I’ve discovered a few critical recruiting principles over the past 30 years placing hundreds of top performers in staff, management, and executive positions. Here’s a quick summary of Lou’s Recruiting Rules:

1. Maintain Applicant Control. Stay the buyer from first contact to offer extension and acceptance. When you start selling, you lose. This is the essence of applicant control. Most recruiters don’t have a clue as to what this means. They talk too much, don’t know how to use questions to uncover the candidate’s motivating needs, they over-sell, and they under-listen.
2. Sell the Next Step, Not the Job. Don’t start your initial discussion with a complete description of the job and why it’s wonderful. This is an unsophisticated sales tactics. As a result, most top candidates will say they’re not interested. Instead, ask the candidate if she’d be interested in talking a few minutes about a possible career opportunity. Be vague about the title and get the candidate to describe a little of her background. Withholding information is a good way to maintain applicant control and keep the process moving along.  
3. Define the Job, Not the Person. Traditional job descriptions that emphasize skills, experiences, background, and academics are not job descriptions; they’re people descriptions. A job description describes in some detail exactly what a person will be doing, not the skills a person needs to have. We call this type of job description a performance profile. It lists the primary 6-8 performance objectives the person is expected to achieve during the first year. 
4. Don’t Use Wal-Mart Advertising to Attract Tiffany Customers. Boring advertising only attracts average candidates. The best candidates with multiple opportunities won’t apply to a job that leads off with a list of skills, some pie-in-the-sky overview of your glorious company, or a req number. Instead, have a unique title and describe some of the important projects the candidate would be focusing on.
5. Follow the 80/20 Rule when Recruiting Passive Candidates. Referred and pre-qualified candidates are 25 TIMES MORE VALUABLE than a name or resume you found using some clever Boolean search string. First, consider that the callback rate of a referred person is at least 2-3 times greater than that of a cold call. Second, recognize that the likelihood that a cold-called candidate is qualified, appropriate, and interested in your job is at best a one-in-ten shot. The secret for success in recruiting passive candidates is to spend 80% of your time calling pre-qualified people who have been referred to you by another strong person.
6. Measure 1st Impression at the End of the Interview. More hiring mistakes take place in the first 30 minutes of the interview than at any other time. People who make good first impressions tend to be asked easier questions, with the interviewer looking for facts to prove the candidate is qualified. People with weaker first impressions are initially assumed to be incompetent or a bad fit, with the interviewer asking tougher questions looking for facts to prove the candidate is not qualified. It’s always best to wait 30 minutes before making any yes/no assessments, using this time to collect objective evidence.
7. Use the One-Question Performance-based Interview to Recruit and Close. For me, the primary purpose of the interview is to look for voids and gaps in the candidate’s background. Using the one-question interview, I compare the candidate’s major accomplishments to what’s described in the performance profile. The difference, if there is any, represents the growth or stretch involved in the job. I use this difference as the reason for the candidate to move forward rather than a big comp increase. In the long term, real future growth is always more valuable than a short-term comp increase.
8. No No’s! When a candidate says “not interested” when first contacted, it’s usually caused by a lack of information, the recruiter over-selling the job, or lack of time. Overcoming these problems is pretty easy – either only ask questions that can be answered by “yes,” or ignore the “no.” If you do get a “no” just rephrase your opening remarks to something like: “Would it make sense to talk 5-10 minutes on the chance the job I’m handling represents a significant career move?”    
9. Get 100% Acceptance Before Making Any Offer. You should never make an offer formal until the candidate has told you with 100% certainty that she’ll accept without equivocation. You do this by testing every aspect of the offer before making it formal. Start the testing process by asking the candidate if she wants to be on the short list. Then ask how this job compares to others she’s considering. Test the comp range, benefits, and other aspects of the offer the same way. Test the start date by asking when she could start if the offer was finalized in the next few days. Then, before you make the offer final, ask if she’ll sign it within 24 hours and stop considering other opportunities.
10. Move Slowly, but as Fast as Possible. Passive candidates need to time to evaluate any new job, primarily to consider the strategic impact of the move in comparison to the tactical issues. For example, top people might be willing to give up compensation for a faster growth path, but this won’t be done instantly. While the recruiter needs to push the process along, you risk losing the deal if you push too hard. If you maintain applicant control, create a sense of urgency, and add in some competition, you can accelerate the decision making, but be careful not to break the space-time continuum.

Recruiting the best can be a logical, commonsense business process that can be learned, applied, and scaled throughout a company. You’ll be half-way there if you follow these 10 rules from now on, on every search. You’ll be 100% there if you get everyone else in your company to follow them, too.