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What if a recruiting firm made a decision to not play today’s client-agency game?

Instead they:

• Create new value propositions (e.g. Heidrick & Struggles)
• Build communities around felt needs (e.g. Intuit)
• Relied only on  personal introductions

Such a recruiting firm would be free from:

• Participating in a system that has commoditized talent
• Focusing on weekly or monthly transactions
• Being viewed as competition

What would such an agency look like?

Would this be easy to create?  No.  Making your own rules and redefining success never is.

Photo by nickwheeleroz

One of the more painful things for me to hear are recruiters discussing how “bad” their clients are behaving these days.  I know hiring managers aren’t angels and I’ve experienced plenty head-banging frustration.  Dissing clients only reinforces the idea that I don’t need to change and rarely does it help. 

You want a better client?  Be a better recruiter, change your approach.  Sounds too easy?  No, it’s simple.  The hard part is the answering the question of will you and I be willing to change.   Chris Brogan wrote a great email on What your boss needs most from you.  Great stuff and, in that vein, here are my four recruiter visa vis client starter list:

1. Don’t confuse hard work with business deliverables:  Many recruiters say their calendars are sooo full of resume filtering, phone screens, posting/networking efforts and in-person interviews.  None of this matters to a client.  Results, as in viable candidates a hiring manager can interview do.  Knowing your metrics will help you calibrate your effort to maximize your effect.
2. Know your craft:  By this, I don’t mean what your specific hiring process is.  I’m referencing to how you are going identify talent worthy of your client hiring.  If you show them a process, a client isn’t impressed.  Any recruiter can show them a multi-step hiring solution.  This only leads you to “more of the same” in the effort category.  Not good.   Show them a game plan of hiring their Linux System Administrator (because you’ve done it before) matched to a time line – now you’re talking.  This is a project perspective, not a process mindset.  I’ve covered this in other posts, there is a huge difference.
3. Know your options, create new ones:  If you are stuck on a recruiting project, bring the challenge to the client (or your manager) with two or more possible solutions and their cost/implications.  Nothing makes you look helpless and not resourceful than a shrug or “I don’t know what else to do”.  Maybe the marketplace isn’t full of Flash engineers for your full-time opening.  Scout out a temporary staffing solution, an external agency (yes, I said it) or even a 1099.  “That’s not my area…” some might say.  It should be now – learn it.  Be a consultant to your client.
4. Know your business: This goes well beyond a marketing slogan.  This is about you being able to connect the dots between the significance of the opening you are working on to the client’s engineering team product launch timeline to the company’s position in the industry to the candidate that is on the phone with you and their next career move.  If you have candidates asking you, “So what is your role is in the company?” just smile.  You are viewed as a business person first and your client will greatly appreciate it.

 
This is a start and I’m sure there are more – what would your client add?  Let’s raise the bar.

Photo by Saquan Stimpson/monstershaq2000

Recently, we launched a search for a Creative Director.  For those who recruit in the creative or advertising agency world, this would seem easy as pie.  For me, this was a first, an adventure. Fortunately, I’ve been building my social network and for this search, Twitter came through.  My first move was to contact David Armano, who is someone I follow and a vice presdient at one of these agencies.  We had a conference call where I asked him how creative directors were “made”.  He mapped out three backgrounds typical of creative directors:

1. Copy writing
2. Art (or “design”)
3. Technologists (“problem solvers” leveraging technology to solve a challenges)  

I call this “typecasting” in the Hollywood sense that an actor or actress becomes known for a particular well-known role that they play.   In a similar way typecasting of candidates can over simplify their careers.  Isn’t that bad or un-pc?  Yes, but only if you’re a recruiting simpleton – and I don’t have you figured as one.

As a recruiting newbie, most industries are complex with many career paths both into and within them.  Typecasting of a skill set gives you a framework or reference point to start from.  As a recruiting pro, typecasting (especially when drawn out) can give you new ideas and fresh approaches to your search.  My conversation with David crystallized for me that we were searching for a creative director that hailed from the copy writing side of the business.  Here is the map of what I learned (figure).  

It’s simple, but it had an immediate impact on the:

1. Search structure: What companies and firms should I focus on looking for talent?  How can I better educate my client (hiring executive) in what the marketplace is like why my search strategy is the best way forward?
2. Communication:  How do I give potential candidates a better description of what this role entails and why it should appeal to them?
3. Soliciting of referrals: Does the person who I’d like to help me easily understand the type of candidate I seek?  Can they easily look through their contacts and know who to refer?

For those who have heard me harp on being a “recruiting expert” in your industry, this is a great way to help take that first step.   Find someone who is an expert of that domain and ask them how to typecast the talent you seek and then draw (yes, draw) it out.  Sure, a more senior recruiter can give you some of that information.  However, you will learn far more from someone on “the inside”, who lives in finance, engineering, hospitality, civil engineering.  

For those who do take this seriously and do it, please let me know.  I’d love to hear how the conversation went, your typecast and how you mapped it out. 8~)