Thursday, November 4, 2010

When The Plug Fits The Socket - Perfectly

When I step back and look around, I see things very clearly when I'm given a chance to listen to a new perspective.

I step back and look at my team, and see the reason why they all love working at this company; I similarly see the passion that drives every recruiter, every headhunter, the reason why they all have so much fun in this job.

This reason can be summed up with the word click. Click meaning that everything just clicks.  That things fall together in the places they are supposed to; that everything works out better than you could have expected.

These little clicks, every one of them, are achievements that come only after gaining the experience and knowledge to see what works and what doesn't.

 David Graziano recently gave some advice that clicks to a job-seeker that changed his life.  It's about taking a different approach to interviewing when your approach isn't working - it's about fitting the right plug into the perfect socket, and it just clicks.

The concept is to sell yourself, and once you've done that to the maximum you believe you can, ask these questions: 

1) What are the problems/issues you have run into trying to get the job accomplished currently?

And after they answer and you have some brief discussion, follow up with:

2) What solutions have you attempted to overcome these issues?


These questions put you on a different platform to sell yourself - they effectively allow you to see your target in 20:20 vision.  What does this company need, and how can I solve their problems?  Truthfully, without the answers to that question, an interview can be a lot of firing blindly.

Having the answers to those questions allows you to directly answer their problems with examples of how you have solved them in the past.  This is paramount; this is effective, this is precisely the part of the conversation that ultimately convinces your interviewer to hire you / bring you (with a voracious enthusiasm) to the next step in the hiring process.

As headhunters: How much more effective can our interview process with candidates be if we know the answers to those questions, and can adequately prepare a candidate to ask the questions - but already have the answers prepared?  How much tighter would your interview : placement ratio be?

This type of extreme effectiveness is the difference in value between the recruiters who keep client relationships for many years, and recruiters that just pass on through.

I love it!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

There's a High Likelihood That Your Job Postings Suck

Just read a fantastic post from Ask a Manager which highlights a job posting that 37Signals in Chicago recently released, that seems to have sparked a bit of a revelation for me.

On top of that, Alison goes on to talk about the reasons why the posting works and contrasting it to postings from many current ads on Monster.com.  I think this is a huge point here: why are companies talking to the people they want to hire like they're born bureaucrats?  Talk to people naturally.  

If I came up to an HR Manager at one of these companies and asked them the main responsibilities of the job they're looking for, do you think they would be able to recite "Coordinate with applicable business areas to define/implement remediation activities"?  I don't think so.


I believe the major component that 37Signals got right here is in their "If you were working for us, here are some of the things you would have done last week:" section.  This is beautiful.  It allows you a direct insight into the exact day-to-day responsibilities of the job.   Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?


These are those little effective tips that make us better recruiters and headhunters and let us strike at the heart of the placement when it's made up of mostly ribs. 


Does anyone else have thoughts on this and how you can increase effectiveness in recruiting - specifically through job posts? 

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The First of Many Original (See: Not Blogspam) Musings.

Hello, and welcome to my brand new, fresh-blog-smell blog about headhunting and recruiting.  I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and make one too - but rest assured that it won't be filled with reposted articles that you saw three and a half days ago.  This will be lots of insights from me and my own business - and the occasional article with my thoughts on it.


I'm going to enjoy engaging with many other recruiters and headhunters out there in the comments section of this blog - so don't be afraid, I won't bite that hard! ;)