What Do Executive Search Firms Charge?

Most of the people in my neighborhood have never used an executive search firm, they are doctors, teachers, dentists, college professors, and government workers. They work in organizations where it’s incredibly uncommon to use executive search firms.

Even in Washington’s huge nonprofit and association market, where the use of search firms is prevalent, some organizations choose to engage search firms very rarely. We regularly work with people who have never engaged the services of an executive search firm before. So naturally people have questions about who pays (the employer always pays), when the fee is due (it depends on the search firm), how much the fee will be (it depends on the search firm), what services are delivered (it depends on the search firm) and what replacement guarantee is in place if the placement does not work out (it depend on the search firm).

Let’s start with fees. Search fees vary widely depending on the business model the firm uses.

Retained executive search firms typically charge 25 – 33% of the estimated total annual compensation a candidate is expected to receive in their first year in the position. (Many search firms include first year commissions and bonuses in the estimated total compensation figure, but not the cost of benefits.) Some portion of the fee is always due when the search commences, but the final fee is often dependent on what salary the candidate accepts. So if a search firm charges 30% of annual salary and places someone earning $100k, their search fee will be $30k. But if that same candidate negotiates for a starting salary of $110k, or a salary of $100k with a sign-on bonus of $10k, the search fee would rise to $33k.  Additionally, some firms charge back their expenses to the client, so the total fee can easily rise to 35% of total annual compensation. Staffing Advisors is a retained search firm, but instead of tying our fee to the candidate compensation, we prefer to charge a simple flat fee with no charge back for expenses. We set our fee in advance of the search based on the level of effort we anticipate, and our fees are typically 15% of less of total compensation. Like many retained search firms, Staffing Advisors handles executive searches in a wide variety of functional areas (and not just Accounting, or IT, or HR). Consistent with most retained search firms, we offer a replacement guarantee of a full year if a placement does not work out for any reason.

Contingency search firms do not guarantee to fill positions, but if they do, their fees are often between 20 and 25% of annual compensation. Contingency fees are usually due only after the candidate starts work, so if nobody is hired, no fee is due. Some contingency search firms are even willing to negotiate placement fees, but negotiating lower fees can sometimes result in a lower level of effort being spent on your search and a lower chance of filling it. Contingency based firms tend to specialize in one functional area (like accounting). If a placement does not work out, contingency search firms typically offer replacement guarantees from 30 days up to six months.

Some firms take a hybrid approach of requiring some portion of the fee in advance, and making the remainder contingent upon the placement. They key for you as the buyer is to understand which business model best suits your needs. For more insight into the differences between retained firms and contingency firms, read Contingency vs. Retained Search, Common Fallacies.

Small Employer Recruiting Challenges

As you might expect, LinkedIn does some research on job seeker behavior. And their findings are pretty interesting.

22% of fully-employed people are not open to new opportunities. 16% are not actively looking, but network with friends about jobs. 44% are open to considering jobs, but only when someone contacts them first (typically a recruiter).

Only 18% are applying to job postings.

OK, small employers. If you run ads, you can at least hope to get some good people in that 18% … right?

Well, as I mentioned in my last post on this topic, your job ads aren’t doing as much good as you thought they were. If you are not on Indeed, and if you are not mobile friendly, and if you are not easy to apply to, that 18% gets whittled down pretty fast. Your job ads are only giving you a tiny fraction of the 18% now.

These are just a couple of the slides from a presentation we have on this topic. Contact me if you want to know more.

Reinventing the Executive Search Firm (Part Three: Being Digitally Approachable)

Many years ago, you could judge an organization by the professionalism of their sales force and the quality of their marketing documents (“Hey nice suit, and gosh that’s an impressive brochure!”)

Now, nobody wants a sales call and nobody reads brochures. Buyers do their research, gather recommendations from people they trust, check out the organization online and make their purchase decisions before they ever pick up the phone. (This is true for both candidates and employers).

Google is the new business card … and brochure … and sales force. Your reputation is now your digital reputation–whatever shows on the first page or two of the search results.

An engaging website with great content is expected by everyone. Authentic, online testimonials are expected by most people. A healthy social media community is important to the social media savvy people. A quick Google search should reveal a blog or a book or an interview that reflects well upon you and conveys how you view the world. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt to have something else impressive pop up on page one of the Google results, perhaps an an award or something… 

And what about online reviews? With an empowered consumer, advertising  is giving way to online reviews. Yelp drives significant candidate flow to some staffing firms (and away from others).

Which brings me to executive search.

Why are so many executive search firms still operating with a bare-bones online presence? I can tell you from experience that it takes years to develop enough content to support a robust online community, and whoever gets started earliest often gathers the most attention.

In every sector of the economy, almost every organization is working diligently to make their marketing and communications efforts more social media friendly.

But when you look around, most executive search firms are still woefully behind the curve. Firms that are not gaining experience in social media and firms that have not invested in becoming “digitially approachable” will find themselves falling further and further behind.

You can read Part Two of this series here.

Reinventing the Executive Search Firm (Part One: Location)

Many years ago, outplacement firms had lovely offices where laid-off executives could go to conduct their search. They could use an office to make phone calls, and they had administrative support.

Now, the vast majority of outplacement is done virtually. The job seeker rarely needs to visit the outplacment office. Costs plunged as outplacement firms shed their exepensive real estate and overhead costs. Outplacement services are still in high demand, but costs dropped as the delivery mechanism changed.

Many years ago, if you wanted to buy something, you went to a store. 

Now, Amazon delivers merchandise to your home the same day you order it, and many people are predicting “the end of retail as you know it.” Retailers with expensive overhead costs struggle to compete with Amazon’s pricing. Consumers are still buying plenty of merchandise, but costs dropped as the delivery mechanism changed.

Many years ago, sales reps were the best source of information about products and services. You could actually learn something from them.

Now, by the time most customers are ready to buy, they have already done their research, and often know more than the sales rep. People no longer trust what they are told, they trust what they have learned on their own. Customers still buy, but are no longer willing to ”be sold.” Maintaining a sales force is expensive, and many firms are learning how to attract customers without heavy sales and advertising expenses.

Which brings me to executive search.

Candidates don’t want to go to the offices of an executive search firm, and they don’t expect to learn much from talking to the sales rep (recruiter). They would prefer to be more in control of how they gather information.

Employers still want great candidates, but are reluctant to pay 33% of annual salary if less expensive options were just as effective.  

For both candidates and employers, the personal service from a search firm is still helpful, but the delivery mechanism must change.

What we have done:

Staffing Advisors has conducted over 300 searches without a salesforce, with nobody on commission and without using expensive offce space, and here’s what we’ve found:

Candidates and employers, when given a choice, want our recruiters to schedule virtual interivews rather than take the time and expense of meeting every candidate  face to face. Our retention statistics have proven that properly executed virtual interivews bring just as much rigor (and far less bias) to the hiring process. They also allow us to cast a much wider net for nontraditional candidates.  

Inevitably, the traditional search firm business model will give way to forces that are reshaping outsourcing, retail and every other industry. We welcome the changes.

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.

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.

An Executive Search Firm Leaving Money on the Table? Huh?

Let’s play a word association game.  I’ll say a phrase and you think of the first thing that comes to mind … Ready? 

“Retained Executive Search Firm”

Hey, by any chance did the words  “bargain” or  “great value for the money” come to mind?  No?

The Economist recently published a jaunty little analysis comparing the societal benefit generated by IBM during their first 100 years of existence, vs. the benefits generated by that “flagship of American philanthropy” – the Carnegie Corporation.  And while it was an odd pairing,  it was a fascinating perspective on how corporations can potentially make a larger positive impact on society than even a major philanthropy.   (Key word: Potentially)

In gauging the impact of IBM, the article used a term I had not heard before - ”consumer surplus.” 

“… companies create what is known as “consumer surplus”—the difference between the market price and what a consumer would be willing to pay. This surplus benefits society, not shareholders.”

Southwest Airlines and Costco regularly create a consumer surplus.  Lots of organizations are organized to generate a consumer surplus.  You recognize it as a customer when you get that thrill of feeling smart – knowing you are getting more than what you paid for.    But to create it, a company has to “leave money on the table” and not harvest every last nickel from every last transaction.   Companies must design their process to leave money on the table … on purpose.

Creating consumer surplus is definitely not something that most retained executive search firms are good at.   (If you want to understand why executive search remains so stubbornly expensive, read my post in Fistful of Talent about the two biggest myths in executive search).

Who is the Heart of your Company?

Ellen, our Operations Manager just returned from maternity leave.  We muddled through just fine while she was out, in fact we had one of our busiest months ever.

Ellen did a great job dividing up her workload and cross-training everyone before she left.  We all knew who has responsible for everything and it all got done.  

But while she was out, we were all just a bit disconnected from each other.   Our collective go-to person was missing.  We had all our highly effective people working in isolation, but without the glue.  We had lots of successes, but less job satisfaction.  It was, quite simply, less fun for all of us.

I knew Ellen was valuable to us, but it was really fascinating to discover that so much of her value was completely separate from the tasks she completes.  (You never find that sort of thing on an organization chart or in a job description).

Do you have someone who is the heart of your company?

How Corporate Recruiting Budgets Are Wasted

A big chunk of corporate recruiting budgets are wasted … but not by HR.  It’s the hiring managers who lay flame to it with actions like starting the recruiting process without a clear job definition, stacks of resumes going un-reviewed, and indecision with scheduling interviews.  

But does HR get any credit for allowing hiring managers to be so reckless? Heck no.  The Corporate Executive Board is reporting that fully two thirds of hiring managers are dissatisfied with the influence recruiting has on their organizations.    

If you work as a recruiter in a large organization, you work at a massive disadvantage.  If your hiring managers are unresponsive, unrealistic, or indecisive, you still have a responsibility to fill their job openings.   Sure, over time, smart recruiters can build influence with hiring managers … but they rarely have the clout to say “Sorry Jim, your search is not workable until we resolve these issues.”

As the owner of a retained search firm, I have recruiting advantages that most corporate recruiters would kill for.  First I can improve a process, introduce a new productivity tool, or allocate more recruiting resources whenever I want to. But more importantly, I can choose what searches we accept.  Before a client engages us, and before we accept a search, we spend two hours with all the hiring stakeholders:

• We have time to discuss the year one performance expectations, challenges, and what a top performer would find attractive about the job.
• We can review ideal candidate profiles with the hiring manager, so we know how they will evaluate resumes.
• We can put time on everyone’s calendar for interviews, and everything else we need to move the hiring process along.    That’s right, we pre-schedule interview time, so we don’t have to beg for hiring manager time later in the search. 
• We can align salary expectations with market realities, and make the necessary trade-offs that happen in every hire – but we make them before we start recruiting.

We require the ability to make these critical trade-offs before we start recruiting because we know that faster hiring speed cuts the total cost of recruiting in half.

Taking Action vs. “Thinking”

Almost everyone I know is really, really busy.   It’s hard to find time to think, so  tasks that can be done without much thinking end up getting most of our attention. Things like hiring, that require deep thought,  just slow us down.  So we set them aside for later, saying “I need to think about that some more.” 

It all sounds so … thoughtful and responsible.   

Except, like Winnie the Pooh, “Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?”  

Hiring new people is risky and often a bit unfamiliar to managers.  It’s not “on fire” so in most organizations you can get away with delaying for a good long while.   You can’t really ignore it completely, so you tell yourself  “I’m thinking about the job description.”   or “I’m still thinking about who I want to interview from that stack of resumes.”  or “I’m deciding who to bring back for a final interview.” 

And three months later the job is still vacant.  

As it turns out, you were not “thinking” at all.  You were simply delaying  … and making the problem worse by not taking decisive action.

So when you catch yourself saying “I want to think about that” I suggest you do what we do at Staffing Advisors.   When something is important but unfamiliar, when we might find ourselves procrastinating, we just turn it over to our scheduling mavens – our Project Coordinators.  They grab our Outlook calendars and schedule time to deal with it.  When the Outlook event pops up, then we ”have time” to think about it.  We deal with it, and move on.   This keeps our projects running on schedule, and frees our attention from trying to remember all those things we “have to think about.”   We either handle an issue right now,  decide not to handle it at all, or schedule a specific time in the future to handle it. 

Because long ago, we realized that “thinking about it” is not really doing anything at all.

Why is Executive Search so Expensive?

Once upon a time, twenty years ago, in a backwards country called telephone-land, all your news came from a thing called a newspaper.  And all your mail was delivered by the postal service.  And the telephone (land line of course) was the fastest way to reach someone.   Yes, twenty years ago, finding candidates and presenting job opportunities over the phone was a pretty expensive thing to do - so executive search services had to be expensive.  

But now, if you live in a place I call “the world,” your news comes to you on your computer, most of your mail comes to you on … your computer (or your phone), and, if you still have a land line, your telephone calls disappear into a place called voicemail.

So if all the technology to find and reach candidates has changed, why is executive search still so expensive?

There are two big myths that have prevented executive search firms from using technology to lower the price of executive search.   But you’ll have to read my guest post on Fistful of Talent to find out what they are.

Who is your Staffing Consigliere?

I have a confession.

I’m don’t think of myself as a Headhunter or Executive Search Consultant.  I think of myself as a Staffing Consigliere – like Robert Duvall in the Godfather.  (That’s him … quietly in the background).  

For those of you who don’t run organized crime syndicates … or go to the movies:

A consigliere is “a close, trusted friend and confidant, the mob’s version of an elder statesman. He is devoid of ambition and dispenses disinterested advice.”  (From Wikipedia -  the repository of all human knowledge).

How do I know I’m a consigliere?  Because senior executives call me every day to get perspective on complex, emotionally charged, high stakes problems.   They don’t just call when they need to engage us for a search, they often call me just to talk them down off the ledge. 

This is personal, I don’t do this for strangers, but my clients know they can call me without it turning into a “sales call.”  The cash register doesn’t need to ring to get my attention.  I just solve the problems, and the money takes care of itself in the long run.   

Sometimes it’s a hiring manager who is desperately afraid of making another hiring mistake.  I just talked to someone who had engaged another search firm to help them fill a very specialized job.  They were coming into the interview sequence and looking for a pre-employment assessment tool or anything that will help lower their risk in this high-stakes hiring decision.   In fifteen minutes of conversation we developed a much simpler solution.  (Again, this call was not about one of our searches, it was just an executive calling for advice).

Sometimes the call comes from a senior executive who is considering quitting their job (again, not the people we’ve placed, just colleagues).    They need perspective because the pressure on them is so intense.

• “Is this job salvageable or should I pack it all it and work at the local wine store until I get my next VP gig?” 
• “Is it time I tried my hand as a consultant?” 
• “How would my resume look if I quit now?”
• “How’s the job market looking for someone like me?”
• “Hey, quick question, I had a headhunter call me and they said …. should I believe them?”

Often I will tell people what they don’t want to hear.   “That key executive you are so happy with?  That’s the source of your problems.”  Or “If you quit now, you’ll make yourself far less marketable.”

So who is your consigliere? 

Who do you trust for informed, unbiased advice about the job market, about your own marketability, and for agenda-free advice on how to handle a complex staffing problem?   Because if your vendor relationships are with people who you don’t really trust, or people who just agree with you, or worst of all – people you trust who are uninformed,  then you are not getting full value from your vendors.

Because while many people think work is “strictly business” we both know, it’s personal.

Who’s That Driving Around in Your Employment Brand?

Hiring managers, who is that behind the wheel of your employment brand?  You’ve had 5 internal meetings to discuss the language on your new website, but then you hired a contingent recruiter to work on your job opening after talking to them on the phone for what, half an hour?  

What exactly are they telling people about you, your company, and your open job?

When you engage a search firm, you hand over your reputation as an employer.  They are authorized to represent you (for the duration of their engagement).  It’s like handing over the keys to your car … with your company name emblazoned on the side of it.  They ARE your employment brand while they are behind the wheel.   And remember, they are talking to a lot of people about your company.

So how much control do you have over what they say?  In most cases, none at all.  So yeah, you probably want to know who you are dealing with, what their reputation is, and precisely what they will say about your job opportunity.

At Staffing Advisors, we craft a written marketing message for you, and give you a chance to look it over before we use it.  (You told us that you offer great work/life balance, but really don’t want to want to over-promise that?  Ok, no problem, we’ll delete that sentence…).  We want to be sure the message sets the right tone for skills, performance expectations, cultural fit … everything.  

Then, when we deliver the message, someone with real credibility reaches out.  Kelly Dingee, our Strategic Recruiting Manager has real digital credibility.  She writes well enough to meet Jessica Lee’s demanding standards at Fistful of Talent (no easy feat), she was named one of the Top HR Digital Influencers by John Sumser over at The HR Examiner, and then publicly praised this week by both Kris Dunn and Glenn Cathey - that’s doing pretty well with HR’s digital royalty I’d say. 

So yeah, Kelly looks legit when she reaches out to someone.  And that is reflected in how people respond to her.  (Test this for yourself.  Google the name of whoever you are trusting with your brand.  That’s what smart candidates do before they respond.  So how does it look?) 

We’ve connected with over 25,000 candidates this year (people who were referred to us, or people we reached out to).   I hear about every single person who has had a complaint with the service.  This year, I talked to less than a dozen disappointed people – that’s less than one in two thousand who had a complaint - and remember, 24,900 of those people ended their experience with us by getting a rejection letter.   

I’m not saying you need to hire us to protect preserve and defend your employment brand (although that is an excellent idea), and I’m not bashing how other search firms do business (Relax third-party recruiters, I’ve said for years that the contingency search model is perfectly valid).

 I’m just saying you need to think harder about who you let drive your reputation around.  Because it matters more than you may realize.

The Recession is Over … As a Retention Tool

The recession is over … well, at least as a recruiting and retention tool for employers.  If you are hiring, you can’t miss the pronounced shift in the DC job market.  This year the power is shifting back to the job seekers.   With the national economic news still looking dicey, how can this be happening?   We explain it all in our monthly client newsletter, and you can read it here.

10 Signs Your Search is “Going Off the Rails”

Every week I get at least one call from a frustrated HR executive or hiring manager who has just had a search “go off the rails.”  Disappointed and at their wits end, they call me.   And in about 10 minutes I usually have a pretty good idea what was not working for them … because most searches don’t fail suddenly and for mysterious reasons.  Most searches fail for fairly predictable reasons and they often give quite a few warning signs along the way.

So, help keep your searches on track, here are 10 common warning signs that signal your search is heading for trouble.   Hopefully you won’t have to waste three months on a doomed search, because as you will see, most of these warning signs actually appear very early in the process. 

1. The hiring manager either never defined what they were looking for, or key managers disagreed on what they were looking for.   A sure sign of  trouble is an old, borrowed, or vague job description or one that is mostly a laundry list of qualifications.   (Be sure you know what is expected of new hires and how their performance will be judged before you start recruiting and outreach).
2. The primary “recruiting” method was to post a dull job description on job boards.  Bad ads attract bad candidates - period.  (Be sure you also reach out to the networks of your current employees.  You simply must look beyond job ads if you want to develop a strong candidate pool).
3. After weeks of collecting resumes, nobody has looked at the resumes yet.  (Be responsive, get back to people quickly – good people almost never stay on the job market very long.  Think about the impression you make on candidates with a haphazard, sluggish, indecisive hiring process. )
4. Resumes are screened looking for “the perfect fit” instead of looking broadly at qualifications.   Hiring managers often try to use the resume to make assumptions about the candidates, rather than actually talking to the candidates.  Often hiring managers pre-judge a candidate by their title alone.  (The resume never tells the whole story and most attempts to “save time” by carefully screening resumes … only wastes more time.)
5. Hiring Managers did not pre-schedule interview times, so when a good candidate comes along, it can take weeks to get them scheduled for a first interview.  Then long lags occur between first and second interviews.     (Schedule your hiring process like you would schedule any other project. Cluster your interviews into one week, so you act decisively and move quickly from first interviews into second interviews.)
6. Qualified, interested candidates are ruled out of consideration based on the budgeted salary number, instead of looking at the most qualified candidates, and then determining the fair “market rate” for their skills.   (Ignoring market realities and hiring to fit the budget often leads to hiring the wrong people, chronic turnover and poor productivity – it dooms a search right from the start.   Sometimes smart hiring requires the courage to stand up to internal politics and fight for the budget you need.)
7. Hiring decisions were made based solely on an unstructured interview with a busy executive.  (See what the research says on that – the unstructured interview is only the 9th best way to predict job performance.)
8. At the end of a long, grueling interview sequence there is only one finalist, and you have serious reservations about their ability to do the job.
9. References are not checked, and background checks are not performed before making the job offer.
10. Salary negotiations are left to chance, and not addressed early in the interview sequence.   (Never make an offer without knowing how it might be received).

Consistent, predictable hiring is not only possible – it’s a business imperative.  So if you are settling for anything less, maybe you should stop and look at the staggering cost of an executive mis-hire.