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Winning Despite a Weak Hand

Kathy Barton, January 29, 2008

Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

If you've been through our Recruiter Boot Camp, you know that we advise recruiters to stay current on the business events in their industry. In particular, news of layoffs, mergers, spin-offs and acquisitions, or anything that tends to make good employees nervous about their future at their current company. Good recruiters will immediately begin calling into those companies, using the uncertainty about their companies' future as a tool to coax top employees to jump ship. Many employees are willing to explore their options in these circumstances, so it's a technique that can be very successful.

» Continue reading "Winning Despite a Weak Hand"

10 Great Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find the Best Passive Candidates on the Planet

Lou Adler, January 23, 2008

Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

LinkedIn is a great tool for finding passive candidates who want to be found. This is its little-discussed power. No one would publish their profiles otherwise. While some recruiters are still reluctant to jump on board, others have been making placements since day one. Here are some ideas on how to get started right away to take full advantage of this remarkable networking tool:

» Continue reading "10 Great Tips for Using LinkedIn to Find the Best Passive Candidates on the Planet"

The Year of the Race!--Recruiting, Restructuring, and Rebuilding

Bryan Johanson, January 16, 2008

Topics: Managing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

2008 is the year of races, including the all-important race for the Presidency of the United States. As the presidential hopefuls gear up for their longest job interview ever, we shouldn't forget that the race for top quality talent in our own organizations has already begun, and candidates are bolting out of the gate at a tremendous clip. Unlike the presidential race, where now nine hopeful candidates are vying for one top job, the talent race is upside down with hundreds of thousands of candidates and even more open positions. As one pundit put it last year, "The talent wars are definitely over and the candidates have won!" Just like the bloated real estate market, we've got a glut of jobs and a shortage of talent (except perhaps in Michigan), and more recruiters than ever pitching their opportunities to an ever shrinking talent pool. Even if the economy dips into the dreaded recession, we'll still have jobs for talented people. It's a buyers market even for average talent, and recruiters are going to have to step up their game if they expect to attract top people. And just for the record... it's always a buyers market for top talent regardless of the position, industry, or economic circumstances.

» Continue reading "The Year of the Race!--Recruiting, Restructuring, and Rebuilding"

Inside the Mind of the Top Performer - Part I

Lou Adler, January 9, 2008

Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interview Training, Negotiating, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

Top performers are different than average performers both on the job and how they look for a new one. Simply defined, a top performer is a person who consistently exceeds expectations. While you might be able to determine a person's potential to be a top performer in 30 days or so, it takes at least a few months to determine if a person is a top performer. This has to do with motivation, team skills, and the consistent achievement of results. For a variety of reasons, just because a person can do the work, it doesn't mean the person will do the work. Generally speaking, if a top person takes a great job that perfectly fits his or her needs and aspirations, it's unlikely the person would even consider changing jobs in the first year or so. The person is typically on a steep learning curve, making an impact, and highly satisfied with the current work and the potential future opportunities.

» Continue reading "Inside the Mind of the Top Performer - Part I"

The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent

Lou Adler, January 3, 2008

Topics: The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Everybody - from the Board and CEO down to every manager and supervisor - talks about the importance of hiring top talent. But only a rare few have converted the concept into reality. A number of companies have actually succeeded in embedding the idea into their corporate cultures, but in most cases, even these leave the "how" up to the recruiting department and each individual manager. Creating a road map on the "how to" of hiring top talent is the purpose of this book. It's now more important than ever. The worldwide demand for talent has increased as the supply of trained, talented, and available labor has declined. Even a temporary economic slowdown will not alter demographic trends and the long term need for talent.

» Continue reading "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent"

Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments

Lou Adler, December 19, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I wrote a version of this article for ERE in April 2007. It seemed worthy of repeating as a year-end reminder of the critical role that recruiters need to play to ensure that bad decisions don't preclude the best person from getting hired. As you'll find out, the key point of the article is that good candidates, who we spent a great deal of time developing, can often be lost for easily preventable reasons. Setting up some process or check-point can prevent the problem from arising in the first place. If this isn't possible, you need to have some counter-measures ready to employ to mitigate any problems that do arise.

» Continue reading "Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Superficial Assessments"

Don't Let The Grinch Steal Your Recruiting Season

Lou Adler, December 12, 2007

Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

Last week Lou gave you our prelude to the holidays using the "12 Days of Christmas" theme. Today we'll take a look at the realities of recruiting in today's tough market through the eyes of none other than The Grinch himself. So let me begin by quoting rather liberally from the beginning of one of the greatest holiday stories of all time. My apologies in advance to Dr. Seuss and to my eight children.

» Continue reading "Don't Let The Grinch Steal Your Recruiting Season"

12 Great Sourcing Gifts for the Holiday Season

Lou Adler, December 5, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

If you want to generate one great candidate day after day after day, follow my 12 golden rules for sourcing the best. These are this year's stocking stuffers whether you're hiring active or passive candidates.

» Continue reading "12 Great Sourcing Gifts for the Holiday Season"

How to Overcome Early-stage Recruiting Objections

Lou Adler, November 20, 2007

Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

After finding some interested candidates, transactional recruiters send in a stack of resumes to the hiring manager hoping one will fit. This isn't recruiting. This is roulette.

The best recruiters use a very sophisticated sales technique called solution selling during the sourcing process based on deep job matching. This starts by working with the hiring managers to clarify job needs, define the performance objectives, and develop an employee value proposition. From this, targeted sourcing approaches are developed that involve convincing the best people why they should consider your opportunity. Done properly far fewer candidates are presented to the client, all are seen, and one of them is hired based on an offer package emphasizing opportunity rather than compensation.

» Continue reading "How to Overcome Early-stage Recruiting Objections"

The Secrets of Top Recruiters Finally Revealed

Lou Adler, October 31, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

I'm very proud of the fact that I've helped hundreds (maybe thousands) of recruiters in the U.S. and around the world increase their monthly placement rate by 50-100% and in some cases much more. As part of our planning for our 2008 "The Official Rules for Hiring Top Talent" tour, I've put together my list of "recruiter essentials" we'll cover during the workshop. These are the secrets that every top recruiter follows in order to maximize their placement rate. [FYI: We've incorporated these same points into our final Recruiter Boot Camp Online program for this year (the four-part course starts Nov. 2, 2007) and our San Jose LIVE: Performance-based Hiring Tour 2007 event on December 5, 2007.] While there are about 20 key techniques we teach during the workshop, in my opinion the following 10 techniques represent the difference between average and great recruiter performance:

» Continue reading "The Secrets of Top Recruiters Finally Revealed"

To Poach or not to Poach - is that Really the Question?

Kathy Barton, September 20, 2007

Topics: Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Last week on one of our free public webinars someone asked whether I thought it was okay for recruiters to "poach" another company's employees. This got me thinking about where the term "poaching" originates. Here are some definitions:

» Continue reading "To Poach or not to Poach - is that Really the Question?"

Hot Tip #29 - Humongous Techniques to Boost Your Recruitment Advertising Efforts

Lou Adler, September 18, 2007

Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

I've just finished reading Dan and Chip Heath's Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. This is a great book on marketing and how to influence others, and many of the ideas can be directly applied to recruiting in general and recruitment advertising in particular. When you combine this with Hire With Your Head you'll be finding more top candidates and making more placements before the week is out.

» Continue reading "Hot Tip #29 - Humongous Techniques to Boost Your Recruitment Advertising Efforts"

Fixing Corporate Recruiting

Bryan Johanson, September 14, 2007

Topics: Networking, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Last week I met with a Director of Recruiting from a major Fortune 200 company in the Midwest. In a recent meeting with one of her top corporate executives, the executive made the comment that he finally considered the recruiting department "fixed." The Recruiting Director was so taken back by the comment that she didn't really know how to respond. She was genuinely troubled by his comment. What does he mean by "fixed"? Perhaps it was a backhanded compliment or maybe he meant "fixed" in the sense that he's crossed it off his to-do list—he's no longer worried about it. Perhaps he believes that because they recently installed a new ATS system, added two or three additional recruiters, and restructured their sourcing department, he doesn't really need to worry about it any more.

» Continue reading "Fixing Corporate Recruiting"

Hot Tip #28 - The Anatomy of a Great Ad

Lou Adler, September 11, 2007

Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Sourcing

If you want to attract top people online, your ads need to be outrageous, compelling and found. To prove it we're launching our first annual outrageous ad writing contest. To win a fully-paid scholarship to Recruiter Boot Camp Online (a $1200 value!) you need to follow these guidelines on how to write and post ads that really pull in top people. We'll also award a second scholarship if you can get better results doing it a different way, but I personally wouldn't waste my time. With that said, here's the template we've used to write ads to successfully attract great candidates from entry-level to executive.

» Continue reading "Hot Tip #28 - The Anatomy of a Great Ad"

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Lou Adler, September 6, 2007

Topics: Interviewing, Negotiating, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

I'm in Australia this week working with a number of different recruiting organizations. In Australia the talent supply is far short of demand, so getting assignments is relatively easy, while finding and closing strong candidates takes exceptional sourcing and recruiting skills. Candidates always have multiple offers and counter-offers are standard. To meet this challenge head on, the recruiting teams I'm working with wanted to figure out how to double their monthly production within six months.

» Continue reading "Work Smarter, Not Harder"

Compared to What?

Kathy Barton, August 30, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I spent the first half of the '90s working at GE. This was in Jack Welch's heyday: best practices, work-out, and management course from Harvard professors at the training center at Croton-on-Hudson (affectionately referred to as Camp GE.) It was a great experience, but there were a few things about GE's personnel policies that didn't really make sense. One of these was what we called the 10-80-10 policy.

» Continue reading "Compared to What?"

Are You Masking Your Hiring Process Problems with the Wrong Solutions?

Lou Adler, August 23, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Just about every corporate recruiter has too many requisitions to handle as effectively as possible. The problem is magnified when good candidates get excluded for dumb and preventable reasons, generally weak interviewing skills on the part of the hiring manager or a candidate who wasn't at his or her best. Sometimes good candidates are excluded before they're even seen because they don't have exactly the right background. Sometimes good candidates pull themselves out to of the process because the job doesn't seem interesting or the candidate didn't like the hiring manager. Few companies address these problems directly--instead they avoid them, focusing most of their energy and resources on hiring more recruiters or developing new sourcing ideas. This is comparable to buying more raw materials than necessary for a factory that has an excessive scrap rate rather than fixing the scrap problem.

» Continue reading "Are You Masking Your Hiring Process Problems with the Wrong Solutions?"

Hot Tip #26 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates

Lou Adler, August 21, 2007

Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

There's a great article about recruiting in the September 2007 issue of Fast Company - "The Inevitability Of $300 Socks." Actually, it has nothing to do with recruiting unless you read between the lines. And what a great story is told between those lines! Chip and Dan Heath, the authors of the business best seller Made to Stick - Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, make the point in their article that some basic products attain premium pricing when they're seen as ideas rather than mere commodities. The Heaths cite alcohol, jeans and spa treatments as idea-based products and oil changes and fax machines as idea-free. You obtain premium pricing and margins with idea-based products and basic market returns with basic commodities

» Continue reading "Hot Tip #26 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates"

Unmasking the Well-Prepared Candidate

Bryan Johanson, August 17, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

It's back-to-school week here in Colorado, so my eight children are beginning yet another year of school. It's always interesting to me to gauge their reactions to their new teachers. They form their impressions very early, and some of those impressions are negative. Last night my son told me about his new sixth grade math teacher from you-know-where. "Oh dad, she is absolutely awful! She's extremely strict, she doesn't allow talking in class, and home work has to be in on time. If it's a minute late you get zero credit. She's way too serious, no fun, and she's the hardest, worst teacher in the school. Can you help me transfer out of her class?" We've all had teachers like this one, but what's interesting to me is that as you go through this process over and over with so many kids, you realize that the first day of school is very much contrived. It's a huge multi-act play. Every teacher has on his/her game face. Some try to scare the kids into submission while others try to win the students over by being open and friendly. Each has their own strategy and it's all carefully orchestrated to set the stage for the coming year. In two or three weeks once the impact of the teachers' "first day of school" speeches wear off, I'll start to get the "real" scoop. Sometimes the toughest teacher becomes my child's favorite. What I really care about is simply their ability to teach my children their subjects well.

» Continue reading "Unmasking the Well-Prepared Candidate"

Hot Tip #25 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates

Lou Adler, August 14, 2007

Topics: Recruiter Hot Tips, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Here's a modified version of an earlier article that's worth considering today more than ever. Over my 25 years of recruiting experience, I've learned a few important principles about how to effectively recruit passive candidates. Most were learned by trial and error, and while they might not all be applicable to your specific situation, collectively they offer a pretty decent road map of what it takes to hire more top passive candidates on a consistent basis. Here are the first five of my favorite ten commandants for recruiting passive candidates. The next five will be covered in next week's Hot Tip article.

» Continue reading "Hot Tip #25 - A Partial List of the Ten Commandments of Recruiting Passive Candidates"

Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy

Lou Adler, June 21, 2007

Topics: Interview Training, Interviewing, Newsletter, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training

If you want to increase assessment accuracy and save time, conduct more panel interviews. These are much better than an all-day series of one-on-one 45-60-minute interviews. When organized properly, panel interviews help everybody involved learn more about the candidate, even weaker interviewers, if they just observe. Panel interviews also provide a great means for subordinates to get involved in the hiring process. Subordinates should never conduct one-on-one interviews, since they usually are trying to work for someone they like, so they focus on the wrong issues. For another, they're rarely objective, and worse, many of them are weak interviewers. A panel interview overcomes all of these problems. However, I didn't always believe this strongly that panel interviews were that good of an idea.

» Continue reading "Using the Panel Interview to Save Time and Increase Accuracy"

Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection

Lou Adler, June 8, 2007

Topics: Assessment, Interview Training, Interviewing, Performance Profiles, Recruiter Training, Recruiting

I learned to become a better interviewer than my clients for only one reason: to prevent good candidates from being excluded for bad reasons. Too many of my clients were assessing candidates improperly, either overvaluing first impressions or using some narrow range of skills to determine competency.

» Continue reading "Being a Good Interviewer is More About Recruiting than Selection"

Learn to Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Dumb Decisions

Lou Adler, April 13, 2007

Topics: Negotiating, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Working With Hiring Managers

The demand for top people has exploded. Part of this is due to demographics, a strong economy, and a widening gap between those with high-demand skills and available supply. Matters are made worse by the increase in workforce mobility, the blurring of the lines between active and passive candidates, and the transparency of the job market.

» Continue reading "Learn to Defend Your Candidate from the Competition and Dumb Decisions"

Recruiting Circa 2010: Critical Hiring Trends You Must Watch

Lou Adler, March 15, 2007

Topics: Interviewing, Managing, Recruiter Training, Recruiting, Sourcing

Web 2.0 has resulted in a rapid change in how hiring top talent could be conducted. But from what I can tell, very few companies are moving rapidly enough to take full advantage of this great opportunity.

» Continue reading "Recruiting Circa 2010: Critical Hiring Trends You Must Watch"

What You Absolutely Need to Know About e-Learning

Jason Weseman, September 6, 2006

Topics: Interview Training, Newsletter, Recruiter Training

Congratulations! You made it this far without being scared off by the title of this article! You were able to get past your initial feelings of 1) "What am I going to do without my weekly dose of fabulous hiring tips?"; 2) "e-Learning? What does that have to do with my role as a recruiter?" and 3) "Why does Lou keep letting Jason write articles?" and are now ready to learn more about one of the most important aspects of training and development today.

» Continue reading "What You Absolutely Need to Know About e-Learning"

The 15-Minute Hiring Manager Selection Training Course

Lou Adler, March 16, 2006

Topics: Interview Training, Recruiter Training, Working With Hiring Managers

I was recently reminded of an old story from my pre-ERE days and heavy recruiting days. You might find it useful as you attempt to train your hiring manager clients to become better at defining their real job needs and assessing candidate competency.

» Continue reading "The 15-Minute Hiring Manager Selection Training Course"