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!