How to Recruit Your Recruiter

So let's say that you work in HR and you've been charged with filling a hard-to-fill position. Perhaps the ideal candidate needs an obscure skill set and your advertising campaign has yielded few candidates. Now you are considering hiring a recruiter to help you but have no idea where to start. What can you do?

Easy: Hire me. I'm the best. The end.

Short blog post, huh?

Seriously, the first thing you need to do is figure out what kind of a recruiter you wish to hire. In a previous post, I explained the difference between contingency and retainer-based and research-based search firms. Regardless of the type of firm you pick, there are a few things you might wish to keep in mind when interviewing potential recruiters:

Who will be doing the work? Large firms often have sales people, who sell the search work, and people who execute the searches. Not only do you want to know the skill set of the person who will be conducting the work, but you also want to know if you like them. Remember, if a search was easy, you would not need to hire us. You will likely get to know your recruiter quite well over the weeks or months of the search and it's important that you like and trust them.

How will they represent you in the market? While recruiters can do their initial screening without revealing the name of your company, eventually candidates will come to learn who you are. It's a small world out there and an overly aggressive recruiter can sully your reputation in the marketplace. Ask the recruiter how they find candidates. Understand their methods. Make sure you are comfortable with what they will be doing on your behalf.

Do they think outside the box? When looking for candidates, it's rare to find someone who 100% fits the bill. If I am looking for a branding specialist for a consumer goods company and the branding specialists in competitor firms are are happily employed, I need to know where else to look. A good recruiter understands business, so they know where to find the needed skill set when the obvious places do not yield good results. Creativity is key.

Are they charming? Ultimately, recruiting is a sales job. If your recruiter sounds like a sleepy, disgruntled chain-smoking telephone operator from the 1940s, they may not be able to convince an ideal candidate to consider the position you are trying to fill.

Are they persistant? Good people are not always easy to find. A good recruiter has to chase down leads. You want to know that your recruiter has stick-to-it-iveness.

Do you like them? While it's nice to think that you'll give your recruiter a job mandate and then not hear from them until they present someone to hire, this is not the case. There is a lot of back and forth, as everyone figures out who could best fill the position. If you can't stand the recruiter, it will be a long, torturous process. A sense of humour helps a lot too.

It's a tall order, isn't it. The shortcut is to simply hire me. I'm the best. The end.

Happy hunting!

Nancy

How to be Headhunted

So, you keep hearing about people getting these great jobs through headhunters. But your phone never rings. Is there anything you can do to get yourself on a headhunter's radar?

Absolutely.

As a headhunter, I get paid to find the best people for the job. That breaks down into two parts 1) finding the people and 2) making sure they are the best people out there for the position. So first, I need to be able to find you. Second, I like to have evidence that you are good at what you do. The best way I can do this is to have other people in your field recommend you. The second best way is for me to see evidence that you are passionate about your career. This allows me to go to bat for you with my client and say with confidence that you are one of the best out there and it's worth offering flex hours or making a salary stretch to bring you onto their team.

So, how can you show me how great you are when you have no idea I'm conducting a search?

LinkedIn. I can never say this too many times: get your profile on LinkedIn. Some people are nervous about putting their profile on LinkedIn because they think it indicates to their employer that they are looking for a job. Repeat after me, LinkedIn is not a job hunting tool. There are far better tools for that such as the myriad of job boards that exist. LinkedIn is career networking tool. If you have a career, you should be using LinkedIn regularly. Join relevant industry groups and participate in the discussions. You will gain credibility as an expert in your field and build out your contacts -- something that your employers, present and future, will value.

Industry Associations. If you are a very passionate digital marketer, I assume you are a member of your local digital marketing association so you can find out the latest and greatest. Not only are you attending association events, but you are probably helping to organize them. Headhunters are very good at getting their hands on association lists. If you are not participating, you are difficult to find. And even if I do track you down, I wonder how committed you are to your industry if you seem to have no interest in it beyond 9-5.

Conferences. If you are an engaged and valued employee, you probably attend a conference from time to time. If you are perceived as an expert in your field, you probably speak at these conferences too. Often I will get hold of conference agendas and track down the speakers to find out about an industry.

Stay in touch with former colleagues. When someone leaves your group for other employment, make a point of staying in touch with them. That way, when I call them, they'll give me your name. It's like getting a soft reference right up front. It builds my confidence in your skills.

Twitter. Lots of people have their own twitter accounts where they tweet industry-relevant information. Use hash-tags, tweet often. Trust me, I'll find you.

Happy Hunting!

Nancy

Why Headhunting is Exactly like Dating.

So, let's say you are happily single. Life is going well: the job is good, your friends are fun, your half-marathon training is going well, and your cat, Mr. Jingles, is good company during those times you have nothing else planned. 

Then, one day you are at the local Whole Foods, trying to decide whether or not you will be able to get through two cartons of the two-for-one organic blueberries before they spoil. Suddenly, you notice that someone on the other side of the blueberry display is watching you.

Startled, you give the Jeremy Renner look-a-like a half-smile. He's not wearing a wedding ring. He smiles back. You notice organic dog food in his basket. He likes animals too.  

"I find that when I buy both cartons, I end up wasting the second one, " Jeremy Renner says. You know it's you to whom he's speaking because you've turned around, assuming someone else is behind you - like his physicist-swimsuit model girlfriend. But nobody is there but you. 

"You know, I could buy the berries and give you the free carton," he continues. 

And you freeze. You went to Whole Foods expecting blueberries and that Jerk Tilapia they do so well. You did not go to Whole Foods expecting Jeremy Renner. 

A call from a headhunter is not unlike this: the earliest stages of courtship.

It's unexpected. Think of the active job search market as online dating. Companies are aggressively looking, candidates are aggressively looking, and, at the end of the day, it's a numbers game. Plenty. Of. Fish. It's also time consuming and exhausting. When companies hire a search firm like mine to find candidates for a position, it's a bit like hiring one of those high-end matchmakers on TV. Think of me as Jeremy Renner (though frankly, I'm more of an Amy Poehler in real life): It's my role to hang out at the Whole Foods, keeping an eye out for good people. As I identify people who are a good potential fit for the role, I give them a call. The jobs I fill are good ones: I'm offering candidates a proverbial box of free organic blueberries.  But still, candidates can be taken off-guard when, in the middle of minding their own business, they are invited to explore a new possibility. Try to be open to new things. There is no reward without some risk. 

It's a time to get to know each other. OK, so let's say you allow Jeremy to buy you the blueberries and now you are sitting at the little area in the front of the store drinking your fair trade coffee with him. You find out that he's a divorced software sales manager who loves french bulldogs. You are a cat-loving hat designer who called off your engagement to your long-distance Swedish paramour Sven. And you both love The Eagles, Indian food, the colour persimmon, Ayn Rand books, and Jerk Tilapia (Jeremy bought some too.) You have some things in common, enough to arrange for another coffee meeting. This is how you should view the interview process with a search firm. You have a job: life is good. What you are trying to find out is if life could be better. Perhaps this new job would give you more autonomy, a broader scope, a heftier paycheque. At this point you are just exploring possibilities. Relax and have some fun with it. 

It's a time to not rush forward (even though you really want to.) At some point in the process, it will hit you: OMG, I have just met Jeremy Renner and he loves animals and is employed! Depending on your age, you might also realize that you are statistically more likely to be hit by lightning than to have had this happen to you and you want to close the deal now now now. Before you get Vera Wang on your speed dial and have poor Jeremy running for the hills, you need to take a deep breath. If it's meant to be, Jeremy won't go anywhere. He'll realize that there are not many of you - Gwyneth Paltrow meets Tina Fey - on the planet. Companies are probably interviewing a number of candidates, but if they have hired a search firm, it's because there are not that many people who can do the job. Relax. If it's a good long term fit, it will happen. 

Don't have a one track mind. The first thing most candidates want to know is what the job pays. I have a mortgage too: I get it. But salary discussions are a bit like sex. Wait a few dates before bringing it up. A search firm will be feeding the client good information about what the market is paying. If they are willing to pay to hire a search firm to fill your role, they are not going to lose you over a few dollars. If you seem too fixated on the topic, your motivation may be called into question. Again, relax.

It's a time to look for red flags. Confession time: The reason things did not work out with Sven is he took a strong liking for Bjorn. All of those ABBA posters on his wall that time you visited him in Stockholm should have been a clue. Live and learn. Take your time to get to know Jeremy. See how he treats his dogs. See how he treats his mom. Does he tip the waitress? Is he respectful? How is he under stress? How is he when he meets your busty friend wearing that white tennis dress in the rain? Believe me, Jeremy is looking to see how you behave in a variety of situations. The dating process is a two-way street. The job interview process is no different. If it's a publicly traded company, read what the analysts say about management. If it's privately held, find out about the owners. Why did the last person leave? Why is the role hard to fill? The earlier in the process you find out about the bad stuff, the easier it is to go your separate ways. And if there are no deal-breakers? Nirvana!

Consider cultural differences. Perhaps you come from hearty stock who would only take a rest from work if someone were hospitalized. Maybe Jeremy was the baby in a laid-back family who believed a lot in napping. This might be a problem down the road. The same applies to the workplace. If you come out of a hierarchical, rule-bound organization, working for a creative start-up with a bunch of 20 year olds might just blow your mind. Unless you've been itching for a change, in which case it will rock your world. Don't be bound by what you've done in the past. Think about what you want now. 

Consider balance. Maybe you'd like to see Jeremy three days a week. Maybe Jeremy would like to see you once every three weeks so he can work, work out, hang with his posse, practice with his band, and date other girls. This could be a problem. Ditto if you are a nine-to-fiver who is about to take on a job with a 24/7 culture. Work-life balance is key and a valid point to discussion during an interview. Remember, we called you. You have a good thing going already. You can choose to be picky. 

This is the time to run. If Jeremy, cute as he is, starts to bring up topics such as astral projection, that time he was in prison, or his need to stock up on anti-itch creme, don't hesitate to run for the hills. If you mentioned these things, he'd be running. Nobody will be upset if you discover that a job is not a good fit early in the process. When you've accepted the job, the paperwork has been drawn up, your office has been repainted and your predecessor let go, they might get angry when you declare, "maybe I'm just not that into you."

If you just got married, fess up. To be clear, I am not Ashley Madison. If you have just joined a new company to take your dream job, you should not be interested in what I have to say. Yes, I'm Jeremy Renner: new on the scene and kind of exciting. But you're with Brad Pitt. He's promised to stand by you through thick and thin. God bless. And if you have the name of any eligible single friends, please pass them on. 

Happy hunting!

Nancy