Body shop, agency, recruiter, head hunter. They make me wince, as in “ Can the next person in line please come to this checkout?” Do a search for “head hunter” and you’ll have your choice of about 9,560,000 results including “The Headhunters” ( a professional wrestling tag team) , the “Chelsea Headhunters”, ( hooligans associated with the Chelsea football club ) or “The Headhunters”, ( a jazz fusion band founded by Herbie Hancock). And of course head hunter, as in recruiter, someone we likely know only vaguely and use reluctantly, hoping they will help us find the perfect job or dig deep into their extensive, encrypted rolodex to find the perfect hire.
What you suspect about the business is largely true….most recruiters are transactional and despite fancy names like recruitment consultant or search advisor, all are commission-based salesmen. ( Full-disclosure, while I love my work, I am also paid on results.) Yet, while only about 20% of all roles are filled by external search ( remember this number as you develop a networking plan or engage in your next job search ), recruiters can play an important role guiding you to new opportunities or providing smart career advice.
Here’s a primer on how to get the maximum value from the recruiting industry.
For Candidates
1. Make sure you own your career plan…ask yourself the critical questions. What are my career objectives? What should my role next role look like inside or outside of my current company? What skills gaps do I need to fill to get there? Do not turn this thinking over to anybody else, especially a recruiter who leads with: “Do you want to look at this job? I think you’d be great at it”. I once met a previously-successful Director of Sales (emphasis on past tense) who told me that he liked to keep his career options open by seeing what came his way. The upside: flexibility. The downside: in the previous 5 years, he had made 2 opportunistic decisions, was earning 30% less than peak, and the market was no longer buying what he was selling. Good recruiters should want your answers to those first 3 questions (and more) before they discuss a role.
2. Most recruiters in today’s world would die without LinkedIn… which means that your profile has extraordinary power. Make sure that your profile is current, and offers a balanced view of who you are and what you’ve done. The better the description and the stronger the narrative, the greater the chance that I can find you. If you’re not sure what a good profile looks like, spend 30 minutes scanning LinkedIn: you’ll find plenty. Bad ones stand out too, so pay attention. Then revisit and rewrite yours. Two more tips: first, make sure to use only high quality digital photos: no head shots from a webcam in your basement office, or the beach bar in Punta Cana with someone’s arm wrapped around you. Second: be smart about peer recommendations. My all-time favorite: “Jim worked for me”.
3. Resumes are still important tools for career advancement. Like it or not resumes remain the primary selling document but on average, recruiters scan a resume for about 7 seconds before deciding if they should be filed. Your resume should detail your responsibilities and accomplishments, it should not read like a job description. Every job and every role has yardsticks of success. Make it your business to remember your results over the last several years. How did you perform? What did your manager say about you in your last performance appraisal? I’ve stopped being surprised when sales leaders say “Let me think” when I ask a simple question of their team’s performance against quota. And beware the Pinocchio effect! Your nose will grow if you exaggerate your accomplishments, and you will lose credibility. Like the marketing director, who claimed to deliver $1.5B in sales for employer #1, and 12 months later revolutionized employer #2’s business, before deciding his work was finished and moving to employer #3. Really?
4. Once you engage with a recruiter, be responsive and be honest. I am very aware of the time investment and emotional commitment I’m asking you to make. But when we have real conversations about what your future should look like, who you are, where you are headed and what you think, great things can happen. And while it might seem obvious, be professional, because as a candidate you have a brand too, which creates lasting perceptions of who you are. Like this note to me on LinkedIn: “Hi Fredo. Any new opportunities?” Later, much later.
Lastly, ask yourself if you were the client and paying for a search “Would I use this recruiter?” Because if the answer is no, you probably aren’t being well represented.
For Employers:
1. Act like your best sales leader, and develop a go-to-market plan for talent. Think of talent acquisition as a part of your overall business strategy. Look out to predict your likely hires over the next 1-2 quarters, and beyond, and then think about how senior those hires will be. The more senior the role, the greater the likelihood you should use external help. But use us selectively; you should fill most roles yourself. Remember, using recruiters is expensive and can be wasteful. If you’re short on internal resources but find yourself constantly using external help, consider hiring your own staff:$75,000 spent on search firms will hire a good quality internal recruiter for junior-to-mid level roles. If you’re short on both resources and process skills, check out Kim Benedict’s (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/kimbenedict) and her company TalentMinded.
2. Own your people strategy. It’s called talent acquisition for a good reason. In my experience, only about 50% of clients begin with a job description (even for senior roles). Job descriptions are generally useless because they’re all the same. A Global VP Sales for Plumbing Supplies and a Global VP Sales for Predictive Analytics have identical functional requirements: hire great people, knock on doors, build pipeline, close deals. Less than 5% of clients have a position profile which defines the performance characteristics of the role, and identifies how success will be measured 6 + 12 months into the job. If your search partner doesn’t or can’t go to this level, ask yourself what you’re paying for.
3. As you evaluate search partners, look beyond the stock photos of city skylines and zoom-whitened millenials laughing in boardrooms. Beyond phrases like “The Right Person the First Time. Exceptional is What We Promise. Putting People First. Helping Companies Grow.” Dig deep to understand their service model. What do they specialize in? Narrow is good. How do they differentiate?
4. Resist the temptation to start the discussion by asking “What is your fee structure?” and “When will I start seeing candidates?” In real terms the difference in fees is small compared to the business value a really good hire delivers. Be realistic about the length of time the search will take….60 days is fast, 90-120 days to start date is common. More senior roles can be 4-6 months.
5. Insist that your HR staff, hiring manager and external recruiter are joined at the hip and act like a team. For reasons which escape me, internal HR and external recruiters often compete when we both serve the same client. Remember the importance of Employer Brand. Almost 2/3 of interviewed candidates receive no feedback from the company or recruiter about their interview and over 1/3 share bad hiring experiences on social media. Just like every important project, demand milestones and guaranteed communication from your search partners. Good internal and external recruiting practices follow a defined process which creates accountability. Commitment cuts both ways, you should do the same for your search partners.
If you’re stuck on how to strategize and plan your career, the next 2 blogs will discuss the Six Essential Questions to Planning Your Career. Young or old, executive or early career, we should all be thinking about them before circumstances force us to. I love this observation from an IBM high potential employee, top 5% worldwide in a meeting I hosted. “Listening to the discussion in this focus group I’ve just realized I spend more time planning the menu for a dinner party than I do thinking about my career strategy.”
Fred Kulach is the owner and Chief Talent Officer of Mindspan Recruiting, singularly focused on Employer Brand and Candidate Experience for customer-facing roles in the technology, software and services sectors. fkulach@mindspanrecruiting.com