Finding the Love in Recruiting

There are no shortages of “how-to” blog posts out there when it comes to learning the tactical approach to recruiting.  And, if you look hard enough, there are plenty of strategic articles available to the astute thought leaders of our industry looking for information on strategy and .  And these are important.  Strategy combined with tactics make for an excellent game plan (or war strategy) and is an important aspect to recruiting.

However, there is more as well…the philosophical side.  The soft, mushy, feel-good, kumbaya side of recruiting that doesn’t get published very often.  Why not?  Because on the surface, it’s not very strategic, it’s not very tactical and it doesn’t appear to have much of an ROI.  However, when we look deeper, noting could be further from the truth in this changing market, evolving generational shift, and era of social living.

If we do not pay attention to the emotional side of recruiting, we will quickly find ourselves strategically and tactically irrelevant.

Recruiting is about the People

Unlike other functional departments such as IT, Finance or Operations; Talent Acquisition’s core competency is centered around people; the attraction, engagement, and acquisition of people.  People are emotional and understanding them, winning them over, and getting them to see things from your perspective is a skill that is more often associated with sales departments rather than Human Resources.  However, Talent Acquisition is sales.  Talent Acquisition is the ability to consistently source, attract, engage and win over people who are critical to the advancements of our organizations.  When we don’t have our selling shoes on, we lose.

Social Media has changed the world!

In today’s electronic world, every aspect of the human experience can easily be defined, outlined, liked, shared, plussed, retweeted, and voted upon by members of our social circles.  Even if we do not want to subscribe to all of the “social media hoopla” (your words, not mine…I plan on tweeting this blog post when it’s finished) the actions of you, your team, and your company are certain to be documented forever.  Since this is the new reality, it is safe to assume that the recruiting process or, more specifically, the being recruited process, is also transparent for all to see and experience.  We used to only worry about what our candidate’s significant others thought of our job opportunity, however, we now must concern ourselves with the candidate’s entire network (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, G+, and more).  It is not uncommon for the person you are recruiting to Google you, the hiring manager, department head, and the entire company and immediately pass judgment on all of the above players.  So how are we going to control the experience to insure that it is a good one?

Love Baby Love!

Be kind; for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle – Plato.

I know…It’s tough.  For years I’ve been telling people things like, “Recruiting is a contact sport”. “There is no room for mediocrity in a job search”.  “Recruiting is not social services, we are about finding, attracting, and engaging the best of the best”.  And all of that is still true.  But we can still be kind.

How long does it take to hold a door for someone?  How much effort is it to tell every person who serves you food at a drive through or in a restaurant or at a coffee shop how grateful you are for their service?  How difficult is it to tell people that they are valued as candidates and that their experience is worthy of recognition and advancement?  It doesn’t mean that we need to hire differently, but it does mean that we should try to move the needle away from “cold and compliant” towards “kind and sincere”.

Let’s look at three main areas where we can accomplish great things by loving on people more and making a difference in our community and in our own credibility as a subject matter expert and trusted advisors in our field; sourcing and engagement, recruiting process, and acceptance and onboarding.

Sourcing and Engagement

• When we source someone and reach out to them, how are we engaging them?  Are we trying to get to know them and find out if what we may be offering to them is actually beneficial?
• Are we putting their needs, concerns, questions in front of our own qualifying questions?  Are we engaging them as servant leaders, asking them the simple question of, “What’s important to you IF you were to make a career change with our firm, company, or client?”
• Are we being truthful about who we are, how we found them, what we are recruiting for, and what our qualifications really are?
• Are we answering their questions about their ability to be considered for the job we are sourcing / recruiting for?

Recruiting Process

• Do we call the candidate back after they’ve applied online?  Even when they don’t qualify for our job?
• Do we share constructive feedback that does not expose our firm to liability but gives the candidate something other than, “Sorry, but your resume does not meet our qualifications.”?
• Do we listen when they tell us their stories?  Are we compassionate to their situation and circumstances?
• Are we proactive in giving them information or do we wait for them to hound us?
• Do we return all calls (yes, all calls) within 24 hours or do we secretly hope that they’ll just go away?
• Do we touch base with them during the process just to see, “How they are?”  Tip: With long hiring cycles, we will gain substantial credibility by checking in from time to time when we don’t need anything from a candidate.
• When we must deliver bad news to a candidate, do we do it in a respectful manner to them?  Are we as honest as we can be without exposing our company to liability?

Acceptance and Onboarding

• When we are working with the candidate on their offer, are we listening to their concerns?  Their fears? Their worries in making a move to our firm, company, or client?”
• When they accept our offer, do we take their acceptance at face value and move on or are we genuinely happy for them because the move makes sense?  If the move doesn’t make sense are we asking them for clarification as to why they are making the move, really?  Are we interested in their best interests?
• If they accept another offer or turn down our offer, do we encourage them in their decision and treat them with respect?
• Do we stay connected to the candidate during their resignation because we need a start or because they may need a trusted advisor during a tough process?
• Do we make sure that they are handled well during the onboarding process and that they are not left to their own devices or another department?

But I don’t have time to do all of that? 

Really? If we don’t actually have time to be kind, we need to do something else for a living.  People deserve kindness from our industry and we are responsible for being better than they deserve.  Recruiting is a critical department for most organizations as we are the people in our companies that find, engage and attract talent to join our firm and make a difference.  Therefore, by proxy, we make a difference.  With great power comes great responsibility.  Be responsible. Be kind. And by all means recruit the best of the best for your teams!

1. Take a good job order
2. Fill it with good people
3. Do that over and over again

As a tactical approach to the recruiting field, it worked for me.  So much so that after one year, I was running four recruiting offices and two onsite facilities with a team of 22 recruiters.  The secret to my success lay in me doing those three simple steps and then managing my team to do the same.

So in laying a solid foundation for your and your team’s success, I want to bring it back old school.  To the job order.  Sometimes known as the intake session, sometimes known as the job order development meeting, sometimes known as the “let’s find the last job description we posted and just re-post it” meeting.  Let’s make sure we are NOT doing the latter approach.

I would like to outline for you a strategic approach to taking a job order so that you can then take this strategy and create whatever form is most suited for and fitting for your organization.  I have created a generic Job Order Intake Form that can be altered and tweaked to your specific needs in case you want to have a template to start with.  It is not necessarily HR friendly and should be custom tailored to meet the needs and standards of your organization.

Ok…let’s begin.  What’s the purpose of the job intake session?

I know, you’re probably thinking, “More philosophy?”  Yes!  We have to know why we are doing something before we can begin doing it.  We always want to begin with the end in mind. The purpose of the job intake session is to gain enough information to be able to conduct an educated search, build continuous rapport and credibility with the hiring manager, and be the best at filling the search with the right fit (#2 above).  Let’s explore each of these areas.

a)      Gain enough information to conduct an educated search

These are the captured pragmatic and subjective points of the intake session that we can focus on in a worksheet, a notebook, an iPad.  These are the things that we will begin to craft our search around for each req or pipelined position.  These are the who’s, what’s, why’s, and how’s of the meeting that we will learn to dive deep into. Some of these generic (non-function based) objective questions are:

Functional Questions

• What is the corporate title of the position?
• What is the functional title of the position?
• What is the pay grade or salary range?
• What (if any) is the bonus structure and how is it paid?
• Where is the position located?
• Will there be travel? How often? Where? Why?
• Who will it report to?
• What software will they be using?
• What size team will they manage?
• Who are the people they will manage?

Sourcing Profile Questions

• What level of higher education will be best suited for the role and why? Are there any preferred schools to have come from and why?
• What are the personality traits of a successful person in this role?
• What are the necessary strengths required that cannot be taught?
• What technology should they know inside and out?
• What are the top companies to recruit from?
• What are the top industries to recruit from?
• What are the top schools to have in the background?
• Are there any schools that should be avoided in the sourcing process?
• Are there any “model” candidates in the market that could be considered a solid recruiting profile for the role?
• Are there any candidates that should not be considered?

Position Related Questions

• What will the person primarily do every day?
• What will the person be accountable for?
• What are the basic skills required of someone who would be successful in this role?
• What is the best background for this person to have come from and why?
• What type of organization should this person have come from and why?
• What key stakeholders or internal clients will they be interacting with, how often, and at what level?
• What external clients will they be interacting with, how often and at what level?
• What technology will they be exposed while in the course the job?
• What are some of the key initiatives they will be responsible for and a part of?
• What kind of vertical advancement opportunities are in the role?
• What kinds of lateral opportunities are in the role?
• What kind of senior level exposure will they have in the role?
• What do the three, six, and twelve month wins look like today?
• What are the “other duties” of their job (recruiting team members, training, etc)?
• Why did the last person leave?
• What made them successful or unsuccessful in the role?
• Is there a person or team of people that this person can go to outside of the hiring manager for help, guidance, ideas, or learning?
• What is the hiring manager’s background?

Process Oriented Questions

• What is the interview process like?
• Is the process set or flexible?
• What is the ideal timeframe for the process (resumes, interviews, and offer)?
• What types of reports or updates would you (the hiring manager) like to see until it is being filled?
• What type of collateral intel should be documented or delivered upon while conducting this search?
• What are the ramifications of the role not being filled?
• How long can the role stay open (or the current person stay in the role without being replaced) before those consequences begin to take affect?  Then what happens?
• Are there any prospects that are in consideration already?
• What else should I know about the position, the team, or the individual value proposition?

b)      Build continuous rapport and credibility with the Hiring Manager

 There will come a time during the sourcing and recruiting process where you will need to cash in on some of your credibility chips with the hiring manager in order to make your recruiting function flow well.  If you have the ability to work with your hiring manager over a long period of time, you have opportunities to make deposits in to their credibility bank over the course of many activities and searches.  However, if you work with managers intermittently or are in a shared services model you have to build equity in the credibility bank quickly.  Asking the right questions helps you do this early in the process.

c)       Be the best at filling the search with the right fit

Sourcing and recruiting skills aside, even the best recruiters have a difficult time with a search that has been vetted improperly.  If you don’t know the answers to the questions listed above, you could get stumped by your candidates and may not make a lasting “WOW” impression when you are trying to get them to make a career move with your company.  In order to be the best at filling your search, you must understand what and who you are searching for and then how to convince them to make the transition.  That happens by telling a great story to your candidates and by tying the parts of the job, the manager, and the company to their particular scenario.  Without the answers to most of the above questions you are simply reading off a list of duties to someone that already has a job.  That leaves you at a significant disadvantage to sell any other part of the job other than…comp.  And we’re definitely not selling comp. Are we?

Stay tuned as we dive seep into S3 – Sexy Sourcing Strategies next week…

About Chris
Chris Stanzione is the Vice President and Corporate Talent Acquisition Manager at SunTrust Bank and a frequent speaker at industry events.  Chris is also the founder of RecruitersNation.org, a National Association for recruiters.  After ten years of staffing and executive search experience, Chris transitioned to the corporate side of recruiting with SunTrust in 2010.  Actively engaged in the areas of SMART sourcing and recruiting through Social Media, Talent Community Development and Foundational Development, Chris brings passion and enthusiasm to the industry.  Originally from Washington, D.C. by way of Boulder, Colorado, Chris lives in Atlanta with his wife Amanda and his three children; Zoe, Christopher, and Alex.

Follow Chris on Twitter @cjstanzione

Too many times we don’t get in the room?  Which room is that?  The one where everything is happening.  

For years, recruiting has been a function and not a strategy. The concept of recruiting has been limited to filling reqs and finding bodies.  Some of the bodies were good and some of them were not so good, but nonetheless, finding bodies.   Here’s the problem with that… There’s more we can do.  There’s more that we HAVE to do to remain relevant in the eyes of our stakeholders.

In 2008 I worked with a man who told me over and over again that he believed that there was virtually no known challenge that a company faced that people could not solve.  When you think about it, he was right!  No company can run itself, not company can create a winning strategy without people to execute it and not every person can grow into the superman role that a company may need them to be in order to gain a competitive advantage.  Sometimes you have to find them, recruit them, and bring them into the company from the outside.  Sometimes?  The reality is that it is most of the time.

So if recruiting is so critical and the preservation of our culture and values is so critically important, why are the corporate recruiters still seen as tactical rather than strategic?

Not all of them I assure you, but certainly some.  Certainly most.

If not measured against the tactical piece of the job, wouldn’t most recruiters sit around waxing eloquently about the theory of recruiting?  Some would also take the information from the strategic planning sessions, run with executing the plan, and win. That’s what headhunters do, right?  We win.  We love this industry and all of its quirks and twists and turns because of the challenge and the hunt.  We love to win.

So what does this have to do with getting into a room?

When we in Talent Acquisition, Recruiting, and Sourcing (whatever we are calling ourselves this year) are regulated to staying on the tactical side of the house and are not part of the strategic planning process, we CAN’T win.  We may fill the job, but we can’t win the respect of the key stakeholders and executive leaders in our industry.  When we are confined to the tactical and are not brought into the strategical aspect of our job, we lose.  We need to stay sharp and add value to our craft.

The room we need to break into is the decision room.  This is the room where all of the key conversations happen and all of the key playmakers in the organization converge to figure out who, what, why and how the company grows through….people. 

When IT gets together with Sales to discuss strategy of a new integration, invariably the question of “who” will come up.  Who will implement it, who will drive the process, who will understand the technology integration?  When the question of “who” arises, the answer should have a TA component to it.  Maybe there will be a new hire that is required, maybe there isn’t.  However, Talent Acquisition KNOWS the human side of all of the “who” questions.  We know because we are the experts.  We belong in the room.

SO if you are not in the room yet, get there.  It’s where the magic happens and it’s where you belong.

About Chris
Chris Stanzione is the Vice President and Corporate Talent Acquisition Manager at SunTrust Bank and a frequent speaker at industry events.  Chris is also the founder of RecruitersNation.org, a National Association for recruiters.  After ten years of staffing and executive search experience, Chris transitioned to the corporate side of recruiting with SunTrust in 2010.  Actively engaged in the areas of SMART sourcing and recruiting through Social Media, Talent Community Development and Foundational Development, Chris brings passion and enthusiasm to the industry.  Originally from Washington, D.C. by way of Boulder, Colorado, Chris lives in Atlanta with his wife Amanda and his three children; Zoe, Christopher, and Alex.

All of these impact statements are being used to describe what is desired by most recruiting managers, hiring managers and CFO’s in today’s rebounding economy. More. Faster. Cheaper. Better.

Recruiting has been around for decades and what was true then remains true today, every successful recruiter (and recruiting department) needs a solid foundation. Many a competitive strategy has died upon arrival because the foundation upon which the strategy had been executed was poorly laid. In order to gain a competitive advantage in the rebounding economy, good recruiting groups will have built that solid foundation.

People don’t necessarily enjoy building foundations because they are not sexy. They’re not pretty. They’re, quite frankly, not very fun. Think of it in terms of home building. If you were able to design a house, how much time would you spend picking out the cement and rebar that would go into the foundation? How much time would you spend picking out the cabinets and granite countertops? For most of us, we’d linger on the latter ones a bit more. It’s the same way for most recruiters and recruiting departments. We spend time on the sexy stuff; the social media strategy, the metrics, the time to fill ratios, the CRM’s and ATS’, and we LOVE to talk about LinkedIn. However, without a solid foundation under our feet, the best laid plans crumble under even the slightest amount of stress and pressure. In looking at the fundamentals of a solid recruiting foundation, it is important to look into each aspect of the TA life cycle and get honest about each piece of it.

At the center of the TA life cycle is your team (or yourself). Since you are going to have to be honest with yourself in order to fully build a solid foundation, the first question that you must ask is, “Who is on your team and what do they DO every day?”

Some of your managers (friends, peers, or even team) are asking that EXACT question already.

Once you answer that question, you can begin to look into each of the eight fundamental bricks of your foundation and begin to analyze the life cycle of your recruiting system piece by piece.

1. Job Order Development – How do we rate ourselves in this bucket (really)?
2. Sourcing Strategy – How do we approach sourcing (really)?
3. Corporate Competitive Advantage -Do we know it, understand it, and can we sell it (really)?
4. Sourcing Execution – Are we good at it or just talking about it (really)?
5. Recruiting Ability – Are we good at it or just like everyone else (really)?
6. Hiring Ability – Have we given the managers the right amount of help and coaching? Do we have their buy-in (really)?
7. Onboarding – How well are we at this CRITICAL piece (really)?
8. Systematic Refinements – Do we shut the door on our reqs once their filled or do we inspect them and see how we could’ve done better on a REGULAR basis (really)?

Over the next several weeks, we will explore each of these eight pieces and dig deeper into them in order to fully develop our unsexy, grey concrete, rebar-filled, solid foundation.

I heard that today at church. Not only did I like it, I completely related to it. I need to figure out what this year’s story is going to be… What will God put in my path to grow, thrive, learn, accomplish, love…

What is my story for this year?

What do I want it to be? What is my heart open to? Not just a “to-do” list, but a “to-be” list.

So here is my first “to-be”:

1) Enjoy the journey in growing up…in getting healthy… In recognizing God’s blessings in myself and other people