• 
• Training
• Consulting
• Resources
• Events
• About Us
• Store

• » Articles
• › The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent
• › Newsletters

Building Your Personal Recruitment Brand

By Bryan Johanson, April 9, 2008

When your clients or hiring managers think of you as a recruiter, what words come to their minds? Reliable? Insightful? Unresponsive? Bureaucratic? Whatever the words, these concepts define our personal recruitment brand. Hiring Managers may not communicate these directly to us in formal meetings, but they definitely share their opinions among their peers. Below is a short quiz which should help you get a jump start on where you stand with your personal recruitment brand. Ask yourself each of the following questions and be honest in your answers. No one’s looking, I promise.

Read more articles by this author.

Related Topics:

Newsletter, Recruiting

Related Articles:

What is Your Recruiting Strategy?

Is Your Recruiting Department behind the Eight Ball?

Adler's Wild and Crazy Economic Recovery Plan

When your clients or hiring managers think of you as a recruiter, what words come to their minds? Reliable? Insightful? Unresponsive? Bureaucratic? Whatever the words, these concepts define our personal recruitment brand. Hiring Managers may not communicate these directly to us in formal meetings, but they definitely share their opinions among their peers. Below is a short quiz which should help you get a jump start on where you stand with your personal recruitment brand. Ask yourself each of the following questions and be honest in your answers. No one’s looking, I promise.

Recruitment Brand Quiz – Just Four Questions

1. How many candidates do you present to your hiring managers before they hire one? If it’s more than three you’re recruiting brand may need work.
2. Do your hiring managers see every candidate you recommend, or do they still reject some candidates based on something they see on the resume, even though you have screened them and found them worthy of an interview? If the resume carries more weight than your recommendation, then you have some serious branding issues.
3. When you first take the assignment, are your hiring managers willing to spend time with you to define the job in terms of what actual success looks like? Do they take the time to explain what separates a top performer from an average performer? Do they trust you to spot the difference? If not, you may be perceived as a recruiter who adds little value to the process—an administrator.
4. Do your hiring managers regularly ask your opinion on whether they should hire someone or not? If not, they may not trust your opinion or value your ability to interview candidates against real job needs.

When I first started recruiting eight years ago, Lou Adler told me that my reputation as a recruiter was only as good as my last placement. There is some truth to that realization. Recruiters are judged by the quality of the candidates presented, as well as how well the candidates actually perform on the job once hired. But our recruitment reputation is directly tied to the quality of the processes we implement as a recruiter. Below are some brands you might want to avoid and one you might aspire to establish.

The Invisible Recruiter: I was at a training session last week with hiring managers and recruiters in Olympia, WA. One group of managers was working to develop a performance profile for one of their open positions. When I asked them who their recruiter was, they gave me a blank stare. “We’re not sure!” was the reply. As it turns out, their recruiter was right in the room with them. This recruiter didn’t have any brand at all. She was irrelevant to their hiring success and essentially invisible. If these managers really had a difficult position to fill, they would have most likely done it on their own or hired a third-party recruiter to help.

The Black Box Recruiter—Incommunicado: This recruiter will spend a minimal amount of time upfront with the hiring manager and then disappear until candidates start surfacing. Sometimes this may take a few weeks or even months. They may be working hard behind the scenes, but the hiring manager has no idea what’s really happening. There is very little communication, and the recruiter doesn’t have much influence with the hiring manager once the candidates are presented. Constant open communication is the bedrock of a strong recruiting brand. The more the hiring managers know, the better off you will be, even when candidates are hard to find.

One Hit Wonders: Sometimes these recruiters blow hiring managers out of the water with an exceptionally great hire, but they are inconsistent. There is no process behind their success. Inconsistency is the hallmark of this brand. You can tell a one hit wonder because the feedback from hiring managers is all over the board. Some managers love them and others are quite negative.

The Perfect Partner: If you want to be a Perfect Partner you’ve got to prove your worth at every step of the process. The key is to add value and communicate that value clearly. The difference between this brand and those described above is consistency, process and constant communication. How do you build this brand? The simple answer is one hiring manager at a time! Recruiters build their brand with every placement. You’ll know you’ve made it when hiring managers and clients start asking for you by name. You’ll hear things like, “This is such an important assignment I really want you to do it!” Why? Because you’ve establish a partner relationship built on trust and respect.

The key to a strong recruitment brand is establishing a consistent, repeatable process. Most recruiters don’t have a well-defined step-by-step process for conducting a search. That’s the power of Performance-based Hiring ^sm. The process we teach gives recruiters the tools to address the four core areas necessary to establish a strong recruiting brand. It starts with the ability to help hiring managers define the real work. We call this performance profiling. The second step is focusing the search on top talent using sourcing strategies much more powerful that just the typical job posting on the major job boards. Recruiters must have a multi-channel sourcing strategy that includes multiple venues for attracting top talent. Once you’ve got the talent, you must be able to interview and assess that talent accurately, while at the same time setting up the recruiting and closing process. In full life cycle recruiting you must also be able to coach the hiring manager through the courtship process and ultimately through the offer.

As a foundation for establishing and building your credibility, Performance-based Hiring helps you define your personal brand and provide an exceptional level of service. PBH was originally developed by Lou Adler as a way to differentiate his recruiting firm from all the rest. It’s the reason he was able to be so successful as a third-party recruiter, and it’s the reason so many recruiters are getting certified to use the process today. As a PBH certified recruiter you can market your brand with the organization and will be recognized for your proactive brand of recruiting. Recruiting is a team sport and recruiters must have a seat at the table. That seat must be earned, and your adherence to a proven process will be the best way to separate yourselves from the pack.

Happy Recruiting,

Bryan Johanson