Why Your Job Ads Are not Delivering Results

Lots of organizations make lots of hires from advertising on job boards. I know we do. Yes, we have a world-class candidate research team, but we still find a reasonable number of great candidates from posting on job boards. So relax, this post is not another “death of the job boards” rant.

Most employers waste money on job boards by ignoring the math.  Last month we had an average of 496 people read each job ad we posted, and 30% of them applied (150 on average).  That’s about normal for us, our ad views vary from 500 to 700 per month and our “view to apply” ratio varies between 27% to 34% month to month.

So, assuming you are looking for the same kinds of candidates we are (big assumption) if you are running ads that don’t get as many viewers (readers), or if you are getting a lower than 30% response rate, then you paid the same advertising rate that we did, but harvested less value for your dollar. In other words, you threw away your money by crafting and an ad that did not perform for you.  So let’s look at why our ad might have outperformed yours.

The likely culprits are:

• You ran a title in your ads that is not a common title among your candidates.  (This will result in nobody clicking to view your ad).
• You wrote a dull ad. You probably just posted the job description. (This will result in a low application ratio)
• You required a cover letter and salary history from everyone. (This will result in a low application ratio)
• You asked the candidate to submit a business plan or jump through some other hoop in order to apply. You did this to save yourself time screening resumes, and winnow out the less serious people, but what you really did was make all the busy people (with other options) opt out.
• Online, you make a terrible first impression. You have no online presence of any kind, just a dated website. You ignore LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Candidates cannot get a sense of who you are–you are digitally anonymous. (This will lower the application ratio from the best and most marketable candidates, who have options).
• And finally, you make it really hard to apply. Research shows that 34 percent of candidates who try to apply for jobs don’t complete the application process – simply because the application process is too much of a hassle.

Beware of any barrier you construct between you and the most marketable  candidates.

Why I Don’t Care About Cover Letters

On the first day of a new search I am often handed a giant stack of resumes. “There are the 300 people who applied to our ad” some exhausted, disgusted hiring manager says. “And how many resumes did you like?” I ask sweetly.  ”These three” says the hiring manager.

Often the hiring manager has ruled out anyone who did not follow instructions and provide a cover letter.  ”If they did not care enough to follow instructions, I’m not interested in them.”  But of course 297 of 300 people never even got an acknowledgement to their resume, so asking each of them to spend an hour crafting a good cover letter seems a tad unfair.  And candidates have long since learned that applying to an ad is a long shot at best. So how does it make any sense that each of them should spend an hour crafting a cover letter that will probably never be read? Basic fairness dictates that you ask for a writing sample only after you are interested in them.

I’m astonished how many companies insist that candidates demonstrate the highest standards of interview decorum, while the employer casually disregards their obligation to do the same.

If you want better candidates, it’s best to remove the barriers to applying.

When we reach out to recruit candidates who are not currently looking, all we ask is for them to schedule a phone call with us – easy peasy.

And when we run ads we don’t ask for a cover letter. Heck, we don’t even require people to apply online (which takes two minutes on our site) – they can simply click a button and email us their resume. Does that create a bit more work for us to upload resumes for people? Yes. Do we have to sent out a few more acknowledgement and rejection letters? Sure. Do we have to plow through a few more bad resumes? You bet. But our ads draw far more highly qualified people than the employers who make candidates jump through hoops.

Which is kind of the whole point of advertising.

Dealing with a Work Avalanche

Are you feeling overworked and understaffed right now? You’re not alone. Under-staffing is common during this stage of the business cycle. Some people think it is a long-term trend–calling it the “Job Squeeze.” Perhaps it is. I do know that work pressure has been building quietly for years in many organizations–like snow falling on mountaintops. And when something small triggers it, you are suddenly faced with a “work avalanche.”

Here is how work avalanches are created: When confidence is low, your organization responds to good news differently. You try to grow without corresponding staff growth. Headcount starts to trail revenue growth, and then falls further and further behind. Good news for the organization actually becomes bad news for the team. They were overworked before, and “good news” just makes it worse. Every new contract, new client, and new project just makes it harder to keep up.

How do you know you waited too long to add staff? Your best people are getting sick more often. You are seeing more preventable mistakes being made. Small issues cause tempers to flare, people are less tolerant of each other. They take things personally. Work just seems less fun. And eventually your best people burn out, give up, or quit–triggering an avalanche of work on the remaining team members.

Here’s the thing. Often, when you force your team to “do more with less” they are not doing more. They are making trades. They are trading long-term thinking for short term thinking. They trade planning time for reaction time. They stop making deposits into the relationship bank, and start making withdrawals–using up the goodwill they’ve built over many years. And the cost of that short term focus builds up… like snow building up on a mountain. Eventually the bill comes due in a work avalanche.

Here is what to do about it: When your hiring fails to keep pace with your growth, you can no longer afford to drag out the hiring process. But when confidence is low, that is exactly what happens. “Let’s try it first on our own, before we put it out to a search firm.”  Three months later the team is exhausted, frustrated, and at wit’s end. In your cautious desire to save money, you not only lost time and focus, you created even more risk–from people quitting.

Newsflash: When you are chronically understaffed, nobody on your team has the time or energy to do hiring on their own. When you are running from a work avalanche, you don’t want to make your backpack heavier.

If your business strategy requires you to keep staffing levels lean, you must be prepared to hire very quickly when you get good news. Either beef up your internal recruiting capabilities, have qualified contract workers on speed dial, or be ready to call in search firms the instant you know you need help.

Because standing still is not a good strategy when an avalanche  is bearing down on you.

Why Your January Hiring Plan will Work … in April

It’s mid-December. If you want to hire people in January, but you have not yet finalized your job description and recruiting strategy, you will probably succeed … in April.

It’s nothing personal, I’m confident that you are above average in every way. It’s just that most employers underestimate the importance of December planning and overestimate their ability to make things happen in early January. When they say  ”I plan to hire in January”  they really mean they will “finalize their plans for hiring” in January. Big difference. Finishing the planning in December means you can actually start recruiting on January second. ”Finalizing your plans for hiring in January” means that  you will post your ads (or start your recruiting) in late January. Then stack up some resumes and begin the interviews in late February, and then, by the time references are checked and notice is given, maybe your new hire will start work in April. And with a bit of luck, they should begin to be productive about the time your summer vacation rolls around.

I know. You are different. That kind of delay is not your intent. But I’ve seen it every year for the 25 years I’ve been in the search business, so yeah, I’m pretty confident that I’m right about this.

You see, December is a wonderful time of year…to put off work until January. You can hear the sweet, sweet lure of procrastination it in every work conversation. “We’ll get on that right after the holidays” and “Let’s set a meeting to tackle that in early January.”  Right now, it feels like you are just delaying by a week or two … it’s no big deal, right?

Except recruiting does not work that way. Not in January. January is different from every other month of the year in recruiting. It is the only month you can get a significant competitive advantage over everyone else. If you do your planning in December, and start recruiting aggressively on January 2nd, you can make your job offers before you have any serious competition from other firms. But when you miss that window, everything takes longer. And the only way to get the January advantage is by finalizing your recruiting plans in December.

Think about it: Your ideal future employees are just like your current employees. Busy, hardworking, stressed-out and looking for a break. And they will take break over the holidays. On a long drive they will reflect on what they want from their careers. Over eggnog they will make New Years Resolutions to go find it. And they will be primed, refreshed, and ready to be recruited in very early January.

But you won’t be recruiting in early January–you’ll be in meetings. Meetings to hammer out the dull job description with HR, waiting for your boss to sign off on the hiring requisition, checking in with some other department who wanted to “get with you” to review how their restructuring that might affect this position, and oh yeah, the CFO had a quick question about how this hire will fit in your budget.

So you’ll start recruiting in February, right when everyone else is recruiting. When recruiting takes longer because it is one of the most competitive recruiting months of the year. Hey good luck with that.

For want of a December meeting the job spec was not done.
For want of a job spec the recruiting was not done.
For want of recruiting the new hire was not found.
For want of a new hire your goals were not met.
For want of results your summer vacation was ruined.
And all for the want of a December meeting.

Sometimes Quitting is the Key to Recruiting Success

Yup, it’s true. Sometimes giving up quickly is the key to recruiting success.

Full disclosure, I’m a Viking, and it’s been (fairly) observed that “we have stubbornness issues.” So quitting does not come naturally to me, but it can be useful.

This week we had a recruiting strategy that generated some truly terrific candidates in the first few days. The problem was that the first twelve people we spoke to were above the salary target our client wanted to pay. So we killed that outreach strategy, revamped the target candidate profile and outreach messaging, and now we are talking to some less experienced people who are happy to work for the target salary. The first batch of expensive candidates fit our mental picture of what the client wanted. But the second batch will actually have a shot at getting the job.

In another search we had a recruiting strategy we thought was perfect. Except in the first three days, none of our target candidates were interested.  None. So we quit. We revamped the message on day three, since clearly we missed the target. Initially we were concerned that our outreach strategy would generate too many candidates. Boy we were wrong–we got less than a tenth of the response we expected.

Most recruiting strategies require patience and perseverance. You find good people one at a time. Some of the best candidates need to be “courted” over a long period of time and don’t respond to your recruiting message at first. They might take several contacts to become interested. Slow and steady recruiting is fine, so if good people are gradually responding to your approach, stick with it.

But when nobody responds to your recruiting strategy, or when everyone who responds to your outreach is not the right profile…then you need to quit and try something else. When nobody appropriate is responding, then you are just being stubborn to continue on the same path. Quit. Admit your brilliant strategy had “some room for improvement” and pivot to a new one.

So here is the real question.  How quickly do you admit it’s time to try a different approach? I suggest you admit it in the very first week, sometimes you can tell in 3 days. For example, if you are running a job ad, look at your ad response in the first three days. If there are not good people to talk to in that pool, your ad did not work. Really.

Waiting and hoping it will get better is not a useful recruiting strategy.

How to Recruit When the Hiring Manager has Champagne Tastes on a Beer Budget

I often hear recruiters complain about hiring managers with “unrealistic” expectations. I don’t hire those recruiters because I have no patience for that kind of complaining–it solves nothing. Recruiters are strategic advisors to, not victims of, the hiring manager. As recruiters our job is to advise managers of the cost of their choices, and their job is to decide how they would like to proceed. Whining and complaining has no place in that conversation.

When a hiring manager has really high standards there is often a business imperative for that need. Once we understand that need, their expectation suddenly seems reasonable. When a hiring manager insists on finding candidates with an uncommon set of attributes, their search will simply cost a bit more or take a bit longer. The manager’s request is not unreasonable–it is simply a trade-off. We tell the manager “This kind of skills can be found quickly and inexpensively, but that set of skills takes longer, costs more and is less predictable. Which approach would you prefer?”  The hiring manager simply has a choice. (Of course, it takes some market knowledge to be able to give this advice.)

Perhaps the most common recruiting trade-off is salary–the manager with “champagne tastes on a beer budget.” When they say “I need a superstar” but their salary budget is just average, or when they say “I want someone good” but their salary budget is below average … then what?

When it comes to salary trade-offs, I’ve learned that “showing” works far better than “telling.” When a manager’s expectations are not aligned with job market realities, I don’t spend much time telling them about salary surveys–it’s far more effective to show them candidates. They need to see what they get for their money. “Here is a superstar who is 20% above your target salary. And here is someone right within the target salary, but they lack this critical skill you wanted. And here is someone below the target salary, but you will need to invest a lot of your time to bring them up to speed.”  Even the most stubborn managers become reasonable when they can see candidates side-by-side. “Showing” gives them actionable information. Just talking about salary ranges never brings that level of clarity.

When a recruiter is complaining, it’s often because they allowed themselves to get boxed in to fighting against job market realities. Recruiters don’t define the job market–they navigate within it. If you consistently pay below the market rate, you’ll probably have high turnover. If you demand superstar performance levels, you’ll probably need to pay a premium rate. If you demand uncommon skills, your searches will require more time and effort. That’s just reality.

A recruiter’s job is to be the expert on job market realities. The hiring manager’s job is to drive business outcomes. When a recruiter defers to the hiring manager’s (often outdated) perception of the market, they cause the very problems that they later complain about.

For more on this topic, see:
Are you Hiring to Fit the Budget or Hiring to Fit the Job?

and

How Corporate Recruiting Budgets are Wasted

Is November a Good Time to be Recruiting?

We’re getting a lot of calls right now from potential new clients who have been recruiting on their own since the summertime. In past years, we got those calls in mid-September, then as the economy worsened, we got the calls in October. But this year, we’re getting them in November. It’s an economic barometer–I call it the “How long can you suffer until you ask for help?” indicator.

But in November, when people call, they often ask me a question. ”Is this a good time to be recruiting?” People are worried that they frittered away the great recruiting months of September and October.

Our ability to get the attention of great candidates varies depending on the time of year. (We can always find someone who is willing to talk with us.) So the real question is “How long will it take to put together a robust slate of highly qualified candidates?” And the holiday season adds some delays and complexities to that. It brings to mind a quote attributed to General Omar Bradley:

“Amateurs talk about strategy, dilettantes talk about tactics, and professionals talk about logistics”

So on to the logistics. On the 2011 calendar, there are 4 beautiful weeks of recruiting left–from November 14th to the 18th, and from November 28th through December 16th.  Outside of that, you will have a very difficult time attracting the attention of currently employed people.

So if you really want to get someone on board in early January, don’t dabble with just running ads and hoping for luck. This is the time to aggressively reach out, and to move quickly to interview anyone with potential. The recruiting window is closing fast.

But if something happens, and you end up frittering away the next few weeks, promise yourself that you will stop suffering this year. Make your plans in mid-December to be recruiting heavily in early January–which is the best time to recruit all year. At least then you can get someone started in mid-February.

“The Rare Find” is a Must Read for Hiring Managers

If you want to lock in a long-term competitive advantage for your organization, be among the first to read and apply the lessons of George Anders new book “The Rare Find:  Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else.”

Drawing on vivid examples from the U.S. Army Special Forces, Teach for America, Facebook, Hollywood, and professional sports, he shows how you can see what everyone else is missing in their hiring.

This is no vanity book. He’s not pitching his hiring system, or trying to sell you consulting services. Even better, he is not advocating that you “just do your hiring like we did at GE in the 1980′s.”

No, this book is the real deal.  Space does not permit me to cover all my favorite quotes, but here are a few:

“American social norms call for job candidates to tell a story of uninterrupted success. Previous experiences are burnished until they all sound like triumphs. Traditional resumes are set up so that resilience becomes invisible. That’s a horribly unfortunate distortion. At some point fate slams all of us to the ground. What happens next determines who we become. Some people are so bitter or dispirited they never fully recover. Others do whatever it takes to bounce back. The more you can learn about how people handle adversity, the more astutely you can judge them.”

or:

“…we’re in the midst of an enormous economic and technological upheaval that is redefining what it means to be enduringly successful. Long track records my be irrelevant or impossible to find in fields that are taking shape so fast the everyone is a newcomer. Competence is not enough anymore. The difference between growth and stagnation comes down to finding people with bold, fresh approaches, who can create opportunities that no one else saw before. That’s true not just in Silicon Valley, Hollywood or Wall Street; it’s the new norm in almost every field.”

From how to define what kind of person you are looking for, to how you should interview candidates, this book covers the landscape of talent spotting. I found no evidence of vague, sloppy platitudes or lazy thinking. For example:

“Take something as universal … as ‘work ethic.’ That’s a cherished value at almost any top tier organization (but) everyone’s definition of ‘work ethic’ calls for slightly different virtues. Some jobs call for people who can summon up extraordinary stamina and ingenuity in a crisis. Others require orderly souls who are totally comfortable with the tireless preparation for a challenge that may be months or years away. The work ethics of a great doctor and a great football player are not the same. Solving the talent puzzle means looking for exactly the right ethos that’s vital for a particular job–rather than trying to match candidates to a along list of universal virtues that might or might not be especially relevant.”

I Don’t Know How You Do it Alone

Seriously, how do you do all that recruiting by yourself?

I know, recruiting is typically a solo gig–rarely do you see two experienced recruiters working together on the same search. But I think working solo is a mistake for tough searches. It creates problems and causes delays that could be avoided.

Some of our clients have one person handling every aspect of HR, including recruiting. In larger firms, one recruiter is usually dedicated to handling the needs of a defined group of hiring managers as in “I’ll handle this department, you take that department.” So even when you are part of a larger team, you are still the only one tasked with each search. Really sophisticated recruiting functions might have dedicated candidate researchers (sourcers), but almost never do you see two skilled recruiters working in tandem. And I think that’s unfortunate. As one of my Project Managers observed “The only time we get into trouble is when we think we know what we are doing.”

In a tough search, you need someone to challenge your assumptions and highlight risk factors you might be ignoring. When you are tired, and think you are within sight of the finish line, someone needs to ask “What happens if your only top candidate takes a counter-offer from her current employer?”

Because we work with small organizations, our work is customized–we don’t know what recruiting resources will be needed until we’ve met with the hiring manager. We know from experience that the solution to every recruiting challenge is not to simply present more candidates. There are four common problem areas in recruiting, and three of the them are not about finding more candidates. But when you are busy, and working solo, it’s easier to just “do more of the same.”

We’re process geeks so we have lots of metrics to ensure we stay on track, but when problems arise, the solution is not always obvious. It takes a discussion to fix it. When we’re one week into the search and people are being unresponsive to our outreach, do we need to tweak the message, change who are are reaching out to, or simply double the number of people we contact? If job advertising is not attracting the right candidates, do we change the message, change the title, or simply post the ad somewhere else? To write compelling ad copy, we find it always takes at least 2 people and a third person to proofread it…and after all that, we still tweak most messages at least once during the course of the search.

What happens when the recruiting outreach message is working, and the target candidates are responding, but everyone is above the target salary range? Do we go back and have a discussion with the hiring manager? Or do we tweak the message, alter the title, and go find other people to recruit?  Or do we do all of the above?

Every solution takes serious thought, time, and resources. And if you are working solo on multiple searches, how do you find the time and energy to do all that work, right when it needs to be done? We find it challenging and we only work on a limited number of searches. Our team has been working together for years. We have specialists in defining jobs, writing ad copy, candidate sourcing, interviewing, and hiring decision support.  Our specialists are supported in a 1:1 ratio by a support team that handles ad posting, candidate scheduling, background checking and a variety of other tasks. We have advanced IT systems and 24/7 support. And even with a team of specialists working together, we are still challenged every single day.

So, like I said, I don’t know how you do it alone.

Is Recruiting About Being Exciting … or Being Safe?

People often think of recruiting in terms of old-school sales. You know the drill… pitch the candidate on an exciting opportunity, talk the client into interviewing them, negotiate the salary, and close the deal. But the Recruiting-Is-Selling philosophy is increasingly out of step with the times we’re in right now.

Sales excitement just sounds like more noise. To have an intelligent conversation about considering a new career opportunity, candidates first need to feel safe–which means talking to someone without a sales agenda. To make an intelligent hiring decision, managers also need to feel safe–which means talking to an experienced tour guide who can help them better understand the job market, think through their options and weigh the pros and cons of different choices.

Amping up the excitement, or introducing a sales agenda (which always makes people defensive) is just the wrong solution for our disturbing and turbulent times. Economist Arnold Kling explains the current employment uncertainty in five short sentences (courtesy of The Atlantic): 

The paradox is this. A job seeker is looking for a well-defined job. But the trend seems to be that if a job can be defined, it can be automated or outsourced . . . The marginal product of people who need well-defined jobs is declining. The marginal product of people who can thrive in less structured environments is increasing.

Top performers have always delivered more results (marginal product) than average performers, but that gap is widening fast in the current economy. Meanwhile, uncertainty is increasing for everyone.

Now I’m not arguing that being dull is the solution–excitement does have its place. Top performers want exciting jobs where they can make an impact … but to even begin to consider taking a new job, people first need a safe place to have a conversation about it.

The latest recruiting technology will always gather the headlines, but the reality is that your recruiting results will increasingly depend on your ability to create an environment where both hiring managers and candidates can have a safe, intelligent conversation, free from any sales agenda.

When is a Recruiting Problem Not a Recruiting Problem?

Q: When is a tough recruiting problem not a recruiting problem?

A: Most of the time.

I recently wrote a post about different kinds of recruiting problems. But the more I thought about it, I realized that the extreme end of each issue was not a recruiting issue at all.

Retention problems: If you have a bad manager who drives all your people away, so you are always short-staffed and constantly hiring–while it may look like a recruiting problem, it’s really a management problem that is causing the retention problem. Fix the management problem and the other problems fade away.

Hiring profile problems: When managers have a really hard time defining what they are looking for in a new hire, you don’t have a recruiting problem, but you probably do have a business strategy problem. Once your business strategy is clear, and your performance expectations spelled out, you will know exactly what kind of people you are looking for.

Sourcing problem: Everyone wants to hire top performers, but not everyone can attract them. If your business plan requires that you hire the very top echelon of people, but your salary budget can’t support that, or if your job is simply not attractive to the top echelon–you don’t have a sourcing problem, you have a flaw in your business model. Similarly, if only geniuses can deliver your service, or make sales for you–you have a business strategy problem, not a recruiting problem.

For all the bad rap that internal HR departments get, I still see a lot of organizational problems flowing downhill into the HR department being called “recruiting problems.” Ann Bares follows this same line of reasoning in her recent post “Why Can’t HR Solve the Performance Management Puzzle?” Don’t miss it.

What Kind of Recruiting Problem Do You Have?

Not all recruiting problems are created equal. Sometimes you can just run ads and hire good people. Other times you might engage a search firm to call everyone in their database. Few hiring managers venture beyond those two stark choices: either tell HR to run an ad, or tell a headhunter to go sell your job to people in their Rolodex. But of course, these two fine solutions don’t resolve most recruiting problems. Which explains why very few hiring managers have a team full of top performers (even after they engage search firms). 

Perhaps if you could better clarify your exact recruiting problem, you could solve it more decisively. And, after gathering data from hundreds of our completed executive searches, that’s exactly what we did. Now, before we accept any new search, we carefully assess how much intensity it will require in 4 common problem areas: Definition, Sourcing, Selection, and Decision Support

Although each of these problem areas require very different skills and levels of intensive effort, I notice that nobody ever asks me about three of them.  Instead, new clients only ask me about our candidate sourcing (recruiting) capabilities. I’m while I am happy to answer that we have superb sourcing capabilities, I also know that sourcing is only part of the solution. So let’s get into all four of the most common kinds of recruiting problems, and what you can do about them.

Definition intensity:  The owner of a small company needed more sales. He could not figure out how to get them, despite having worked in his industry for many years. His solution? Hire some salespeople to beat the streets, and let them figure it out. (He spent an hour trying to convince me what a great opportunity it was for a salesperson to come work for him). Like a medieval alchemist, he was trying to turn his sales problem into a recruiting problem. Except recruiting can’t solve a problem you cannot define.  This is true for any newly created role, or for the leader of any new initiative, but it is epidemic in sales hiring (just read this).

The intensity of defining job requirements might be as quick and easy as “Find me another person with attributes like Sally” or might be as complex and intensive as asking ”Are we looking for someone to execute a strategy that already works, or are we looking for someone to discover a strategy that works?”  If you are hiring a search firm for their great Rolodex, but what you really have is a definition problem, all their sourcing cannot help you figure out who will be successful in the job.

Sourcing intensity:  One of the most grueling searches we ever conducted was for a nonprofit manager who decided that the only way she could meet her business objectives within her budget was to create a job that combined two fairly common skills that are almost never found together in nature. Kind of like looking for someone who is both a supermodel and a construction worker – theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. (Yes, I still kick myself for accepting this search). The problem was clearly defined, the skills desired were crystal clear, but the candidate sourcing intensity it required was off the charts. Not even 1% of the qualified people we contacted had any interest in the job as it was defined.  

Sourcing intensity comes in two forms: it is either hard to find people with the skills you desire, or else the people you seek are plentiful, but just not that receptive to your job. Just because you can define what you want, and find people who can do it, there is no guarantee anyone actually wants your job. When you don’t have a compelling story to tell, you will lay flame to a lot of sourcing time. Is your location terrible, pay low, or job unappealing in some way? Are you looking for a left-handed, bi-lingual, Russian nuclear physicist? Does your ideal candidate receive more than 2 calls a week from search firms? Then your level of sourcing intensity will be equal to 10 other searches. And remember, if you hire a search firm to flatter, cajole, and sweet talk these rare, elusive, or high-maintenance people into your firm – you better know what was promised to accomplish that … and you will need an equally intensive plan to retain them. 

Selection intensity: Once you have people interested in talking with you, how hard is it to decide who to spend your precious time with? In lower level positions, you need to know how to quickly winnow down hundreds of resumes without overlooking the “diamonds in the rough,” but in executive searches, you need a skilled interviewer to hone in on cultural fit, and to assess skills and strategic thinking. Very different skills.

To present a slate of 6 qualified candidates, sometimes we have to talk to 30 people.  Sometimes it’s just 12 people – but the conversations might last an hour and half each. We’ve found that the interviewing skill required and the interview time needed varies widely from search to search.

Here is a test of selection intensity: How keenly does your recruiter listen to you? Do they really understand what you are trying to achieve by making this hire? If your recruiter is better at talking than listening, or lacks business acumen, then this aspect of your search is probably being done only superficially. In fact, your search might be just a mindless hunt for the perfect resume. Without the proper selection intensity, you will almost certainly overlook great “out of the box” candidates and instead waste time talking with people who have a nice resume but are not a good fit. 

Decision Support intensity: Searches often fail right at the finish line. Once you have a good candidate sitting in front of you for the interview, how hard will it be to forge a consensus among all the decision makers? Do you have a dysfunctional board or executive team? Is everyone rowing in the same direction, or are there stark differences in approach between key executives? Do you have a hiring manager who is so risk averse that they find almost any excuse not to hire?

If you cannot make a hiring decision in a timely manner, all of your other efforts might be in vain. Good candidates are repelled by internal political battles, and they certainly don’t wait around for indecisive managers. They (correctly) ask “If being hired is this haphazard and slow, am I really a good fit? And “If I am a good fit but decision-making is this slow, how excruciating will it be to work for them?”

So once you have a better definition of your recruiting problem what do you do next?

• If your challenge is Definition, be sure you are working with someone who is thorough in understanding the job before they begin recruiting. You are at risk if all you had was a 15 minute phone call with the recruiter, or if they never “pushed back” or challenged your thinking.
• If your challenge is Sourcing, be sure you understand how compelling your job will be to candidates.  Most hiring managers overrate how attractive their job is relative to other opportunities in the market.
• If your challenge is Selection, be sure you have confidence in the person who is pre-screening candidates for you.  Challenge their thinking to be sure they are looking at candidates the same way you will.
• If your challenge is Decision Support, be sure you are working with someone who has a process to resolve those differences.  Winging it and hoping for the best is not a strategy.

What’s the Salary Range for that Position?

When we’re recruiting someone, we’re often asked the salary range for the position, but we never disclose it.  Candidates think that knowing the salary range will help them decide if an opportunity is worth pursuing.  In fact the opposite is true.   Whether you are above, below or in the middle of the salary range, talking about it just gets in the way.

Talking about salary up front is like specifying the requirements for your engagement ring on a first date – it gets in the way of the real priority – deciding if you should be in a relationship.

Our clients are small to midsize organizations, and our searches are often for one-of-a-kind, mission-critical positions.   So in that world, salary ranges are rarely set in stone, they are simply a budget guideline, a best guess.  Even formal salary surveys are only an approximation – you never really know the true market rate until you have interviewed at least 3 or 4 people who meet all the qualifications for the job.    

As a search firm, finding perfect candidates is our priority, and perfect candidates are not always within the target salary range.  To rule out great people before talking with them – based on salary alone – would be a disservice to our clients.  We’ve often seen clients pay above their target salary range to attract someone with unique skills.  In the long run, hiring and retaining high performers is the only thing that matters.  And talking about salary too early in the hiring process prizes budget conformity over job performance.  (Full disclosure, we operate on a pre-arranged flat fee basis, so this is not a self-serving argument to raise our search fees – we’re paid the same regardless of final salary).

OK, so we’ve discussed the problem with people who are ABOVE  the stated salary range, but what about people who have a salary BELOW the target range.  That’s just as big a problem.

What happens when I tell a relatively junior candidate who is currently earning $90k that this position has a target salary range of $100k – $125k?     They proceed to ignore all the other variables that go into deciding if this is the right job, they ignore all the factors the employer uses to set a salary and they lock in on the size of the engagment ring salary range, like it’s the only thing that matters.  Big mistake.  The candidate thinks “If they really like me, they will pay me at the top of the range …  at least $120k.”   Without ever discussing whether $120k is realistic, given their actual skills, they begin to fantasize about how to spend the extra thirty grand.   

But salaries are not determined by the target range, they are determined by market rate – what other people with similar skills are earning.   The candidate never knows who they are competing with for the job.  Our $90k junior candidate does not know about:

• The industry guru who currently earns $130k but would happily accept $125K for a better commute. 
• The strong senior person who could hit the ground running (with no training and little supervision) and would happily accept the job at $115k
• The even more junior person who is earning $85k but is hungry to prove themselves and would be thrilled with a salary of $90k.     

If I share a salary range up front, and then later offer my $90k candidate the job – at a very reasonable $105K, with tons of room for future salary growth – they feel like they just took a $15k pay CUT (from their fantasy $120k) instead of receiving a $15K pay RAISE from their actual $90k salary.  Instead of being happy, they are disappointed, and the employment relationship is poisoned before it even started.

Yeah, you can ask all you want, but we’re not sharing that salary range with anyone.

Respecting the Candidate

Imagine you are interviewing a senior executive candidate for a position with your organization.   The candidate is an expert in her field, and the job market is good, so you expect she will receive job offers from other companies.  Naturally you are keen not to offend her, but you also want to be sure she is the right fit.  So how can you appropriately show respect for her, while still conducting a rigorous and thorough interview process? 

We get this question all the time.  Basically “How far can we push, or how much can we ask without being obnoxious or offensive?”

So let’s review what is and what is not respectful in the eyes of the most sought-after candidates:

• RESPECT:  Asking lots of tough interview questions  (and smart follow-up questions) is perfectly respectful.  Being rigorous in your selection process is fundamentally respectful.  Anything you do to reduce your hiring risk (and their corresponding risk of taking the wrong job) is respectful.  So go ahead and be demanding – you both benefit.
• DISRESPECT:  A poorly written, vague job description is disrespectful, it shows you did not care enough to outline what was expected of the person – you have shown no respect for the importance of the work.  Think hard about your expectations before you start recruiting.
• RESPECT:  A thorough interview sequence with multiple people is perfectly respectful, as long as you do not request that the candidate visit your office more than 3 times.  A group interview, or individual meetings with 5 or 10 people is fine, but don’t ask the candidate to come to your office more than 2 or 3 times.  And it is polite to estimate how long the interviews will be expected to last - that shows respect for their time. 
• DISRESPECT:  A disorganized, unplanned interview sequence is disrespectful.      Rescheduling interview times, making the candidate wait in the lobby, forgetting to include a key decision maker, and adding interview steps at the last minute … all these common occurrences are incredibly disrespectful.   Candidates notice when you don’t have your act together.  They may politely endure it, but you have wasted an easy opportunity to look good by simply scheduling intelligently.
• RESPECT:  Work sample testing is perfectly fine, as long as you do not ask them to spend more than a few hours at home on the assignment.  And I urge you to never ask something of the candidate prior to the first interview.  (Yes, I’ve heard stories of firms that make applying for a job difficult, but I do not recommend this practice.  It drives away too many good people who are simply too busy to play the game, and it is inconsistent with starting a conversation with those people you are actively recruiting).   You can ask more of someone when they know they are one of 3 finalists for a position.  When presented properly, almost nobody will take offense at work sample testing.
• DISRESPECT:  Letting weeks go by in between steps is disrespectful.   Waiting for several days to hear back from an employer after an interview does not show respect for the candidate.   Be decisive, let them know where they stand.
• DISRESPECT:  Failure to acknowledge the person’s time investment is disrespectful.  From the beginning, a simple “thank you for your resume, here is our hiring timeline” email is the minimum for all candidates who apply.  At the end, a simple “thank you the position has been filled” is enough.  And for the few people who actually interview, a more personal update is appropriate.  To do alny less is disrespectful.

In my experience people worry far too much about fundamentally respectful things like asking tough questions, including lots of people in the interview sequence and doing smart work sample testing.  Conversely, people worry far too little about actually disrespectful things like allowing vague performance expectations, running a sloppy interview sequence, and not providing candidates information about where they stand in the process.

Authenticity

Matt Duren did a great presentation for a small group I facilitate - The Staffing Alliance of Maryland Employers (Project SAME).   The topic was “How to Build a Social Recruiting Strategy on a Budget.”    Matt understands how to work with a budget.  He works for a big, well-known, well-run, cost-conscious company (see his LinkedIn profile if you want to know which one).  Matt and his colleagues have done some great things.

What really impressed me about their social recruiting strategy was how authentic they were.  They started the entire initiative by looking at their employment brand – asking “who are we to our employees?”   They did not take the bland “we care about people” pablum that is locked securely inside picture frames on every office wall.  They did not even use their well known consumer brand.  Instead they really looked at what makes them attractive to their current and future employees.   They pulled together a cross-disciplinary team of people and distilled down dozens of factors into a handful that really mattered – they looked hard at what promise they could keep to their candidates.  Then they worked really dligently to convey that information as accurately as possible using social media.  Yes, they used some very interesting tools, yes they are way ahead of other employers, and of course after Matt finished his (excellent) presentation everyone was asking questions like:

• “How many people did you end up hiring as a result of the initiative?”
• “What was your return on the investment in social recruiting?”
• “What did your CEO have to say about it?”

But what was most interesting was not the metrics or the ROI.  What was really interesting was what he said the senior executives cared about:

• Did we attract and hire the very best people we could?
• Did people join the company for the right reasons?
• Did the new employees get what they expected when they arrived?

Authenticity.   Telling the right story – keeping promises – that’s the heart and soul of social media recruiting.  If you don’t get that part right, nothing else you do matters.