfect Day

David Szary

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Posted in Bradley Savoy, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Are you a strategic recruitment business partner?

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Last week David spoke about the “backlash” and he promised some examples of 10 fundamental “game changers” that Elite recruiters execute flawlessly 95% of the time. This post will be the first of those.

From leading staffing and HR functions as well as consulting with clients, I have learned the balance amongst recruiting and Hiring Managers is an age old problem. To ensure internal corporate recruiters are seen as more than administrative job fillers they must effectively manage the perceptions of hiring managers. Recruiters must be seen as strategic business partners!

Tips to becoming a strategic business partner!

In order to effectively understand the job, you must first understand the business. How do you do this effectively? Spend time with your hiring manager!!  Spending time with your hiring manager and focusing on the nuances of their business will allow you to relate better to the talent you are searching for and the job you are recruiting for. This time spent with the hiring manager can really impact their perception of you as a true strategic recruitment business partner.

Questions recruiters can ask the manager: 

  • Who is your external and internal competition for talent?
  • What are your key business initiatives for the next quarter, the next year?
  • What are the critical skills and competencies you require in your workforce to meet and exceed your business objectives?
  • Who are your top performers?
  • What characteristics do they have?
  • What characteristics exist in those employees who are less successful?
  • What are the top 3 aspects that are critical for success in each job that I should be looking for?
  • What is your work style?
  • How do you define the culture of your department?

Just by asking these simple questions, recruiters begin to develop a collaborative partnership, earn the respect of their hiring managers as well as demonstrate the desire to not just fill orders, but to build the business.

Critical Steps to further strengthen the relationship between the recruiter and hiring manager:

  • Setting Service level agreements (SLAs): Setting SLAs will help the hiring manager develop an understanding of the recruiting process and their defined role within that process. This process will act as an opportunity to define how the process will work. A SLA is also critical to managing expectations especially with new hiring managers. This meeting can cover everything from timelines, who are key interviewers, and how the day-to-day interactions will occur. If you are interested in an example, please contact me.
  • Defining the position description: Recruiters need to drive the hiring manager to ensure they are not working on “weak job descriptions.” The job description is critical. It not only helps sell the position but also ensures that the recruiter delivers the right candidate. The recruiter is only as good at filling the position as the information they are provided during the intake session qualifying a new position. With that said, for each new job that is created, have a meeting to discuss it in depth. When we conduct our training programs, we teach our students to use a Hiring Manager Consultation/Intake form. If you would like an example of a well-structured Intake Session, please contact me.
  • In addition,we recommend that you have quarterly business review meetings with your hiring managers to discuss:
    • Key business objectives for the upcoming quarter/year
    • Future hiring needs based on business growth, turnover, and succession planning
    • Performance of the recruitment function using key performance indicators (KPI’s) for quality, delivery, and cost
    • Process Improvement initiatives/recommendations

Implementation of these simple practices will ensure that the recruiters have done their best to further understand the job and built a more solid foundation of partnership with their hiring managers. 

We have created a Strategic Partner Competency survey to help assess if you truly have a “seat at the table”. Feel free to take the survey.

If you would like your entire team to take it contact me and we will set up a personal link so you can evaluate the results.

Posted in Bradley Savoy, David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Recruiter, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Sales, Recruiter Training, Recruiting Buzz, Relationship Recruiter, Sourcing, Strategic Business Partner, Talent Aquisition | No Comments »

The backlash is back!

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

It seems like déjà vu. About 10 years ago the art of crafting Boolean search string commands, “peeling back URL’s” took the recruitment industry by storm.  Much like the Job boards did in the mid to late 90’s .   These new sourcing techniques were claimed to be the next ’silver bullet’ with respect to finding that elusive passive, high quality candidate.  Recruiters raced out to learn more about these techniques and if . . .they executed the techniques properly. . . on certain types of positions . . . they found success. 

Fast forward and 10 years later and the same phenomenon is occurring again. We have a new set of technology based sourcing tools to find candidates.

  • Blogs have replaced internet “chat rooms” (isn’t a blog what we used to call a “chat room”?)
  • Searching the Internet via powerful browsers and Boolean search string logic has become even more advanced and powerful
  • Huge databases of people have emerged in social networks

Web 2.0 is what we are calling it this time around and again . . . like 10 years ago . . . on certain types of positions . . . these are powerful tools that work!

But just like last time, the pendulum that probably “swung to far to the right” is coming back.

Over the past six months, many discussions have been focusing back on the fundamentals of recruiting. While technology-based tools and methodologies can assist in finding candidates and even developing relationships . . . we know that this is only one piece of the pie.

What about – -

  • Engaging hiring managers, identifying the skills and competencies that are required of a new employee
  • Setting Service Level agreements
  • Developing and communicating a value proposition to attract quality top talent
  • Skillful Assessment techniques
  • Candidate Interview Preparation
  • Effective Salary negotiation tactics
  • Having the discipline to manage priorities, daily time management, and goal setting, etc.

The Pareto principle (80/20 rule) probably applies somewhere in this conversation. Just like 10 years ago, with all these cool new gadgets – - it is hard not to focus 80% of your time, effort and energy trying to master them. But the reality is there is no silver bullet with respect to recruiting.  Recruiting is a balance between technology, “Boolean searches”, networking groups, and the bullets above!

These thoughts of mine were further validated at the ERE conference last week. While there certainly were some really cool technology-based sourcing and selection tools – - many of the sessions were focused more on the fundamentals, managing client relationships, and measuring success/ROI, etc.

Tony Blake from DaVita, in his excellent presentation, quoted a person stating – - “The next killer app. in recruiting is the recruiter!” (I love this quote!)

Mike Grennier from Wal-Mart in his presentation titled “What I have Learned” . . . stated – - “Don’t forget about the phone as a core fundamental recruiting tool!”

So just like 10 years ago, the pendulum is starting to swing back to the right…

“Mastering the fundamentals, while maybe not that sexy, is back in style!”

Richard Newsom from Fifth Third Bank stated the following during his sesession “Managing your recruitment department on a single metric”: “There is nothing more powerful in recruiting than a skillful recruiter managing the process artfully from “end-to-end” to achieve exemplary customer satisfaction ratings from your internal/external customers. ”

To this point, over the coming weeks we will be discussing 10 fundamental “game changers” that Elite recruiters execute flawlessly 95% of the time!

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Posted in Bradley Savoy, Candidate Pipeline, Candidate types, David, David Szary, Elite Recruiters, Just-In-Time hiring, LEAN recruitment, Lean Human Capital, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Relationship Recruiter, Social Media, Sourcing, Talent Aquisition, Transactional Recruiter | No Comments »

Recruiting in a down market

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009


OK –

I have to shamelessly plug Mr. Scott Clatur (Manager of Talent Selection at Henry Ford Health Systems) again.

I asked what advice he would give a recruiter whose requisition load was “light”. His insightful comment:

“Of course, this is an ideal time to pipeline candidates for future needs and/or look to top grade current staff members that are not performing to expectations. The question I always use to get my hiring managers into the proper frame of mind for this discussion is . . . “

“Would you enthusiastically rehire each and every one of your staff members?”

This thought provoking question usually starts a very fruitful discussion around:

  • Types of candidates we need to pipeline for future needs
  • Immediate issues with current personnel that will probably result in a hiring need shortly
  • The competencies/skills required to be successful working for that hiring manager within that organization.”

I LOVE this question! Of course it could be used in many other situations, including the intake session with a hiring manager when discussing succession planning needs, etc.

Scott – thanks for the great advice!

I hope everyone has a great week.

Posted in David Szary, LEAN recruitment, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Training, Talent Aquisition | No Comments »

A lesson I learned from golf!

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009


After playing some of the worst golf of my life during a recent spring break trip, I finally had enough!

While I have never been a strong golfer, I could at least keep the ball in play and finish the round with a little pride. But over the last year, it seems I get worse each time I play.

For years, friends have been telling me . . . “You won’t get better until you get some instruction.”

Not willing to dedicate the time required for the lessons (and practice); I continued to flounder playing the game. Well after that last pitiful round, that was it… the other week I took my very first lesson!

WOW – have I been missing out!

In the first few minutes of the lesson, the instructor had me hit a few balls as I normally do. Once “warmed up” (like it really makes a difference when I golf?) . . . He proceeded to have me hit a few more balls while recording my swing.

As he replayed the video, he compared my stance/posture when addressing the ball to a professional. AMAZING! I would never have believed how awkward my stance/posture was – - especially compared to “best practices.”

Immediately, I could see what I was doing wrong and started taking the necessary steps to correct it. All this info – 30 minutes into my golf lesson. If only I would have done this 20 years ago!

What does this have to do with recruiting?

I continue to work with recruiters that, self-admittedly (or from discussions with their hiring managers), have hit plateaus with respect to their recruiting performance.

Some days, they are on their “A” game and flourish. Other days, they are not “dialed in” and make unnecessary mistakes.

I ask what they are doing to improve, and many will say, “Attend some training, read material online, etc.”

I ask when was the last time they taped themselves and sat down with a mentor/coach and reviewed the tape and most say . . . I have NEVER done that!

If you can invest 6 hours this quarter (April/May/June)to improving your recruitment game, I would encourage you to tape yourself:

  • Leaving voice mail messages for candidates
  • Catching candidates live on the phone
  • On a phone screen with a candidate
  • Making an offer

Then sit down with someone that you respect as a “pro” at each one of the processes outlined above to provide review/constructive feedback/mentoring/coaching!

Like I found out from my first golf lesson, the time spent is invaluable!

If you have never done this before, this activity will arguably be the best investment you will ever make in your recruitment career!

Those that have done this before will attest to that fact.
Good luck!

Posted in Candidate types, David Szary, Recruiter, Recruiter Academy, Recruiter Boot Camp, Recruiter Top Gun, Recruiter Training, Sourcing, Talent Aquisition, Time Management | No Comments »

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