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Recruiting Is Not Selling, and Other Misconceptions about the Most Important Part of Hiring

By Lou Adler, April 26, 2007

Excerpted from the 3rd edition of Hire With Your Head (John Wiley and Sons, Inc. June, 2007)

After you've made an offer, but before accepting it, your candidate is probably shopping it around hoping to get something better. As soon as a candidate accepts your offer, the person gets buyer's remorse, wondering whether she made the right decision or left something on the table. Even if the person doesn't have a better offer on the table, lack of conviction when resigning sets the stage for a counteroffer. Effective recruiting becomes the difference maker when you want to ensure that more offers get accepted and stay closed.

Read more articles by this author.

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Here are two fundamental recruiting principles. Violate them at your peril. First, never make a formal offer until it's accepted. This way, there's no time for the candidate to shop it around. Second, provide your candidate a compelling future vision that overwhelms the past. This way, there's no chance of the person taking a counteroffer.

Implementing these rules is what recruiting is all about. As far as I'm concerned, recruiting is the most important part of the hiring process. Applicant control requires strong recruiting skills, but don't forget this critical piece - recruiting is not something you do at the end of the interview. It starts at the beginning of the hiring process, when you write the performance profile and post the compelling ad.

Here are some basic ideas:

• Recruiting is more about buying than selling. If you sell too soon, you stop evaluating. If the job is compelling, candidates will sell you as they attempt to convince you why they're qualified. Maintaining this positioning is what good recruiting and applicant control is all about.
• Recruiting is more about consultative needs analysis than transactional selling. For the candidate, accepting an offer is a long-term strategic career decision based on opportunity, not a short-term tactical decision based on compensation. So don't rush it.
• Recruiting and closing is not about compensation; it's about opportunity. If your job is no different than the competition, then all you have left is the money. So, if you want to hire more top people, make the job bigger, not the compensation.
• The best candidates will never make the decision alone. Part of the recruiting process is to provide the right information for the candidate to persuade others.
• The role of the hiring manager is more important than ever. This is your ace in the hole. Use it wisely and often. Managers must be totally committed to hiring top talent and be involved from beginning to end.

Recruiting starts when you first contact the candidate, whether it's a compelling written ad or verbal pitch. Recruiting then continues throughout the interviewing process from the first phone screen to the final interview. It does not begin after you've assessed the candidate and decided that you want to move forward. This is too late. Interviewing and recruiting must take place in tandem. Present the compelling nature of the opportunity up front. This way, the best candidates join the initial pool of applicants hoping to be selected. If you wait, the best will either not apply or they will filter themselves out during the course of the assessment.

While you need to start at the beginning, don't rush it just because you think you've found a hot candidate - don't start selling within 15 minutes. Some managers think they can sell or charm a candidate into taking a job. This is not recruiting. This is selling in its worst form (e.g., think about the pushy car salesperson). It not only demeans the job and the hiring manager, but it also drives the best candidates away. If they do stick around, you'll wind up paying unnecessary premiums. Recruiting is more about career counseling and solution selling. The key to recruiting: create a compelling opportunity, present it early and often, and make the candidate earn the right to have it.

To do this right, the hiring manager needs a complete understanding of the job, a thorough knowledge of the candidate's competency, the person's short- and long-term career needs, and the compensation requirements. A balance among these competing issues is the key in bringing a fair deal together. This takes time and strong recruiting skills. Open and honest communication is a prerequisite. None of this happens when you're selling. Listening is more important than talking. Listen four times more than you talk to get recruiting right.

Think about the hiring and recruiting process this way. When you're sourcing, you want to put candidates in the driver's seat to get their attention. This requires a great job and a great verbal pitch. Once you begin the screening and evaluation process, you'll put the candidate in the passenger seat, ensuring their interest and moving the process forward together. When you decide the candidate is worth pursuing, put him in the back seat. You do this by making the job so compelling and conducting the interview in such a way that your candidate can't wait to drive.

Unless you have a boring job, it's never about the money. It's always about the opportunity. I've been recruiting for over 25 years and training recruiters and hiring managers for over 15 years, and I've learned a few lessons along the way. One of them is that the best people rarely take the job for the money; they take it for the opportunity to meet their personal life plans, ambitions, and goals. Another lesson learned is that there is never enough money in the budget. Someone can always pay more. So never make it about the money, make it about the opportunity to become better. Great recruiting skills enable you to pull this off.

Many years ago, I worked with a very strong candidate on an assignment with a company that had a very rigorous selection process. The candidate was excited about the prospects and went to each interview ready to sell himself on why he was the best person for the position. He didn't get it, but he tried like heck. The job became more appealing the more difficult it was to obtain. This same candidate was turned off by another client that started selling him within 15 minutes of the first interview. On a recent training event, one of the best recruiters in the country told me about his world-class Oracle developer who was offered a huge increase to do basically the same job. He was wooed throughout the selection process, given the red-carpet treatment every step of the way. He turned the job down for far less money to do something more compelling.

Effective recruiting involves a fundamental principle of human nature that most people ignore: When you give someone the job, he doesn't want it. When you make it hard to get, he wants it more. The bottom line is that a job has more value when it has to be earned. It has less value if it's too easy to get, and you have to pay more, too. Top candidates are excited by competition, real challenges, and an opportunity to grow. Candidates sell you when they see an opportunity worth pursuing. Strong candidates are proud of their accomplishments and want their potential new boss to know all about them. This is the concept you need to use in order to attract top people without selling them.

If you make it too easy for someone to get the job, he or she doesn't want it as much. If you make it challenging and difficult to get, he or she wants it more. This is applicant control. This is recruiting.