According to a recent McKinsey/LeanIn study, women are re-evaluating their careers and switching jobs in unprecedented numbers. The global pandemic highlighted challenges associated with child care, family time, and mental health.

But, many of these workplace challenges began for women long before the pandemic started. We just finally seem to be talking about it – out loud and in front of decision-makers.

Are companies listening?  Well, women aren’t waiting around, twiddling their thumbs, waiting politely for an answer. Instead, they’re communicating with their feet – as they walk away from a job (and maybe a career) that doesn’t serve them.

Keep reading to learn more about the Great Breakup and its implications on hiring in 2023 and beyond.

Why Are Women Changing Jobs in Droves?

According to the McKinsey/LeanIn study, women are changing jobs for three primary reasons:

• Women leaders want to advance, but they face more challenges than men
• Women are underrepresented in their organizations but overworked
• Women demand a better work culture focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), overall well-being, and flexibility

Let’s look at each.

1.    Women Leaders Want to Advance, But Face More Challenges than Men

Just like men, women want to grow professionally, advancing in their careers. However, women face unique challenges that men don’t. Here are some examples of these headwinds from the McKinsey/LeanIn study:

• Women leaders are twice as likely as men to be “mistaken for someone more junior”
• 37 percent of women leaders have had a co-worker take credit for their idea, compared to 27 percent of men leaders
• Women are more likely than men leaders to have co-workers who imply they are unqualified or question their judgment
• Women leaders are more likely to claim that their personal characteristics (such as being a mother or caregiver and/or their gender) have negatively impacted their ability to advance (through receiving a raise or promotion)

2.    Women are Underrepresented, Unrecognized and Overworked in their Organizations

Anyone feel this one? Statistically, women are still underrepresented in their organizations – especially in leadership positions. McKinsey/LeanIn’s Women in the Workplace 2022 Report says that women are “dramatically underrepresented in corporate America with only one in four women serving in an executive, C-suite role.

And, despite this underrepresentation, women are still unrecognized and overworked, giving way to burnout and mental health challenges. In fact, 43 percent of women leaders feel burned out compared to 31 percent of men in similar positions.

But here’s the rub. Women spend 2x more time and effort than men on supporting employee DEI initiatives – both of which improve employee retention and satisfaction rates. However, 40 percent of women leaders say this additional DEI work isn’t acknowledged in performance reviews. While work in DEI helps to attract and retain talent while improving corporate brand, this work doesn’t help women advance – it just stretches them thin.

3.    Women are Demanding a Better Work Culture

Finally, women are demanding a better work culture and changing jobs when they don’t find it. Women are more likely to change jobs to find a culture with more flexibility and commitment to DEI and well-being.

And although these demands were present before 2020, the global pandemic just emphasized the importance of these demands.

Here are some examples to consider:

• Women leaders are 1.5x more likely than their male counterparts to have left a previous job for one that prioritizes DEI
• 49 percent of women say that flexibility is a top reason they consider when accepting a job offer or staying at a job

To attract and retain female talent, especially in leadership positions, employers must support women.  If not, women will continue leaving in droves, setting diverse employment and leadership back decades.

Are Younger Generations of Women Changing Jobs Too?

So, what about our future female leaders? Well, the news isn’t much better there. With mid- and senior women leaders leaving for more flexible, diverse, supportive positions, there will be fewer female mentors at a majority of companies – leaving younger women with no one to watch advance up the ranks.

And young women want to advance.  According to the McKinsey/LeanIn study, more than two-thirds of women under 30 want to advance to senior leadership positions. Additionally, more than half of these women say that advancement has become more important to them over the pandemic. Finally, just like their more experienced counterparts, younger women also want to work for an organization that prioritizes flexibility, DEI, and overall well-being.

Companies that fail to focus on these issues will have difficulty retaining women leaders they already have while potentially losing out on recruiting young talent, creating a weak (or broken) leadership pipeline for attracting the next generation of leaders.

Instead, companies must continually embrace flexibility and commitment to DEI and well-being all while providing women with opportunities to advance – free of headwinds. After all, a diverse and inclusive company will continue to attract and retain the best talent while keeping its well-deserved competitive edge.

The post Why Are Women Leaders Leaving their Jobs in Unprecedented Numbers? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

As CFOs faced the ‘worst case scenario’ ever imaginable, they were forced to fine-tune skills, stay calm, manage debt, and plan like they’d never planned before. Brilliant CFOs became a matter of survival. But the pressure to meet expectations for these liquidity professionals meant that many CFOs took early retirement, a career break, or an adjustment in their career direction. An increase of 27.6% of CFOs resigned from S&P 500 companies from 2019 to 2020. As a result, we’re seeing a big focus on filling CFO roles. And what big shoes those are.

Why have these bean counters become so vital, and what does it mean for recruiters and talent acquisition teams?

Why are CFOs Essential for Survival?

Financial expert Paul Ainsworth wrote for Toptal Finance about the evolution of CFOs. He talks about how “older” record-keeping tasks are a critical but minimum requirement. Today’s new CFO applicants need to “drive the direction and success of the organizations they work in using their knowledge and understanding of the financial position of the company.”

The shinier and more evolved role for CFOs is now positioned in top seats as their voices hold volume regarding strategy and decision-making in a business. Plus, they must adjust their plans when environments change or ‘worst-case scenarios’ become a reality. Ainsworth rephrases the job description of CFOs as “business partners to the CEO, who help guide and influence decision making using the financial context as an integral driver of such choices.”

Tips for Recruiting CFOs in Today’s Climate

Recruiting C-level positions requires the most excellent grasp of the role as these “must have” positions come with elevated responsibility for the survival and success of a company.

Know The Updated Desirable Skills in Today’s CFOs

When recruiting for C-level positions, it’s vital to understand what businesses need. With a 6% growth rate in CFO jobs for 2021-2030, we are guaranteed to see fresh, young talent entering the CFO arena. Many of these applicants may have worked at VP finance levels and are seeking to advance to CFOs.

Here are some qualities and skills to seek when sourcing applicants for C-level CFO positions:

• An understanding and fluency of digital transformation and automation trends and practices
• Investment knowledge
• Scenario planning and ability to plan ahead
• Calm during crisis, and ability to offer examples of how they’ve managed in a high-stress situation
• Strong financial modeling skills
• Communication and interpersonal skills for addressing c-suite coworkers
• Adaptable and a keenness to adopt innovative solutions (future-proofing)
• Creative problem-solving skills with examples from experience
• An understanding of talent costs, as well as retaining and acquiring new talent
• They come with a network of relevant connections in banking, auditors, lawyers, etc

According to Deloitte’s CFO Signals survey, 63% of CFOs mention Financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and 46% of management reporting as their wish list areas for improvement.

Understand Which Questions to Ask

During the interview, gather their stories about how they’ve managed crises and come up with solutions to tricky challenges. How did they lead the team? Offer opportunities for the applicant to talk about how they manage investments, how they determine when credit versus fundraising is essential, and more. Assess their attitude and grasp on innovation that is trending.

CFOs hold leadership positions. It’s vital that they have what it takes to serve as strong business partners.

Do Your Research to Provide a Good Recruitment Process

Recruiting C-level positions can take time, months even. When recruiting, make an effort to research the top candidates and provide a personalized approach. Building relationships benefit agencies. Do this by taking your time and focusing on candidates, communicating where they are in the hiring process. Networking is key when it comes to filling C-level positions.

Hiring CFO Heroes

During extreme inflation and recession prospects, brilliant, forward-thinking CFOs can be the heroes that help a business survive and thrive. Situating yourself as an approachable, invested, and interested recruiter will bring more C-level posts your way. Businesses can then rely on you to bring them “hero” candidates.

The post Liquidity Oracles: Why CFOs are Essential When Recruiting C-level Positions appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

It’s clear that across the global economy, labor shortages are presenting a significant challenge for business. This is particularly true in sectors that were most affected by the pandemic and therefore need to make the most significant recovery. Retailers were one of the hardest hit, and the result has been employers struggling to find candidates within limited timeframes.

Employers are being advised to change their hiring processes to stay on their front foot. Currently, many experienced employees are being lost to the Great Resignation and Great Retirement, and they’re demanding more flexible working practices. Employees haven’t progressed as expected because they’ve missed out on in-person development opportunities. The result of all this is a labor market that’s tighter and more challenging than ever.

Reactive approaches increase time pressure on hiring, and it can be hard for retailers to quickly find workers with the right skills, particularly in digital and e-commerce. The dominance of e-commerce is here to stay — that’s the trend highlighted by successive lockdowns and the closure of High Street giant Debenhams — and this has changed recruitment needs in the retail sector.

Now, retailers want candidates for board-level and C-suite positions who have digital and e-commerce skillsets, along with an understanding of social media and younger Gen-Z audiences. The desirability of these skills and the recruitment challenges facing the sector mean proactive hiring practices are essential.

How Retailers Can Adapt Their Hiring Models to Find Top C-Suite Talent

Retail sector employers can identify individuals who will thrive in their company using psychometric testing. This testing highlights candidates who, for example, have leadership potential or are closely aligned to your business’s ethos. Psychometric tests streamline the hiring process, providing an extra measure that employers can use to determine which candidates are strongest.

It’s crucial that you also carve out space in your schedule for thorough interviews. Having face-to-face conversations with potential new recruits is essential, not just because it helps you decide if they’re the right fit, but also because it shows your deeper personal engagement and helps them to become more invested in the opportunity.

When you take time to really understand a candidate and answer all of their questions, they see your care and enthusiasm, and this positive impression can give you an edge over competitors with whom they’re also speaking to.

It’s important to establish what you want to find out about a candidate before meeting or interviewing them and to consider how you can best achieve this. Sometimes, traditional interview formats might not be the most effective. Sitting down for a more informal chat over a coffee can be a great way to spot the most promising talent. This can speed up the hiring process by providing a clearer insight into what a candidate would be like to work with.

The Importance of Retailers Adapting Their Current Hiring Models

One major impact of the pandemic has been a distinct shift in employees’ expectations and needs. Most people working in board-level and C-suite roles in the retail sector have spent extended periods of time working from home, and this has brought many of them benefits such as the ability to pick up their children from school. The changes have altered people’s feelings about their work-life balance.

In the past, when labor markets were squeezed, offering higher salaries could tempt the best candidates away from your competitors. Now, employees are demanding more than just financial incentives. Many top-quality candidates have noticed that remote working enables them to live further outside of city centers in attractive rural areas and to dedicate time previously spent commuting to family, all while maintaining their career progression.

To attract these candidates, retailers looking to recruit new CFOs, CIOs and other board and director-level executives must show that they can offer opportunities for hybrid and remote working.

It’s not just remote working arrangements that employees increasingly want to see from their employers. Many workers, especially from younger generations, are keen to join companies that show a social conscience, and this is undoubtedly motivating firms to change their policies.

For example, many major retail sector employers – such as H&M and Apple – pulled their Russian operations in a show of solidarity following the country’s recent invasion of Ukraine. Another key priority for candidates is opportunities for progression. Employers who present a clear professional development pathway are more likely to attract top talent.

How Retailers Can Reach the Right Candidates

It’s a great time to reimagine how you reach out to candidates.

Board and director-level retail executives in the post-pandemic era need to be flexible and open-minded. They must be able to manage their teams along with their own work in a hybrid or remote work environment. This will require a flexible style of leadership, which enables them to communicate just as effectively online as in person. Determining whether a candidate is the right kind of leader for this new era will be crucial.

As new working practices become consolidated, retailers cannot stick to previous hiring strategies when looking for C-suite and board-level candidates. Showing your commitment to responsible business practices and setting clear sustainability targets may be central to winning over the new generation of emerging retail leaders.

But whichever strategy you adopt, planning for the future is a must. Retailers who think ahead when developing their recruitment plans are those most likely to succeed in the post-Covid world.

The post How Retailers Can Improve Their Interviewing Process to Avoid Losing Top Talent appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

In order to secure this extraordinary source of talent, organizations need to have the right blend of purpose, culture, and opportunity, and recruiters need to have a solid understanding of how the leadership experience acquired by JMOs during their service translates to different roles within the organization.  

While it’s always more difficult to assess leadership qualities than hard skillsets in all candidates, it becomes even more difficult to evaluate the leadership skills of former military officers.

The vast majority of corporate recruiters have never served in the military, and even those who have served can still find it confusing to understand the attributes and skills of officers who served in other branches.  

Getting to Know JMOs

JMOs are mature young leaders who represent a diverse cross-section of America. They’ve earned a BS or BA in technical or nontechnical areas from America’s top universities, and many have advanced degrees as well. 

Most JMOs have served in the military between four and 10 years, and all receive leadership, communications, legal, operational, and functional area training. Typically, JMOs have four to eight years of military leadership experience after graduating college, leading organizations from 20-200 people. 

JMOs are known to be ambitious problem solvers with a willingness to volunteer and help others. Eager to learn and prove themselves as valued team members, JMOs are able to hit the ground running and make an immediate impact on their organization’s bottom line.

They are highly adaptive, excellent developmental candidates, and are often promoted faster than their peers without military experience. JMOs tend to be resolute when it comes to integrity, and will not tolerate an individual or organization that compromises their ethics. 

What type of corporate roles are JMOs best suited for?

The military is a giant organization giving officers opportunities to lead in many areas including engineering, construction, cybersecurity, maintenance, and logistics. Most JMOs are well suited for mid-level leadership roles in operations, sales, and high-tech environments, and are trained for project management and balancing timelines, people, and technology. 

Branch of service too can come into play. For example, the Navy and Air Force teach a more Total Quality Management (TQM) style of leadership which is compatible with roles in engineering and technology.

The Army and Marine Corps provide leadership experience that is better suited for roles in areas such as sales, operations, and leadership development.

Best Practices to Win JMO Talent

Unfortunately many organizations look to hire JMOs only in order to meet regulatory and diversity requirements. If an organization wants to truly maximize this source of talent, it needs to view JMOs as fast trackers who can significantly contribute to company P&L performance.

Here are four practices we recommend to realize the full potential of your JMO hiring efforts:  

1. Buy-in and sponsorship from leadership

Company operational leaders, Talent Acquisition and HR need to work together in prioritizing the goals and strategy for the initiative.  Considerations should include prioritizing the hiring effort, identifying the best starting roles, creating programs that allow JMOs to learn multiple functional areas of the company’s business, and investing in veterans once they become employees. 

2. Mentorship, formal training, and Leadership Development Programs (LDP)

JMOs crave mentorship, purpose, and a leadership path, and it’s not uncommon for JMOs to relocate multiple times in order to move up within an organization.

Although there is no one-size-fits-all LDP, an effective program will expose JMOs to different areas of a company and provide opportunities to grow and lead through all segments.  

It is not unusual for JMOs to accept a position before they transition to civilian life, so consider interviewing military candidates six months before they leave the service, and always provide information on your upcoming developmental and training classes.

3. Educate recruiters on military occupations and skillsets

Matching a JMO to the right job is challenging, and most HR professionals lack relevant knowledge of military structure, operations, and ranks.  

Recruiters can educate themselves by conducting more in-depth face-to-face interviews (virtual or in-person) with veteran candidates, referring to past successes within the company or industry, and seeking out employees who may be veterans to serve as a resource.

Referencing the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) is also helpful in learning about military roles, responsibilities, and kinds of training received in the service.

4. Make your brand more attractive to JMOs

While practices to attract JMOs are not a defined science, making the investment to build a military-friendly employer brand and widely promote leadership programs is a head start.

These future business leaders look for successful and purpose-driven companies with clearly defined missions, so be sure these messages come across on your website and in outreach communications.

The unemployment rate for JMOs falls well below that of the overall veteran unemployment rate, demonstrating that corporate America has a thirst for them.

Organizations that understand and embrace that JMOs seek recognition and leadership opportunities in organizations in which they take pride have the upper hand in winning over this exemplary group of individuals.

The post Why Corporate America Wants to Hire Junior Military Officers appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

I’m pretty interested in onboarding best practices.

Might seem weird to you, because I’ve never worked in HR — and isn’t onboarding specifically the domain of HR?

That’s how it’s commonly viewed, yes, but in reality everyone needs to own it. More on that later.

I’ve been freelancing for 22-24 months, and I like that, but before that I had various office jobs for 13-14 years.

I only worked at maybe 6-7 places, sure, but I never saw a good onboarding process. Most were awful, actually. You know the deal: transactions, paperwork, a lunch meeting with your direct boss, and then on Day 2 a few no-context tasks are assigned to you.

Onboarding best practices? Not walking through that door anytime soon.

So eventually I got interested in it. Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve written a ton about onboarding, including:

• The stats on why most companies are doing it wrong
• How “hit the ground running” is the last thing you want from a new hire
• The power of storytelling in onboarding
• What Facebook is doing right when onboarding new employees
• General fixes to your on-boarding
• The one small change you can make to onboarding

Clearly I’ve spent some time here. I also wrote an article for College Recruiter once about onboarding best practices. (There are some additional examples in there, including Rackspace.)

Now we’ve got new research on onboarding, and it all underscores the major thing we need to remember.

Onboarding best practices and “the numbers”

A reality we cannot ignore: most companies are still run on spreadsheets and “the numbers.” Those spreadsheets are now digital (you’d hope) but anyone with any authority cares about one thing: “the numbers.” That’s all you ever hear out of the big meetings.

Here’s a new article — “Your New Hires Won’t Succeed Unless You Onboard Them Properly.” Concur with that title 100 percent. I’ve never been super successful in any corporate job. Part of that is me being an asshole, yes. But part is that I never had any idea what was going on, because the onboarding process was such a rushed farce.

In that article, there’s a link to some SHRM research that 17% of new hires can be gone within three months because of onboarding issues.

Now let’s tie “the numbers” to that concept.

The importance of the revenue tie

Let’s say someone in Product went to the boss and said, “I need $1 million for this process. But the return will be amazing.”

The boss mulls it over and ultimately gives him the $1 million.

Now, three months later, the guy from Product comes back. He says, “I lost it all. It’s gone. I need to restart.”

The boss would be livid.

And yet, that 17% stat is essentially saying that. 17% is almost 1 in 5. So almost 1 dollar of every 5 you spend on hiring/recruiting is wasted in three months?

How is this possibly acceptable?

OK, let’s answer that question briefly.

It’s acceptable because …

… most executives don’t really care about HR, and — ironically! — it’s because they’re not good with “the numbers.”

So what now?

Let’s take this one in two parts.

Part 1 is that any discussion of “onboarding best practices” isn’t about checklists. It’s about establishing revenue ties for what happens when onboarding is bad. This is how you get buy-in. Most companies are still managed on cost-cutting measures, so whoever manages onboarding (HR?) needs to have a handle on costs. You need to know costs of recruitment, hiring, the onboarding process, turnover, etc. Then you can make a compelling (in the eyes of execs) business case for “We need to do this with onboarding because it will save us this much money.” Unless you can do that, you’re doomed from the start. The money tie absolutely needs to be there.

Part 2 is knowing what onboarding best practices actually look like. I’ve got three quick ideas for you there:

• Read some of the articles linked above; some are mine and you might believe me to be an idiot, yes, but they all have lots of external research.
• Here’s a meta-analysis of the best articles about onboarding and what they say
• If you want a Cliffs Notes version of that meta-analysis, here it is: a lot of effective onboarding comes back to psychological safety of teams

How process nukes this whole thing

Most people hear a term like “onboarding best practices” and instantly think they need a series of processes and checklists. Sorry to be a dick here, but many HR people have a compliance-oriented mind — that’s why they gravitated towards that specific field. So of course that’s what they think when they hear the term.

The problem is, onboarding is such a powerful concept. You’re 32. You just changed jobs. This is going to be the one where you really shape your professional existence. Day 1, baby! Let’s do this! This is the new Amanda right here! And … seven hours of paperwork.

See how that would be demoralizing?

We love us some process, and that’s often well/good/fine. But for any onboarding to work — for it to be truly “onboarding best practices” — you have to root it in a place of:

• Money/revenue/bottom line ties
• Human psychology

Anything else you’d add on onboarding best practices or the general importance of onboarding?

The post Not rocket science: For execs to care about onboarding, there must be a revenue connection appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

I've never written about succession planning before, so today seemed to be as good a time as any to get that going. If you've never heard the term before, "succession planning" is an element of (buzzword boulevard coming) "talent management strategy" whereby you try to figure out who's the "next (wo)man up" for a series of leadership slots. Basically, it's building a pipeline of people. Most companies are really good (or somewhat good) at building funnels and pipelines around products and financials, but most are terrible at anything to do with people. A big example of that? Companies get FOMO, go chase an executive from a rival, and whiff on internal recruitment.

What happens in a situation like that? The new executive takes 9-16 months to get up to speed. If you had used succession planning and promoted internally in a logical way, that internally-promoted executive would be doing a lot more in those 9-16 months. He/she already knows the processes and people. I love the concept of "fresh blood" like anyone, but there's basic math and logic to this whole deal.

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SHRM has been talking about mentorship a good deal recently, including an article on “How To Find The Right HR Mentor” and another on “Elevating The Next Generation Of HR Leaders.”

This actually got me going down memory lane a bit to an article I wrote in October 2015 – seems like forever ago -- about how to ask someone to be your mentor.

This is all very near and dear to me. It matters tremendously, and I sometimes wish more of us in executive-level roles would understand and embrace that. We had people who guided us and deflected politics away from us as we rose up. We need to pay that forward.

I work hard at taking time to coach several of my past staff members, startup founders from The Atlanta Tech Village, and recent graduates from my alma mater (UGA).

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Man, it's kinda depressing how everything in business that could have meaning somehow became a buzzword. Today's example: "talent sourcing." Let me set up a few things for you.

1. Regardless of how you feel about the Baby Boomers, they were the most-educated generation in U.S. history.
2. Now they are largely beginning to retire and/or, well, die.
3. Now look at the perceived fastest-growing jobs between 2014 and 2024.
4. 8 of 15 require an Associate's Degree or less.
5. Final little piece of the puzzle: automation getting to scale and employment protection issues.

This is what you're left with. If you were to conceive an American child this evening, there's a good chance that said child has no clear career path around age 22 -- which is when the career path commences for many. The basic life path is changing. Some people are out there having real, honest discussions about it -- but most are burying their head in KPIs. This is probably less than stellar for our futures.

Into this cluster mess walks Mr. Talent Sourcing. Typically this is some "HR pure play" (heard that in a meeting once) whereby someone presents a "strategic plan" -- it's really just a shitty PowerPoint -- and claims that's the "talent sourcing play" for the next few years. Meanwhile, every time a new job opens, the hiring manager covers his ass by throwing HR under a train. No one speaks of "talent sourcing." Instead, everyone lights their hair on fire, does a little Post and Pray, and hopes the ATS delivers a big win. The ATS whiffs, screening out the best people, and it's time again to rinse and repeat the All-Bullshit, All-The-Time hiring process mess. Talent sourcing? My ass. The hiring process is completely broken.

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Picture it: New York City. 1992. Hazy autumn afternoon, Wall Street.

Mr. Carl, Esq., has had another row with his mistress, the Upper Eastside temptress, Adaline.  Except this time, they wouldn’t make up.  Ever. She’d thrown her Calvin Klein heel through his signed Patrick Nagel original.  It was OVER. 

The fallout was almost immediate. The gossip was relentless.  Adaline was a widely-adored ingenue with multiple suitors.  And Carl’s spurned, soon to be ex-wife, was a decade older, but equally as popular. Carl’s firm lost three great accountants that week.  All of them quit to go work for some up-and-comer named Mr. Bloomberg, a man who Carl thought to be a total loser.

No one was answering his newspaper ads for help. And it was almost corporate filing season. Desperate, Carl thumbed through the white pages and found Mr. Anderson, Professional Headhunter.

Mr. Anderson had been working the street for the last 25 years. He was an active member of the chamber of commerce, a long-time Freemason, and head of the local Toastmasters club. Mr. Anderson knew everyone.

He went to every networking event, wedding, funeral, and graduation. He spent years building his valuable personal network, with methodically sent birthday cards, and regularly-scheduled “catch-up” coffees and dinners.  If anyone could find Carl’s firm an accountant, it was Mr. Anderson. 

“Well, who do you have?” Carl barked into the phone.

Mr. Anderson was calm. “Nice to hear from you Carl, I was expecting your call. I’ll take care of it.” He hung up and dove into his famed Rolodex.

The price was 20% for the first years’ annual salary. But it was worth it.  Mr. Anderson’s years and years of in-person networking meant he could get the job done and done quickly. 

Fast-forward to 2018.

Times have changed. Technology has changed. The role of the headhunter has changed. But, some things have not changed, not one bit.  And one of them is the fees.  So…why hasn’t price changed with the times? I’m here to tell you that it’s time we all stopped pretending that those agency staffing fees from the 90’s make any sense in today’s world.

As of today, 2018, quality firms with talented recruiters use roughly the following metrics to fill a position open with a passive employee (someone currently employed elsewhere who is not actively looking for work).

• Source and reach out to about 100 candidates
• Hear back from about 25 candidates
• Speak to about 15 candidates
• Get about 10 resumes
• Submit about 5 candidates
• Hiring Manager will interview 3 candidates and
• Offer the position to 1 candidate.

In total, sourcing for one role might take a good recruiter about three business days. Then they’ll submit to the client, facilitate interviews and on a very good day, deliver an accepted offer.

This recruiter does not need to personally know or even have ever met any of these candidates. They can use LinkedIn recruiter’s Boolean strings to find exactly who they want, with what skills, in what city the position is located. With the click of a button, they can narrow down the search to a particular college graduation range, or degree program.

And, candidates don’t care where the job opportunity comes from. If they like it, they’ll interview. Personal network be damned.

So if the amount of preparation and the amount of work involved in filling a role has so dramatically decreased, we all really are fools to think that 20% is still a reasonable fee to pay.

Staffing firms know this because they only have to pay the recruiters, (you know–the people who are actually doing the work) between 10%-30% of the fee they collect. So…the rest of the money? Where is that going?

Have you checked stock prices for the big agencies lately?

I’m just saying; they’re not too shabby. CEO, C-Suite and management pay isn’t too bad either.  In fact, the profit margins of these firms are downright ridiculous. But for how long? How long until clients stop buying it? If you ask me, not for very much longer.

The recruiting industry fees are a dinosaur and those 20% fees? They should be looking over their shoulder for an asteroid.

The post Time to Disrupt Recruiting Fees? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Here are some ways your search firm can diversify your recruitment specialties and make the best use of your technology.

1. Strategize where you can offer additional expertise beyond executive search

Figure out where you can support your clients beyond traditional executive search. Reach out to the clients you have good relationships with and ask for their input. Are they focusing on diversity and inclusion strategies this year? Have they considered doing a companywide assessment? What key executives did they lose last year? Did they have a succession plan for those executives?

“Our new business practice lines (diversity training and coaching) were born out of some uncomfortable discussions with clients”

Jeff Harris, Managing Partner of Harris Search Associates explains: “Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions, challenge the historical ways of doing things and be prepared for difficult and uncomfortable discussions that challenge your way of thinking.  Our new business practice lines (diversity training and coaching) were born out of some uncomfortable discussions with clients. We then undertook the necessary steps to add talented individuals who provided diversity of thought, experience; and, our new business practice areas began to take off.”

“We created a separate leadership solutions company called NuBrick Partners,” explains Bob Clarke, CEO of Furst Group. “This company is staffed with experts in their field rather than extending the services offered by a search consultant.  Just because one makes a good search consultant doesn’t mean that they are a solid strategic leadership partner.  We actively sought out the advice of our clients to see how we could better serve them and then we created our new organization around those needs.”

Look at the search needing to be filled and participate in more holistic conversations around how this role fits within the team, what their current strategy is and what it needs to be. From those conversations come opportunities for you to bring value to your client by providing new solutions. Every client has unique needs and this technique is a great way to hopefully parlay an executive search into a future opportunity.

2. Invest in your team

Make sure you have the appropriate leadership consultants managing the separate aspects of the business. When it comes to leadership, development and diversity programs, your team should have specific expertise in areas such as:

• Industrial/Organizational Psychology
• Executive assessment
• Executive team performance
• Change management
• Leadership and board development
• Organizational culture (especially with mergers & acquisitions)

“Creating a communication plan before and after conducting an assessment is crucial to a successful outcome. If the objectives and expectations of the executive assessment are not set, there is a high risk of confusion and uncertainty,” explains Nairouz Bader of Envision Partnership. “Furthermore, if assessed executives are not promoted post-evaluation, the result could be turnover rather than retention, as the assumption often is that not getting a positive career move means a negative one is on the way. My advice is to follow the objectives of the executive assessment, especially the developmental ones.”

Historically, certain industries have been slow to adapt to external consulting when it comes to coaching.  But once you’re able to prove there is a need, the demand will follow. For example, you could tie the increased tenure of candidates to the ongoing coaching and development opportunities they receive as part of their employment. You could also track the success mentoring emerging leaders from under-represented groups provides the organization.

3. Utilize technology to market additional services to clients

Recruitment teams have become more diligent about sharing, classifying and maintaining data to better support their clients and make the most out of every opportunity. This can include tracking what content they participated in, what reports their clients contributed to or what check-in call the search consultant needs to make.

Many of our clients are using workflows within their databases that include ‘triggered’ follow-up tasks like these:

Your firm completes a search and places a candidate, the database automatically creates a follow-up task to check-in to see how the candidate is doing three months later, check in to see if they are interested in executive coaching, if their employer is interested in a companywide assessment, or simply needs another position filled, etc.

You recruit a candidate and they end up moving into a role where they require your services and become your client. A follow up “trigger” can remind you to find out if the client is open to doing a companywide assessment, open to a coaching opportunity or even simply remind you to evaluate them as a candidate for board membership in the future.

You email your firm’s thought leadership to a client. This could be an industry report, white paper or even another client’s interview. The database can activate a trigger to schedule a call with them to do a general check-in and see if they need anything.

Successful executive search firms are not focused on selling additional services, they are focused on being recognized as trusted advisors. If your firm is looking to diversify its services, you need to focus on your client base. What are their pain points and what are the problems their organization needs to be solved? Take the time to capture and track the relationships and history of your clients and candidates. That proprietary information is vital when diversifying your executive search services and developing your firm’s opportunities.

Cluen develops recruitment software that helps strategic recruitment teams all over the world nurture important relationships, track historical search assignment data, and win new business.

The post Three Ways to Diversify Your Executive Search Services appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

For example, the 38.5 percent tax rate now applies to married couples making over $1 million, compared to $470,700 in the previous program.

Some other notable changes in the tax law include:

• Most state and local tax (SALT) deductions have been eliminated. We can deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes.
• The much-feared Alternative Minimum Tax threshold is also increased slightly.
• Standard deductions are expanded to cover the first $24,000 for married couples and $12,000 for individuals.
• A list of other changes are summarized nicely here in this MarketWatch article.

How companies are reacting to the new tax bill

Now, the biggest tax change is in corporate taxes. Fundamentally, the decrease in corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent will yield greater company profits.

This is big, big news for Corporate America, so much so that within days of Congress approving the tax cut, companies such as AT&T, Boeing and Wells Fargo were promising wage increases, bonuses, and other employee benefits as a result of the new tax law.

In some cases, we’re talking about $1,000 bonuses (or more) to each and every full-time employee. As a matter of fact, over a million workers are expected to receive a bonus of up to $3,000 this year.

In short, companies are LOVING the new taxes.

Impact of new tax law on recruiting low-wage earners

The average Joe Job-Hunter has likely heard about the new taxes since it’s been all over the news, and on Facebook, Twitter, etc. — not just in the The Wall Street Journal.

So shame on them if they haven’t heard about the new tax rates.

In fact, if someone you are recruiting hasn’t heard about the new taxes, well, you may not even want them as a candidate.

A $1,000 bonus is a lot of money for a lower-wage earner, like a retail salesperson or a janitor. So recruiting

these individuals will depend entirely on the extent to which your company will be offering a $1,000 or similar type bonuses.

If you’re AT&T, then it should be a lot easier for you to recruit lower-wage earners because now the recruiting package includes a nice $1,000 bump.

However, if your company is not able to “pass the tax savings” on to the employees, then it will be more difficult for you to attract talent — even lower-wage talent.

Impact of new taxes on recruiting mid-wage candidates

What about the mid-section of the American workforce?

These are the accountants, IT administrators, account managers, and other similar positions. This group would certainly appreciate a $1,000 bonus, but they will likely net a larger bonus from Uncle Sam.

Based on an analysis from The New York Times, President Trump’s new tax plan will deliver tax cuts to those middle-class families who take the new standard deductions. The tax cuts are even greater for those married with two children –roughly $1,500 to $2,100 in tax savings.

From a recruiting standpoint, the new taxes will likely not have much of an impact on this segment of candidates.

Impact of the new tax bill on recruiting top executives

The high-end of the candidate spectrum is different, however.

While the decreased Alternative Minimum Tax and the improved tax brackets may help some executives, we expect a vast majority of them will be negatively hit by the elimination of the State and Local Taxes (SALT).

This is especially true as most executives own their homes. For states with high state (and local) taxes, such as California and New York, this segment of candidates will have to pay more taxes under the new tax structure.

From the perspective of recruiting top executives, there are several implications of the new tax law:

1. Executives will likely demand a higher compensation package for their new job compared with what they were making before. This is to help them balance out the bigger checks they’ll have to pay to the IRS.
2. It will become much harder to expect an executive to relocate to a state with high state taxes. Before Trump tax bill, this was already a big challenge given the huge difference in home prices between states such as California and those in the South or Midwest. Now, with a California executive taking home less pay after the new taxes, it would be even tougher to convince one in a lower tax state you may be recruiting to relocate there.
3. Executives will want to negotiate for a much larger signing bonus. This is to help them reduce their home mortgage payments as much as possible. Realistically though, unless the signing bonus is in the six figure range, it won’t make much of a dent given the high real estate prices in these high state and local tax states.

The net equality effect

In summary, the new tax bill is expected to impact the recruiting of the top-end of the employee spectrum more so than the low and mid-ends, especially if a relocation to a high state and local tax state may be in order.

What are your thoughts? Please leave thoughts or feedback in the comments below.

The post Recruiting and the New Tax Law: It’s Mostly Good, Unless You Recruit Executives appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.”

       – Albert Einstein

If you work with talent, you may hold the role of “sourcer.” That’s what most of you do, right?

You spend days and nights honing your tradecraft. People around you get what you do. They respect and admire your work. Career advancement awaits you…or does it?

Maybe.

Future progress assumes that sourcing presents a career path that you embrace. Let’s take a look at your logical next steps:

1. Promotion to a more senior version of yourself;

2. Promotion to leadership in sourcing;

3. Shift into full cycle recruiting, or some other area of HR; or

4. Change corporate hats, but still do one of the above.

Do you spot a pattern? Roles change, but the theme remains the same. You’re moving, but those gigs will not push your research knowledge to any momentous next level.

If that is enough, then that’s great, and good luck.But what if you do a full stop, reflecting on your core motivations and interests? You may have the following epiphany:

What you love is not “finding people and information” for recruiting purposes? What you actually love is just “finding stuff out?”

Imagine that.

A Great Day For Up: Sourcing Skills Aren’t Limited to HR and Recruiting.

You’re passionate about research. You love sleuthing out information, grasping complex subjects, knowing where to go and what to do with findings. But right now, that all anchors to staffing and HR.

You could drop out of the workforce and go back to study library science. Perhaps you could do an MBA; there are lots of research topics in an MBA to build your chops. Options abound for continuing education.

But what if “more school” isn’t an option? What else can you do?

How else might you parlay your passion, curiosity, creativity and experience into an all new professional (and personal) identity?

Is that even possible?

Who even knows what “sourcing” is beyond HR and recruiting?

The answer may surprise you.

What you do is not as relevant as how you do what you do.

Does that make sense?

Organizations and people with interest in research will instinctively reason through the mechanics of your role. The work you do matters, but it’s less relevant than how you approach your role.

People who live and breathe “finding stuff out” may have more interest in how you phrase topics in research, how you manage execution, or your methods and tools.

Most of all, they will want to know if you are naturally curious and imaginative in such a way that you are malleable. That will allow them to repurpose and develop you in support of their agenda.

Thing One: Researching How To Find Stuff Out (And Why It Matters).

Believe it or not, if you are great at doing research, you may have more career portability than anybody else out there. Research is research is research.

Get it? Got it? Good.

…and we’re gonna talk about that last point.

First, some background. Research and competitive intelligence are central themes in my 20+ year career.

That goes back to my early days in the equity research library at Fidelity through my post-MBA days and my current consulting life.

Much of what I do is just “find stuff out.”

Those who know me or have seen me speak at conferences understand that my passion is human capital research. At a basic level, that means understanding who does what in this world and then talking to them. Doing that involves comprehending organizations, markets, products, plans, people and other information.

Can you teach that depth of research to anybody who is good at “finding things out?” As an example, if you are awesome at sourcing engineers, can you learn to investigate the markets for pharmaceuticals, renewable energy or consumer products?

Maybe even learn how to model the networks and actors that shape those markets? Maybe absorb training to probe those human sources in a way that produces information that does not exist on the interwebs?

I am convinced that is possible. In fact, that is what I set out to prove ages ago.

Over the past decade, while consulting for a living, I’ve been writing and editing a project that will soon live online at TheG2.com. It is comprehensive research training material that revolves around human capital research. It encompasses market and organization research, human source research and profiling, network mapping of those people and organizations, and a host of other topics.

That includes the secretive mechanics of elicitation in intelligence gathering projects.

But how did this creation get from the beginning to the end?

Birthing TheG2 anchors to my insatiable curiosity to understand how other people “like me” find stuff out. That means, in a literal way, if you love “finding stuff out,” what else might you be doing for a living? For what kind of organization? And what’s different about what you do, and why does it work in that context?

That line of inquiry took me all over the place. It involved probing investment researchers, journalists, marketers, law enforcement, psychologists, hackers, private investigators…the list goes on and on. And – no joke – it even includes the approaches that magicians take to find things out.

Did that include talking to sourcers? Of course. That’s why you’re reading this column.

Get On Your Way: How To Source A Career Outside of Sourcing.

It may sound crazy, but there are so many consistent themes with all these people. That’s why I urge you to contemplate what else you can do were you to leave “sourcing” behind in favor of a career about “finding stuff out.”

To illustrate all this, let’s explore a handful of approachable careers and industries.

Since you all know how to find job descriptions for these positions, let’s stick with conceptual introductions. The focus here is why these roles may make sense.

1. Retained Executive Search Consulting.

This is the most relevant of all these choices. These are small to large firms that get paid big money to find top executives for companies, independent of outcomes. That means they do not generate contingent fees. Rather, they charge hefty sums for their process.

A huge piece of that process is “research excellence.” It is, in fact, a major selling point during their pitches and the way they try to differentiate themselves.

Research here blends elements of sourcing with other areas of market research and mapping. There’s lots of client-facing reporting as well, and some people do it as a stepping stone to the consulting side.

2. University Development, Fundraising & Donor Profiling.

All nonprofits place particular emphasis on fundraising. Beyond the kids from your alma mater who hustle you for 25 bucks yearly, there is another world in here. It is the vast realm of donor and prospect profiling.

The work goes beyond basic profiling of people to encompass asset modeling and estimation, plus research in support of fundraising campaigns. It’s like doing well by doing good. Oh, and in big universities and nonprofits, the pay and visibility for these positions can be outstanding.

3. Journalism Research and News Rooms Fact Checkers.

Behind every great news story, there are researchers generating crucial insight. They span all topics of coverage. Alongside this are the fact-checkers, the researchers who do the critical work of checking material to withstand factual scrutiny, amongst other things.

Every major news organization uses these folks. That means print, online, television and elsewhere. It can be a tentpole function in some newsrooms.

As an example, ever heard of Julie Tate at the Washington Post? She’s a former fact checker turned researcher who has been a part of 9 Pulitzer Prize winning entries. Do you need a degree in journalism?

Nope.

4. Corporate and Special Libraries.

Yes, actual libraries. These things are everywhere! You will find a research library team inside every major corporation, hedge fund, investment firm and beyond. Don’t believe me?

Take a look at the Special Libraries Association at www.sla.org. If you are excellent at finding stuff out, you should be able to penetrate this landscape by trading years of experience in lieu of an advanced degree in library science (MLS), though an MLS helps.

This is where companies ranging from P&G to Big Pharma turn when they need more research. They go to their corporate libraries or “info centers.”

5. Corporate Marketing and Market Research.

When companies make plans to develop or deliver a product or service to market, they begin with actionable research. Marketing executives do this, product managers do this, and so do the many market research professionals around them. Titles vary, but they all anchor to research.

You may be sizing a foreign market, uncovering distribution networks, foraging for information on components, it is quite infinite. The theme is still just finding stuff out. And no, you do not need an MBA to crack this field.

On a related note, there’s the parallel world of “market research consulting.” This includes firms like Forrester, Gartner and countless others. They do much of the same work but from the sidelines of industry. It is fascinating, and their diverse clients may present high interest to career research professionals who enjoy tackling new subjects.

6. Knowledge Management (KM).

The “KM” function is a big deal in fields like management consulting. It is also a big deal in the rest of industry. One way to think about this is like the other side of research. That is about what we do with what we know, how we capture knowledge, and how we exploit it for myriad purposes. That summary does not do it justice, but it will have to work.

For those with a passion for research, that enthusiasm bears relevance. In most cases, if you have experience managing research, including its outcomes and findings, then you may already understand basic principles of KM.

7. Competitive Intelligence (CI).

As a corporate function, these are often small teams with a singular focus on finding things out and acting on those findings. Competitive Intelligence places tremendous emphasis on market monitoring, mapping, source profiling, open source intelligence, vendor management and on and on.

I live in this market on the consulting side, so my work also involves making direct calls to elicit information from human sources. The work is never the same. It is rigorous, and it is stimulating. While many in the field come with an MBA, your passport does not need that stamp.

8. Business Development, Lead Generation, and Prospect Profiling.

When organizations intend to separate prospects from money, they try to arm themselves with as much information as possible.

They might be in a shoot out with a competitor and need a researcher to build a “battle card” to compare offerings. They might need researchers to find prospects doing X in some key industry or location.

Information needs vary, and they depend on what the company makes and sells. The constant theme is that research is what makes lead generation and profiling possible.

Without it, they’re just guessing.

Extra Credit: Other Options for Reinventing Your Sourcing Career.

That list above is far from exhaustive. But those are several career ideas that present low or approachable barriers to entry. Are there other great choices?

Definitely, but many assume special knowledge, like medical research, or may require licensing, like becoming a Private Investigator. I’d rather see you pursue actionable and achievable alternatives that can effect change soon, not years from now.

Whoa. Did you read all the way to the end of this article? My sincere hope is that it prompts you to stop and rethink upcoming choices you make in your professional life. No, I don’t mean quit sourcing, if it’s what you love to do.

But if what you truly love is just finding stuff out, then consider alternative paths that will take your research chops to a whole new level.

Oh, and if you for some reason you try and then fail, try again.

About the Author:

David Carpe lives with his wife, kids, and a gaggle of dogs by a farm north of Boston. He spends his free time wrapping up www.theg2.com, a new kind of “human capital research” training program. His daily work life involves researching, analyzing and engaging people, places, and things to inform business decisions.

He has done this for big brands, consulting firms, and startups like Microsoft, Serono, the Gates Foundation, McKinsey, Fuld, TiVo, Turn, PGP, comScore and many others.

He has also provided expert commentary to diverse pubs ranging from the WSJ, Fortune, Wired and The New York Times to the Boston Globe, Chronicle of Philanthropy and CFO (and even Maxim!).

Follow David on Twitter @PassingNotes or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The post Oh, The Places You’ll Go: How You Can Reinvent Your Sourcing Career. appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

For an industry which prides itself on “none of us knew we were going to be recruiters,” those of us in talent acquisition seem to make it awful hard for an outsider to get a shot in the recruiting industry.  

Case in point: me.

Now, let me explain. After spending nine years in retail management, a career that extended through college and after graduation, I decided it was time for me to make a move and get a change of scenery.

So, I decided to become a full time recruiter.

Having spent so long in a management role at an enterprise employer like Target Stores offered me the opportunity to develop the requisite leadership skills through its very dynamic, immersive and mission oriented environment. 

One other great thing Target offered me was the chance to return to my old stomping grounds at San Jose State (go Spartans), talking to college students about what their career plans were after graduation, and to let them know the sort of awesome opportunities and experiences working at Target truly offered. I didn’t know it in the time, but those first forays into recruiting was love at first sight. It just took me a minute to figure that out.

I was a poster child for retail management, a success story who proved that with a little bit of hustle, a whole lot of hard work and a passion for learning and growing a career, I was able to not only survive, but thrive, in the middle of a terrible economy. That is, until, I wasn’t.

All stories have to end sometime. Even the good ones.

First Contact.

Leaving Target forced me to do some soul searching, and come to grips with the gut wrenching feeling that what had always felt like “living the dream” had, in fact, actually become something of a nightmare.

Existential angst is a terrible affliction. Trust me.

When I was in college, one of my earlier retail management positions was working full time as a Starbucks barista.

Back then, I had an Excel spreadsheet where I not only tracked the requisite classes and courses I’d need to graduate on time, but how those classes could help me prepare or market myself for a professional career.

I was sure that all this hard work would lead directly to the job of my dreams, so it made sense to obsessively track my personal progress via spreadsheet. Didn’t everyone do that in college? Man, those were some crazy times, I tell you.

I realized one day, looking at my spreadsheet, that the thing I had enjoyed the most, and the part of retail management I had found the most interesting, were those college recruiting events and being involved in the hiring process. What if I were to try recruiting as a full time job? It sounded as crazy then as it does now, honestly.

Fast forward to me posting the Facebook status that served as my fateful first step into this industry, something along the lines of “anyone out there know any recruiters?”

At the time, I had made the mistake of thinking that HR and recruiting were essentially interchangeable, two sides of the same coin. Hey, don’t grab the pitchforks; I also thought that the purpose of HR was to help employees and make sure people were happy and engaged with their jobs. What can I say? I was pretty naive.

That one Facebook post led to a surprising handful of awesome informational interviews, where I quickly learned that in fact, HR and recruiting were very different functions. After learning more about each respective role, it became pretty clear that talent acquisition was the perfect path for me, and the ideal direction in which to steer my nascent career.

I was going to become a recruiter. Pretty cool, huh?

Into Darkness.

I started off interviewing for roles with staffing agencies, mostly because they had the overwhelming majority of recruiting related job postings out there, and so I applied for these positions with little idea of what third party recruiting really entailed.

Overall, that first round of interviews went really well, but it became clear to me that leaving my decent paying, extremely stable retail job would require taking a step back on both my career ladder and my compensation.

I would have to start at the bottom all over again, and take a 20k pay cut for the privilege. At the time, I was barely keeping up with the cost of living in the Bay Area.

The risk-reward ratio started to look a little scary to me, but I was OK with at least making an attempt at this whole recruiting thing.

But despite my willingness to learn and my desire to build a career in recruiting, I learned after this first and ultimately futile round of interviews that my retail management skills picked up over the years I’d spent supervising people, processes and policies on the store level were quickly dismissed as irrelevant for these roles.

Skills like customer service, dealing with ambiguity, closing sales, managing staff and dealing with the details of daily operations apparently weren’t transferrable to the recruiting industry.

I vividly remember going to one particular interview where the recruiter across the desk looked at my resume, looked at me and said (I’m quoting verbatim, here): “I don’t know why you’re trying to get into the recruiting industry. You’ll never make the money you’re making in retail right now.”

Sure, maybe that hiring manager was one of those “bad eggs” in our industry, the kind of recruiter who gives the rest of us a black eye, but I was still dumbfounded at how much resistance and discouragement I was receiving simply by trying to find an entry level job in the recruiting industry.

The response was unbelievable, even with the benefit of hindsight. Where I should have gotten encouragement, I was greeted with skepticism; where I should have received words of wisdom, they were always words of warning instead.

It was effectively like an entire profession had blacklisted me from a career before that career had even started.

The Undiscovered Country.

Six months and dozens of interviews later, I finally connected with a childhood acquaintance of my roommate’s best friend, who just so happened to work for a staffing agency in San Francisco.

Long story short, I snuck out between shifts for my in person, killed the interview, accepted the pay cut and the entry level title, and worked as hard as I could to show that I had the stuff to stick around after first getting my foot into the door.

Fortunately, I had a CEO who recognized my sweat equity and dedication, and a company culture that afforded me opportunities to grow professionally and develop myself personally. Without that sort of encouragement, without that recognition I don’t know if I would still be in recruiting, which is a scary thought, since I’m passionate about my profession and pretty proficient, too.

That I had to fight so hard just to get the chance to prove myself in a staffing job and risk so much simply to take a chance on a career in recruiting strikes me, in hindsight, as a microcosm of one of the most pressing and pervasive problems facing our industry.

Despite the fact, famously, there are few barriers for entry, for some reason we too often make simply getting started in recruiting prohibitively difficult – and without any real rational for doing so, honestly. This is a shame not only for would be recruiters effectively shut out of our industry, but for every recruiter out there hoping for a better future for our profession.

I was lucky enough that in my first ever recruiting job, I landed at a company whose CEO was not only willing to take a chance on me, but also to put in the time and resources to maximize the return on his recruiting investment. We were taking a chance on each other, really, and I’d like to think I delivered for him, since he most certainly did for me (he’s why I’m here, and for his support, I’ll be forever thankful).

The Voyage Home.

So many of us fall into recruiting by chance. For some of us, that coincidence can become a calling and a career; the recruiters who stay around and grow in this industry might have gotten here by accident, but they stay here because they’re willing to do whatever it takes and work as hard as needed to be successful.

Every great recruiter’s story starts because someone gave them their first chance.

Of course, there are risks for the employer doing so – finding recruiters with the potential and fortitude to stick it out and grow in this industry is a risk, mainly because the odds of failure have been so high, historically.

But with every risk comes the potential for reward – and developing a rookie recruiter into a rock star pays off big time for pretty much every employer out there.

Good recruiters are hard to find. Too bad we turn so many with so much potential away. It’s time we stopped making it so hard to get into the recruiting industry, honestly. Do you remember how you landed here? How you got that first TA gig?

I’m going to guess it’s because you took a chance, and some company reciprocated by taking a risk on you and extending you an offer based largely off presentation skills and potential. These are imperfect prescreening criteria, to say the least, but sometimes, you’ve got to go with your gut. And no one knows whose worth the risk better than the very same recruiters who have been there before.

Over and over again, job seekers approach me because they want to know more about recruiting; many times, they’re actually interested in pursuing careers in talent acquisition and the recruiting industry.

Sadly, they have no idea what this career is really about, what recruiting really entails or even where they should start their job search. That’s probably because there’s no one size fits all approach to getting into recruiting, which is why everyone in this industry has some sort of random story about how they got into the business.

How do you improve someone’s luck or have them somehow be in the right place at the right time, which is how many of us got started? The answer is, you can’t prepare aspiring recruiters for something that’s completely random, because you can’t prepare for the unpredictable.

But we really should start providing these would be talent acquisition professionals clearly defined paths, professional insights and personal advice that’s actionable, not arbitrary, and give them tools to help succeed in their search instead of simply shade and a ton of red tape.

Look, it’s time we diversify this talent tribe of ours for the good of all of us. The only way to do that is to make it easier to break into recruiting and actually promote recruiting to high potential professionals with great experience in other industries who could easily make the move to recruiting and not only survive, but thrive.

We need to start looking for people who have the soft skills and are willing to put in the hard work required to become a kick butt talent pro; we should be proactive in promoting and finding recruiting talent, raising awareness instead of barriers to entry. Sure, some people aren’t going to work out.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the chance on giving someone a chance, since you inevitably got a break at some point in your career, or you wouldn’t have one. If we can’t pay it forward, we’re all going to stay stuck in the status quo.

Beyond: Recruiting The Next Generation.

We want fresh blood in our profession, people who have the propensity to develop and disrupt our industry while also enjoying the lucrative, amazing and dynamic nature of the business of hiring.

I’m sure if more people knew how awesome careers in recruiting can really be, we’d have a lot more awesome recruiters.

Also, let’s be honest: if someone actually wants to get into recruiting (or even find out what the heck it is recruiters even do all day), then they’re probably a little crazy.

Which from experience, is a pretty good sign that they’ve got a pretty good future in recruiting ahead of them. We’re all a bit nuts in this business. You have to be.

But not as crazy as the fact that we make it so hard for good people to get good jobs in a great industry. Because as any job seeker can probably tell you, a good recruiter is hard to find. This is why it’s up to us.

About the Author:

Allison Mackay is currently responsible for Infrastructure Data Center Recruiting at Facebook.  Her current team manages hiring for the Facebook team responsible for design center site selection strategy, infrastructure design and creation, operation of data centers, servers and network hardware, and managing Facebook’s standards compliance and sustainability programs across Facebook’s data center sites.

Alison began her career in retail management, where she was first introduced to retail campus recruiting. After realizing her heart belonged to talent acquisition, she began her career in recruiting, starting off at two separate boutique agencies focused exclusively on technical recruiting prior to moving to her current in-house role at Facebook.

A graduate of San Jose State University, Alison is also the co-founder of the Silicon Valley Recruiters Association.

Follow Alison on Twitter at @am_recruiter_sv or connect with her on LinkedIn.

The post Why Do We Make It So Hard To Get Into Recruiting? appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

And yes, in case you were wondering, recruiting is not only a “real” profession, but a rewarding career, too.

That I even have to address this point pains me, considering that most sourcers and recruiters are damn good (and damn skilled) at their jobs.

In my experience, these are the rule, rather than the exception.

It’s those exceptions, however, who continue to exceptionally screw the rest of us recruiters over. Those recruiters who are too slow to call candidates, too quick to cut corners, who care more about making a placement than the person they’re placing.

This, of course, creates poor candidate experiences, pissed off clients and the perception problems persistently plaguing our profession.

I heard this story from a new friend of mine I recently met at a conference, who shared with me his experience of how a rogue hiring manager, a rookie agency recruiter and a train wreck of a hiring process collided in a perfect storm of shitty recruiting and worst practices.

I think it’s kind of a microcosm of everything that’s wrong with recruiting today, a cautionary tale contained in a single search.

Talent Wars: A No Hope For Hiring Managers.

This probably sounds familiar, and that sucks. Because this is a story about what happens when bad recruiting happens to good companies, and the story of this particular opportunity should provide a pretty good example of exactly how high the opportunity cost of a broken hiring process can really be.

For real.

There’s a reason that you need to meet with your hiring manager before kicking off any search. Contrary to popular belief, however, the primary purpose has nothing to do with reviewing requirements or writing a job description. Nope.

It’s essential to get that face time for no other reason than to make sure you, the recruiter, are able to help protect the hiring manager from themselves – because often, they can be the biggest threat to a successful search.

This isn’t intentional, of course, but the truth is that hiring managers don’t manage hiring; that’s the recruiter’s job. And doing that job means establishing this role, no matter what role you happen to be recruiting for, and doing so as soon as the search starts.

That’s why we have intake meetings, a fact that’s not generally discussed with less experienced recruiters. Learning how to match up reqs and resumes is easy. Learning how to make a hiring manager happy while keeping them from self sabotage, not so much.

Guess the secret’s out.

The Hiring Manager Strikes Back.

My friend, however, made a critical mistake when initiating the search at the center of this story. Even though he was a senior recruiter who had filled roles like this a million times, the fact that he didn’t establish expectations and clearly define roles and responsibilities in the recruiting process with his hiring manager led to what’s often a worst case scenario: a rogue hiring manager.

And that rogue hiring manager made the unfortunate decision of calling a third party recruiter directly, without telling his in-house counterpart until it was already too late.

The hiring manager, of course, likely thought that he was helping by being proactive in casting a wider net and augmenting their recruiting resources with some additional firepower. As they’d say in the South, bless his heart. Because, of course, this inevitably hurts hiring way more than its ever helped.

In fact, if there’s one thing that can derail a search, it’s too many cooks in the kitchen. When one of those cooks is an agency recruiter, it’s always a recipe for disaster.

I know most hiring managers think they’re doing recruiters some sort of favor, helping reduce their workload by taking direct control over the screening and selection process. The thing most don’t realize is that they’re inevitably creating far more work for the recruiter by going rogue than by trusting the process that their employer already has in place.

That process, inevitably, flows directly through the talent team. There’s a reason for that, believe it or not.

Now, I don’t wish to disparage my agency and third party counterparts categorically, since many of them are skilled and capable recruiters. But for a hiring manager, finding good agency recruiters is a lot like Stevie Wonder throwing darts – odds are good you’re going to miss a whole lot more than you hit the target.

Having to deal with both a rogue hiring manager and a crap agency recruiter is every in-house talent pro’s worst nightmare.  And if you think that there’s no chance this will happen to you, no matter how good a recruiter you really are, you must be dreaming.

Consider this a wake up call.

Lose The Force: When Contingency Plans Go Wrong.

Once upon a time, there was a hiring manager who decided to recruit for his own role instead of working with his talent acquisition team. I’m sure most of you know how this story goes (spoiler alert: shit show).

After a lot of fighting, he finally had an open headcount. These were hard to come by, and he was understandably excited to start looking at candidates as soon as possible. He hoped, as all hiring managers do, for a high potential A Player, which was why he was so encouraged when the phone rang the very same afternoon the job was posted to the public.

It was a sweet talking agency recruiter, who, coincidentally, hadn’t even seen the ad, but the timing couldn’t have been better. You know this shill drill by now.

You want the best in the business, the recruiter promised, you need to work with us. We fill roles like this all the time. We have a great network and can find candidates other recruiters can’t. And you only pay if we actually make a hire.

If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And the truth is the role was actually one of the harder to fill positions within the hiring manager’s business unit.

But without really doing any sort of due diligence, before he hung up the phone, he had agreed to give the agency a shot at the search.

After a postmortem, it turns out that the recruiter had, in fact, gotten the contact information of the hiring manager from his account manager, who called in a favor from someone in the company who they’d taken to one of those three martini steak lunches earlier in the week in an attempt to recruit him away to a competitor.

So it goes.

Agency Recruiters: The Phantom Menace.

The recruiter who the account manager referred, it turns out, the one who promised the hiring manager that they had just interviewed a bunch of great candidates with the exact same skill set for a similar role they’d filled (suuurrree….), had virtually no experience, was new to recruitment and had absolutely no expertise or industry exposure.

She was dialing for dollars, and she had struck gold.

Of course, a day or so later, a random resume lands in the corporate recruiter’s inbox forwarded from some agency they’ve never heard of. The hiring manager found this great recruiter who had this great candidate, would TA go ahead and do whatever they do to get an interview on the calendar?

Well, a couple of problems at this point. First, there’s the compliance component; not only is the agency not an approved vendor, but as an OFCCP company, working outside of the system (technically and figuratively) constituted a pretty big party foul.

The recruiter tried explaining this, of course, but explaining employment law is like talking through IKEA instructions. If you don’t get the picture, you’re never going to figure it out in the first place. The hiring manager, one can assume, took this ten minutes of cursory compliance training for a quick power nap.

The second problem is at this point, the recruiter had lost all influence or control over the search, which at this early stage in the process is a pretty big problem. No matter what the recruiter does at this point, they’ve been effectively relegated to the backseat while the hiring manager steers (and in the wrong direction, too).

If you find yourself in a place where you’re basically a glorified admin, well, you’re not really recruiting. Asserting authority is imperative, because once you’ve lost control of a req, it’s damn near impossible to get back.

The recruiter, in this case, could do little but comply and silently stew over the fact that he didn’t even get a chance to start sourcing before the search was effectively out of his hands. He didn’t even have the opportunity to reach out to his network, search the ATS for previous submissions or ask for referrals.

He did the only thing he could do: manually entered the resume in his system of record and hoped he didn’t get audited.

C’est la vie.

Attack of the Clones: When Good Offers Go Bad.

A funny thing happened after the candidate came in; somehow, despite not even remotely resembling the job description or meeting any preferred qualification for the role, the candidate nailed the interview. Great presentation skills, articulate and personable, the candidate checked all the boxes the hiring manager was apparently looking for.

The recruiter was unable to push back, since without doing intake, he couldn’t possibly argue that the profile and position didn’t actually align – and again, he found himself forced into a paper pusher, forced to develop an offer for a candidate he didn’t actually own in a search he was effectively ostracized from.

Of course, like every recruiter, he was juggling a pretty busy req load, so he was secretly relieved that he didn’t have to spin his wheels on what’s historically been a really hard to fill kind of role with a very niche skill set. So essentially, he felt justified in at least trading one irritation for another.

That is, until the phone call. The recruiter called the account manager who had submitted the candidates, but that person was unavailable; I then asked to be transferred to the recruiter of record. After all, he couldn’t put together an offer without knowing the particulars on the sort of package the candidate was expecting.

When the recruiter answered the phone, it became immediately clear how she won the business; she was extremely articulate, personable and cheery. She came across, at least at first, as professional and polite. That is, until we got down to the brass tacks of extending the offer itself; “why aren’t you doing that? Isn’t that your job?,” she asked, without a hint of irony.

The recruiter was stunned, to say the least.

“Uh, that’s kind of what agencies get paid for,” he responded, and asked if the offer was at least in the ball park with the candidate’s expectations. His stomach stopped some time during the awkward pause that ensued, when she backpedaled again, trying to deflect responsibility for the offer acceptance to the internal recruiter, insisting that was the company’s job, not hers.

What the hell do you think you get paid for?

It suddenly dawned on him that as much of a miracle as it seemed for her to throw a candidate at a really hard search and actually have one stick, the other shoe had just dropped. She hadn’t discussed salary with the candidate at all, nor had it come up during the process.

She hadn’t discussed what the overall rewards package we offered entailed, what our culture or work life balance was, or anything even resembling pre-closing the candidate.

She confirmed as much. “Um, I just told him about the job and sent him a description. I mean, I don’t like make offers or anything. I let the companies do that.”

Revenge of the Meek: The Real Cost of Rogue Hiring Managers.

What. The. Actual. Hell. Where did this rookie recruiter learn this stuff? That’s not how any of this works, but somehow, she was under the impression that this was business as usual.

The recruiter tried to keep calm, responding through gritted teeth: “How am I supposed to extend them an offer when I don’t have their contact information?”

This strikes me as a reasonable question. Now, he could probably have pretty easily sourced it at this point, but hell. If by some chance the offer was actually accepted, he thought, the recruiter had to try to do something, even if it wasn’t much, to earn that hefty commission they’d receive for a successful placement. It was only fair, after all.

And with that, he firmly told her that he’d expect the answer to come through her, and gave her permission to extend the approved offer. She said something snide and quickly hung up.

The recruiter immediately called the hiring manager, trying to warn him of the storm clouds he saw gathering on the hiring horizon. Sure enough, his answer was every recruiter’s worst nightmare.

You’re the recruiter, and you’re part of HR. You’re the person who has to close the candidate. 

This was the problem, summed up in a sentence: the hiring manager and the agency recruiter were both equally oblivious to how business as usual is usually done in this business.

It was no surprise when the recruiter called back to explain that the candidate was tabling the offer “for a week or so” so that they could complete the process at a few other companies they were considering.

So much for time to fill. The req was officially on hold, and the outlook didn’t look good. He asked the recruiter about what other types of companies and opportunities were on the table, how his company’s offer compared and any additional insight that might provide a timeline or contingency plan for the contingency candidate.

Of course, she knew nothing about any other position; instead, she told me that his major hesitation with our offer so far was over the job title – if we really wanted him to say yes, we could change that while we gave him a week to think it over, right? For this, she stood to make a cool $30k. The world of work is a funny place.

The recruiter, of course, jumped through the requisite internal hoops and barrels, fighting for an amended offer with a new title; by the time he was able to get all necessary approvals, however, and send the updated letter to the agency, the account manager (of course) called back with some bad news.

Turns out, the candidate took an offer from one of their other clients. The recruiter’s company came in significantly lower in terms of total rewards, although they never actually knew what the candidate wanted to begin with since the agency failed to provide them this information.

Not that they were too worried; they got the higher placement fee out of the deal, but hopefully, they could work together on another search soon.

The Force Awakens: How To Manage Your Hiring Managers.

Let’s hit pause here. Think of how frustrating this scenario was for the recruiter in question. Not only was there a total lack of empathy or accountability offered by the agency, but he now had to start the search over from Square One and was ultimately responsible for filling the req – and for the offer fiasco, too.

He didn’t do anything wrong, but he was forced to suffer the load of the ball the agency had dropped. Which is why he called me to see how he should deal with the fallout from his rogue hiring manager and told me this story. I smiled and simply said, “welcome to the world of recruiting.”

I wasn’t being harsh, but I told him the truth: that he was the one who mismanaged his hiring manager.

If he didn’t make it clear that there were consequences for bypassing the internal talent team, he didn’t stand a chance in hell of ever regaining credibility or internal influence with that hiring manager or his team ever again. He should consider this a learning opportunity.

Because it’s happened to the best of us. Or at least, it’s happened to me. The good news is, once was enough – and this problem, it turned out, was an avoidable one. It just took process, project management and partnership, three of the essential parts of recruiting, period.

So how do you deal with a rogue hiring manager? The same way you deal with a crappy agency recruiter.

You’ve got to preempt the problem before it even starts, because once it does, the problem is all yours. Never start a search without making sure your hiring manager knows who’s really managing it, first. Or else, you’re going to be screwed. Trust me on this one.

#TrueStory

About the Author:

Derek Zeller draws from over 16 years in the recruiting industry. The last 11 years he has been involved with federal government recruiting specializing within the cleared Intel space under OFCCP compliance. He is currently serves as Technical Recruiting Lead at Comscore.

Follow Derek on Twitter @Derdiver or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The post Rogue One: Working With Hiring Managers Who Don’t Want to Work With You. appeared first on RecruitingDaily.

Let’s be honest – when it comes to hiring, neither side is ever completely honest with each other. The fact that both sides are given to hyperbole, factual omission and sometimes, outright lying is more the rule than the exception (at least by reputation), and the assumption of mistrust is a critical reason for some of the most persistent problems plaguing talent acquisition and inhibiting hiring success. You can’t build relationships without trust, and you simply can’t trust anyone on the other side of the recruiting process – or so conventional wisdom conventionally holds.

Candidates lie to get the job; recruiters lie about how amazing an “opportunity” is (the very use of this word is often a lie itself, since there’s no opportunity involved in dead end jobs). Candidates don’t believe career site copy or staged employee testimonials anymore than recruiters take a candidate’s resume at face value – which is the reason we have to screen everyone before we actually submit them.

Hey, whatever it takes to make a hire happen, right?

I think we all know that’s just wrong. I’ve written in the past about the concept of “recruiter experience,” which is what real TA pros really deal with when attracting and converting top talent. Most of us have a litany of complaints about candidates, a laundry list of stuff we wish we could say, but about which we must stay mum for myriad reasons, mostly because most of us want to keep our jobs – and this means staying silent, grinning and bearing the bullshit. But given the number of real conversations I’ve really had with candidates about their job search, and with recruiters about the candidates they work with, I thought it was finally time to come clean on what’s really not a pretty picture – and one that’s gotten progressively worse over the past few years.

Revealing What Candidates Really Think About Recruiters (But Never Say).

A warning: what you’re about to read may disturb you (if you’re in this business, it should). But it’s time that we face the brutal truths of recruiting reputation and candidate misperceptions that have become so endemic and problematic to our profession. We all know what happens when you Google “Recruiters are…” but the subsequent suggested searches really only touch the tip of the iceberg.

For all the talk about “recruiting is marketing” or emphasis on engagement and personalized communications, the truth is that candidates and recruiters rarely communicate like they wish they could.

I know I’ve written a lot about what recruiters really want, but here are some of the things candidates wish they could actually tell recruiters – and I wanted to share with you so that maybe, just maybe, we could all finally hear what candidates really think.

Here’s hoping that for once, recruiters actually hear the message in the madness. Here are five examples of what candidates wish they could tell recruiters (but never do).

Are you listening?

Candidate $1: The Technologist.

Hello Recruiter:

Congratulations, you finally found me – and yes, I am a professional coder who knows a lot of the esoteric technologies and  in-demand programming languages recruiters are always looking for. I’m not sure how you came across my name and information, but I do know an exhaustive amount about technology, software engineering and product management. I’ve worked with some of the coolest companies, hottest startups and biggest brands in technology, including many of the same software and systems that you’re currently using to contact me. I’ve collaborated with some of the greatest minds in the world, which is why I just can’t see myself working with a recruiter like you.

I mean, seriously. I just did a perfunctory search, found your profile and learned that you went to school for communications. So if you have an actual degree in this subject, why is it you suck so badly at actually, you know, communicating? Why do you blast generic emails without doing any sort of personalization or targeting or send over requisitions that have nothing to do with my experience or expertise?

Why would you ever think I’d take the time to respond to you when I get dozens of messages from recruiters like you every day with positions that aren’t even close to being relevant to anything I’ve ever done or will do.

I know I’m not easy to find, but since you did, I am not sure why you didn’t take the time to actually try to learn about what I do, what I care about or what I want out of a job. Nope. You just added me to some email distribution list, cut and pasted some crappy copy and attached a JD that doesn’t describe a job I’d be remotely interested in. And no, I don’t know anyone who would be interested, either – the thought that I’d refer my connections and colleagues to you, someone who I not only don’t know but who obviously doesn’t know the first thing about tech, is laughable, honestly.

But it’s OK. Every email you send from here on out is going straight into my spam folder, and because I have admin access, you’re never getting past the firewall to anyone at our company ever again, because you’re wasting everyone’s time. If you don’t get tech – which is pretty obvious from your message – then how are you going to get me the right job? It’s wrong, but I think we can make things right by ensuring you never, ever reach out or try to speak with me again.

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and yours sucked. #JustSaying.

Candidate #2: The Registered Nurse. 

Hey there!

I’m not sure why you think I need your help finding a job, but guess what? I don’t have any use for any recruiter, since I can pretty much call my own shots (get it?) on where I want to work and with whom. Healthcare tends to be a smaller industry than you think, and we tend to talk to each other – nurses more than anyone, more than likely. And every one of my colleagues is aware that they’re in demand, since we’re inundated by recruiters nearly non-stop these days.

We have enough experience dealing with you people that we know what good recruiters look like – and that they’re few and far between. We tend to recommend the good ones to each other, which is why so many nursing placements come from referrals – something you already know, since you asked me who I knew in your message.

Well, I know enough people to know that I’m going to warn them not to work with you if you keep bombarding me with unsolicited messages, emails and text messages. Seriously, stop. My work is a matter of life and death, whereas your “work” indicates that you probably just need to get a life.

The open market is waiting for us with open arms, and we know recruiters make a lot of money off of us – and that we’re often exploited on offers, cheated on compensation or otherwise used by recruiters eager to do what it takes to make a placement. That short term success should prove short lived – once one of us figures out you’re screwing us over, then everyone in our industry is going to know.

There are more chatrooms, private Facebook groups, email strings and closed forums where nurses and healthcare professionals connect than you’ll ever know, and most of us use these and similar sites or specialty communities to give each other advice and support. Often, that means sounding the alarm about a sketchy or shady recruiter and the games they play. If you think the con is on, you need to back off – we’re already onto you.

So stop with the phone calls and the incessant emails telling me how great your positions are or how awesome you are to work with, because I don’t need you to find fulfillment in my job. After all, that’s why I went into nursing in the first place.

And since I have options, I don’t need to choose where (and how) I find my next opportunity. Suffice to say, it won’t be with you. So back off,  buddy.

Candidate #3: The Accountant.

Dear Sir:

Thank you for your phone call and your email. I had the opportunity to both listen to your voice message and look at the job description you attached to the email you sent over. Upon review, I would like to express my interest in figuring out whether or not you have any idea what the hell it is I actually do. You don’t have a clue, do you? You know that there’s a pretty big difference between accounts payable and accounts receivable (I don’t do either), and between consolidations and reporting, neither of which are actually my specialty. Accounting is really complex, and you clearly don’t know a P&L from a G/L. Spoiler alert: they’re completely different, just like the candidates required. Too bad you probably won’t get many, considering your obvious lack of accounting acumen or industry knowledge.

I am a CPA, and I handle SEC filings and IRFS compliance. The A/P job you contacted me about is kid’s stuff by comparison – yeah, I could do the work, but that’s not really the work I do – in fact, it’s pretty far beneath me at this point in my career. Not that you’d know, since you clearly didn’t bother to look at my resume or profile online, but if you did, you’d see that the only match between my experience and your job description is the word “accounting.” And there’s no accounting for stupid.

I must ask if you are actually being paid to send out this kind of complete crap or continually chase candidates in the hopes of connecting with them about opportunities they’d never consider to begin with? What the hell kind of job is this? If I were to crunch the numbers, I’m fairly certain that there’s no way your ROI can be worth the investment your employer is making for your recruiting efforts. Good thing we don’t work together, or I’d have already cleared up some cash flow by eliminating your position. But hey, we’re never gonna work together, so stop wasting your time sending me this stuff.

Just thought you should know why I always ignore you, and always will.

Candidate #4: The Blue Collar Worker.

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am sorry that I did not spend $500 I didn’t have on a resume writer I can’t afford just to hopefully impress y’all enough to at least get a call back about that open job I applied for. I never hear from you, and no one else I really know does, either. So we sit around and wait for news that just never seems to come.

I know it’s hard to stand out from those stack of resumes when you’re not some white collar worker a whole lot of degrees, experience and the kinds of skills employers actually want these days. I dnn’t have any of those.

What I do have, though, is a family to feed and provide for, rent due and bills I gotta pay off. When you live paycheck to paycheck, that’s really what you need out of a job, and when you need a job in my position, chances are you’re scared, desperate and alone. There’s nothing that would make any of us feel better than maybe the occasional call back or acknowledgement that you actually considered us for that job we tried for, even if we didn’t get it. I just want to know I’m not wasting my time and somebody sees the damned things.

Because I’ve been waiting for a recruiter to call back for so long, I’m starting to really lose hope. Haven’t I already lost enough without your promises of open jobs and competitive compensation you post everywhere talking about “immediate need” and “urgent demand,” but never enough to actually call me back, because I’m looking for a job, and that’s not what jobs look for these days.

I just want anything, and the roles I applied for aren’t rocket science. They’re mostly menial labor for minimum wage, and anyone could probably do this sort of work – but I actually want it. This isn’t me settling, this is me paying my bills and taking care of my family. You could be the lifeline I’ve been praying for, but instead, you don’t even treat me like a human being instead of just another job applicant you can cast aside like garbage. There are a lot of other people out there like me who can’t get a call back if their life depended on it. So what is it about us you don’t like?

Please. Just give me a call, and give me a chance. I won’t let you down. Until then, I’ll be waiting, and praying. For something. Anything. All I know is I need a job, and you have jobs. I don’t know what the problem is, but it’s a big one. For me, my family and my sense of self worth.

Anyone Out There?

Here’s the thing. The three most stressful life events according to psychologists are, in order, getting married, buying a home and looking for a job. We don’t get much help with the first two, but the third? If you’re a recruiter, that’s your friggin’ job, man, and what you’re getting paid to do, period. As you can see from some of the stories above, though, that’s not worth a whole lot to the candidates out there who are the real currency that really runs recruiting. Without candidates, we wouldn’t have recruiters, and you’d be just another candidate desperately searching for a job instead of the person responsible for filling them.

Never forget: you are as dispensable as you treat the candidates you come into contact with. And if you can’t add value to the job seekers you support, then you can’t expect to extract any, either. It doesn’t work that way.

Look, candidates are a commodity – the most valuable commodity on the job market today. So it doesn’t make sense to treat them like shit – but shit rolls downhill, you know. And if you’re one of those craptastic recruiters who are part of the problem, not the solution, chances are that you’re not only at the bottom of that hill, but about to get hit by all the crap that’s coming your way. But if any of the above sound like they could be your candidates, you damn well know you deserve it.

Recruiters, we’re better than this. We really are.

Maybe it’s time we started proving it – to our clients, to our candidates and to our colleagues. They deserve better. And frankly, our profession does, too.

About the Author:

Derek Zeller draws from over 16 years in the recruiting industry. The last 11 years he has been involved with federal government recruiting specializing within the cleared Intel space under OFCCP compliance. He is currently serves as Technical Recruiting Lead at Comscore.

He has experience with both third party agency and in-house recruiting for multiple disciplines and technologies. Using out-of-the-box tactics and strategies to identify and engage talent, he has had significant experience in building referral and social media programs, the implementation of Applicant Tracking Systems, technology evaluation, and the development of sourcing, employment branding, military and college recruiting strategies.

You can read his thoughts on RecruitingDaily.com or Recruitingblogs.com or his own site Derdiver.com.  Follow Derek on Twitter @Derdiver or connect with him on LinkedIn.

The post What Candidates Really Wish They Could Tell Recruiters (But Can’t). appeared first on RecruitingDaily.