Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Recruiting Straight Talk

Real Resume Suggestions: Let's Get Beyond the Status Quo

Upon grabbing my usual cup of morning coffee on this wonderful Monday a.m., I did what I normally do - take my first few sips while looking over the day's headlines on CNN.com. Being a recruiter, articles on career hunting, resume writing, etc. always catch my eye; that being said, I know that they're largely a waste of time and are normally masked advertisements for the job board du jour (in this case particular case, Careerbuilder.com)

Since it's been a few weeks since I've looked over a recruiting article, I decided to clink the link and dive in to the article, "Five easy ways to improve your resume". Nearly immediately, I realized why I stopped reading these articles in the past! The five rules listed in the article are so basic that if you're concerned about not getting feedback, responses, or looks, it's probably not the formatting that is the problem. Here are the rules listed in order:

1. Spell check... the old-fashioned way.
2. Put it in reverse chronological order.
3. Simplify your language.
4. Eliminate clutter.
5. Read it aloud.

Okay, rule 5 is actually highly applicable in all situations, but you get my point. Since I personally see about 100 resumes a day . . . and I'm in the business of headhunting and identifying the upper tier of candidates in the labor pool, here's what stands out when I'm looking for a diamond in the rough:

1. Include a 'Professional Overview' or 'Executive Summary' at the top of the resume (just under your contact info). This is why: A resume is an advertisement and your goal is to get to Stage 2 - frame your resume and the contents within it with a powerful opening paragraph about what sets you apart from the sheep you're competing against.

2. Tell a Story: Your resume should speak to your career progression, however don't overdo it. The best candidates understand that out of every position you've ever held (average time in today's economy is 2 - 3 yrs per role), there are really only 3 - 4 accomplishments worth noting. I don't want to read your resume and come away with the same information that's on everyone else's; performing the basic tasks of the position is simply the point of entry. In other words, don't include the obvious - focus on your accomplishments.

3. Quantify, quantify, quantify. If I see "increased market share within the region", this is a red flag to me. The best recruiters want to know by how much . . . and how you did it. Use the SAR approach: S - situation, A - activity, R - result. If each of your accomplishments are delineated in this fashion, you're already in the top 10% of resume advertisements. Also, it shows the recruiter that you understand the business impact of the actions you take and decisions you make.

4. Tailor your Resume to the Role you're Applying For! Yes, it takes time, but you don't stand a chance if you let this one point slide. I often see resumes for engineering roles in which the candidate's first line speaks about sales abilities. As you can guess, I don't make it to the second line.

Employ the points above and watch your looks, responses, and feedback to improve greatly. Good luck!

"No Posted Candidates, Please!" - That's Beauty To The Ears Of A True Search Consultant

Those words are beauty to my ears . . .

"No Posted Candidates, Please!"

Only under searches like these will the cream of the crop among search consultants rise to the top.  If you're tired of being slung the same old resumes of the same old candidates off the same old boards, then challenge your staffing partners.  Personally, I love hearing those words - it's an immediate indication to me that the client is knowledgeable and understands the risk of a mediocre hire.

If you want my 110% commitment as a staffing partner, all you have to do is tell me, "No posted candidates, please!"  Then at least I know you're telling your other staffing partners the same - and that's what I'm after.   Otherwise, it's easy to assume you work with the Big-Box Agencies where slinging board candidates is the fastest way for an Agency-er to get a submittal.

In the truest Darwinian-sense, start culling the heard of mediocre recruiters and 'agencies' from your list of preferred partners by holding them to a higher standard - we'll all benefit in the end, but you will most of all through a much higher quality of hire.

Fellow Recruiters: Ever Work With Companies Actually Looking For Mediocre Talent?

As a recruiter, I'm sure you've heard the mantra, "There are B-level candidates for B-level companies".  And while there is some serious truth to this statement, most recruiters I know want to ensure they're presenting A-level candidates, regardless if the company is B-level, C-level, etc.  It's just in the blood of passionate recruiters to want to present great candidates.

I've begun noticing something odd lately, though.  And that is that B-level (or worse) companies are now figuring out that they're not going to get A-level candidates unless they get their act together.  With it becoming more and more of a candidate-driven market each day, these companies are now starting to understand that they're the "emperor that has no clothes."  But that's not what this post is about - this post is about companies that just flat out don't want top talent - they want mediocre talent!  (Can you imagine a company willing to pay a 30% fee for B-level candidates, but won't hire A-level candidates, even at a fee of 10%???)

I'm shocked that a client I work with is scared off by A-level talent.  It's like there is some internal bias that they don't deserve somebody who is top-tier.  Just last week, a candidate of my firm got turned back by this client with the line, "I don't know why she'd want to leave where she is to come work here." 

The candidate wanted to eliminate a glass ceiling that existed with her current employer, and as a result, she was willing to trade off working with the top company in her vertical space.  However, as much as I tried to sell against such corporate self-deprecation, the company was concretely convinced - they were not going to hire her, regardless of the immediate contribution she could make to their market share and bottom line.

This made me ponder - Would the president or CEO of the company agree with the hiring manager or internal recruiting staff?  Would the exec team be happy that A-players were being turned away because of some bias in the hiring authority's mind that great people don't work there?

As I thought more and more about this, I convinced myself that perhaps my new strategy had to be to present B-level candidates . . . so that's what I started doing.  And guess what?  They love them.  If I didn't mention this before, these are sales positions!  I guess I'll just chalk this up as another oddity in the staffing world.

All Job Seekers Are Liars??? (Of Course Not, But That's What "They" Think!)

To all candidates: Here's a truth about the recruiting world that you probably don't hear enough:

Internal Recruiters and Hiring Managers Don't Believe You . . . (Or Me) . . . But They Believe Your References!

Sounds odd, right?  Yeah, it does.  But it's true.  And why don't they believe you?  Because they see you as someone who will say anything you think they want to hear since you want the job!  And why don't they believe me?  Because they see me as someone who will say anything I think they want to hear since I want you to get the job, too!

So what do you do in a world where your prospective employer thinks everything you are telling them in the interview is a lie? (Ok, not everyone in a hiring capacity feels this way, but it's their job to find out what your real story is).  Moreover, what do I do when the individual in the hiring capacity thinks you're a liar . . . and that I am to? ("As the recruiter, of course Josh is going to be biased because he wants his candidate to get the job.")

Just what can we do with the cards stacked against us like this?  Well, recruiters all handle this differently, but I can tell you what I do.  I call your references - hence the green guy above (I think that's Donatello or Michaelangelo - ok, I really don't know what Turtle it is, but since he's sporting an orange headband, I'm sure we could find out!)  Back to the point (and this is key): After speaking with your references, I will know much more about you than I could ever get out of you in an interview or discussion.

See, the green guy above (as your reference) is more believable than me and you!  Why?  Because, as a general rule, references don't lie.  To take it one step further, a great recruiter would call this green guy before even presenting you to his client.  How come?  Because that rockstar above can say more to move you forward in the hiring process than you can say or I can say.  Let me rephrase that:

Internal Recruiters and Hiring Managers will believe what your references say about you much more than what you say about yourself or what I say about you.

Great recruiters also want to ensure your references have good things to say about you - not only because it helps us market you in to a company, but also because we want to ensure you don't jeopardize our relationship with our client.  See, we're actually vouching for you - if you do something in the interview, or even after you're hired, that is unscrupulous or crazy, then guess what?  We take the hit as much as you do because we presented you in the first place!

Stay tuned for tomorrow when I blog about how I've seen references cost people jobs.

Corporate HR: Which Recruiting Strategy Are You Using? - "We Find You" or "You Find Us"?

Between my typical 12-hour work day and the final semester of my MBA, you can probably find me in the gym (working out) or reading the business book "du jour".  My latest addition to the library is "Mavericks at Work: Why The Most Original Minds In Business Win" (by William Taylor and Polly LaBarre, 2006).  Although this book is filled with many thought-provoking illustrations of "outside the box" thinking in both publicly and privately held companies, the following quote really made me laugh (because it's so simple to understand, yet so contrary to the typical HR recruiting philosophy) [p. 208]:

"Then ask one more question: Do I know where and how to find great talent in the first place?  Leaders who are determined to claim their fair share of the best talent understand that great people almost always have great jobs.  So if you want to fill your organization with knockout contributors, you can't wait for them to knock on your door.  You've got to knock on their door and persuade them to walk into your office.  HR guru John Sullivan calls it the "We Find You" versus the "You Find Us" principle of recruiting -- and it's one more principle that separates organizations that are serious about competing on talent from those that aren't.

It's a point that Sullivan drives home to whomever will listen.  "The first rule of recruiting is that the best people already have jobs they like," he argues.  "So you have to find them; they're not going to find you.  It's amazing that so many companies still use job fairs to recruit talent.  Who goes to job fairs?  People without jobs!  All you get are worthless resumes and lots of germs.  Recruiting has to be a clever, fast-moving business discipline, not a passive, paper-pushing bureaucracy."

What blows me away about this is that John Sullivan, an industry-respected HR Guru, is the protagonist of this thought process.  In other words, even the best HR professionals understand this.  Think about this for a minute: Do you think that the best and brightest HR professionals attend job fairs, look at Monster/CareerBuilder for opportunities, or take 45 minutes to build a 'profile' on corporate career sites?  NO.  NO.  NO.  They themselves are recruited away!

At the end of the day, recruiting is SELLING.  You better be able to capture talent's eye, convince them that your opportunity is better than the one they're currently in, and then get them into your office to sell some more!  And then, it's time to sell some more - whether it's offer negotiations, avoiding counter-offer, etc.

Can this be done through a job fair?  NO.  Can this be done through a "corporate blog"?  NO.  Can this be done through a 45 minute process of them building a profile on your career site?  NO.  Can this be done through a job board advertisement.  NO.

I believe that unless you capitalize on a short-lived competitive advantage (for example, if your company is listed on the "FORTUNE Magazine's Top 100 Employers To Work For"), you're not going to win the war for talent.  And the easiest way to go about this is a consultative sales process - a process in which you find out what is important to a candidate before speaking about a career opportunity. 

Any great 3rd Party Recruiters does this all day, every day.  And truth be told, the BEST recruiters don't work for agencies - we work independently, where there is no pressure to trade integrity for income.

Why Most Job Board Resumes Are Re-Circulatory Garbage

This is your public resume on Monster/CareerBuilder, or any other job board:

Click on the picture, look more closely, and let that image sink in a little bit!      Many candidates I speak with do not truly understand the ramifications of having their name, address, and phone number, etc. public on a board like Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. The possible positive benefit is that an opportunity may find you - the negative possibilities are as follows:

        a. You may have been downloaded by HR automatic job board download system - if you don't have the keywords necessary in your resume, you never wind up in anyone's email account (i.e. you are never seen, yet HR "owns" your resume for 12 - 18 months). What this means is that you did not make it through the keyword criteria in the first place, and if a recruiter presents you, HR steps in and says, "We have that resume in our system and they were passed over due to lack of match."

        b. An unscrupulous independent recruiter may have submitted your resume to a position without your approval. Yes, there are dirty recruiters out there that will do this in order to get the OK to work on a position. They may attach your resume in an email to the hiring manager ("I found this candidate who may be a good fit for your open position"), and then when they get approval to work on the position, they say, "Oh, that candidate failed a background check", or "That candidate took another job".

        c. You may have inadvertently submitted yourself to a position a recruiter is working on, in addition to    the client company (as our job is to find the passive seeker, not the active seeker) - If so, we will be given the red light by HR. I hear things like, "That candidate has already submitted themselves to 4 open jobs - they don't even know what they are looking for".

There is a perception of the boards that great candidates don't put their information out there for the world to see - the perception is that the best candidates are happy where they are and are not looking for a competitive opportunity. The other perception is that, at any given point in time, 10% of a given workforce is actively looking for a new opportunity, whether they are unhappy or improperly matched, etc. - the question for a prospective employer is, "Since this 10% makes up the job board resume database, is this the 10% you want working for your company?"

However, I can say that while these perceptions are true 95% of the time, there are anomalies. Not everyone on the job board is a mediocre candidate - it's just that it's hard to find the good apple in the bunch.  If you sleep with dogs, don't complain when HR or the hiring manager thinks you have fleas.

At the end of the day, Monster (and the other boards) make their $ by selling two things:

            a. Access to the site by HR and recruiters (meaning access to the 5 million resumes), and

            b. Job advertisements.

The more people that post resumes on the site, the more they can 'cost-justify' their pricing. The best analogy I can make is nightclubs that realize in order to get the guys to come and spend some serious cash, you have to give the girls free admission and free drinks (well, maybe until 11pm or so!) Without the women, the guys won't show up. In the same respect, a database of 5 million resumes is quite the attraction to HR and 3rd party recruiters.

Moral of the story:  If you're going to put yourself on a board, at least put your contact info as 'Confidential' - it's a small conciliation, but at least communicates that you're aware of the re-circulatory garbage floating around in your midst.

This is your public resume on Monster/CareerBuilder, or any other job board:

Click on the picture, look more closely, and let that image sink in a little bit!      Many candidates I speak with do not truly understand the ramifications of having their name, address, and phone number, etc. public on a board like Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. The possible positive benefit is that an opportunity may find you - the negative possibilities are as follows:

        a. You may have been downloaded by HR automatic job board download system - if you don't have the keywords necessary in your resume, you never wind up in anyone's email account (i.e. you are never seen, yet HR "owns" your resume for 12 - 18 months). What this means is that you did not make it through the keyword criteria in the first place, and if a recruiter presents you, HR steps in and says, "We have that resume in our system and they were passed over due to lack of match."

        b. An unscrupulous independent recruiter may have submitted your resume to a position without your approval. Yes, there are dirty recruiters out there that will do this in order to get the OK to work on a position. They may attach your resume in an email to the hiring manager ("I found this candidate who may be a good fit for your open position"), and then when they get approval to work on the position, they say, "Oh, that candidate failed a background check", or "That candidate took another job".

        c. You may have inadvertently submitted yourself to a position a recruiter is working on, in addition to    the client company (as our job is to find the passive seeker, not the active seeker) - If so, we will be given the red light by HR. I hear things like, "That candidate has already submitted themselves to 4 open jobs - they don't even know what they are looking for".

There is a perception of the boards that great candidates don't put their information out there for the world to see - the perception is that the best candidates are happy where they are and are not looking for a competitive opportunity. The other perception is that, at any given point in time, 10% of a given workforce is actively looking for a new opportunity, whether they are unhappy or improperly matched, etc. - the question for a prospective employer is, "Since this 10% makes up the job board resume database, is this the 10% you want working for your company?"

However, I can say that while these perceptions are true 95% of the time, there are anomalies. Not everyone on the job board is a mediocre candidate - it's just that it's hard to find the good apple in the bunch.  If you sleep with dogs, don't complain when HR or the hiring manager thinks you have fleas.

At the end of the day, Monster (and the other boards) make their $ by selling two things:

            a. Access to the site by HR and recruiters (meaning access to the 5 million resumes), and

            b. Job advertisements.

The more people that post resumes on the site, the more they can 'cost-justify' their pricing. The best analogy I can make is nightclubs that realize in order to get the guys to come and spend some serious cash, you have to give the girls free admission and free drinks (well, maybe until 11pm or so!) Without the women, the guys won't show up. In the same respect, a database of 5 million resumes is quite the attraction to HR and 3rd party recruiters.

Moral of the story:  If you're going to put yourself on a board, at least put your contact info as 'Confidential' - it's a small conciliation, but at least communicates that you're aware of the re-circulatory garbage floating around in your midst.

"You Have To Know What You Want To Be When You Grow Up"

It's a rather simplistic statement, but it means everything to a recruiter:

"You Have To Know What You Want To Be When You Grow Up"
(Special thanks to my business partner, Eric Gholston, for coming up with this concept!")

This is why: As recruiters, we are retained to identify, locate, and recruit those high-talent individuals that internal recruiting teams can't find on their own.  (Well, maybe they 'could' find them, but you have to be a consultative salesperson at heart to recruit them . . . and consultative salespeople like to sell, not wait on candidates to find them.)  The reason this is significant is because we can't just create roles for candidates - our job is to fill tough positions for our clients.

So if we speak, and you can't tell me what you're looking for, how can I help?  The more specific you are, the more I can do to move your career forward.  But if you're all over the board, "Well, I really want to try sales, but buying seems fun, and I am really good with computers, etc.", then I can't do a thing for you.  Moreover, our clients look to us for track record of performance - if they want a career-changer, they can look at any of the 5 million resumes on the job boards (the "wallpaper" for every HR person and recruiter on the market).

If you don't know what you want to be when you grow up, I say become job board wallpaper . . . and maybe, just maybe, you'll become a millionaire through a "be your own boss, work from home" advertisement.  But if you're a mover and a shaker, and can articulate why you are consistently evaluated in the top 10% of your peers, then we make something happen.

The Power Of Networking: LinkedIn At Its Best

I had the opportunity to speak with an esteemed colleague and close friend today, and I was blown away at what he had to tell me.  He was working on his 4th super job offer in less than 1 month, but the latest offer in the works is truly worth mention. 

Why?  Because it's with one of the world's most prominent financial institutions located in Hong Kong (translation: it's an international job offer located in Hong Kong, with a six digit salary and even better bonus potential).

About 3 months ago, I introduced him to LinkedIn.  Within a few minutes of beginning his personal profile, he learned that there were over 100 of his classmates from KNUST using the service (KNUST is the most prestigious university in Ghana).  There were even a few classmates that he had not spoken to in over a decade, and LinkedIn was a conduit in them reestablishing their relationship. 

However, he also reached out to a Director-level individual at the financial institution in Hong Kong as a fellow alum.  Over the next 4 weeks, they spoke on numerous occasions about the institution and what they look for in the right type of candidate.  From this point, his colleague set him up with an initial interview, and my friend blew it away.  Now he's looking forward to a final interview in which an offer is highly likely to be extended.

Am I saying that LinkedIn (or any networking tool, for that matter) is responsible for the offer?  No, but I am saying that if you are willing to do the little things and be as opportunistic as possible, you are likely to have way more success than someone that sits back (or worse, just rests on their laurels), thinking that opportunity will find them . . . instead of the other way around.

Bottom Line: You're Either A Client or A Source

The bottom line in our industry is:

YOU'RE EITHER A CLIENT OR A SOURCE.

Sure, it sounds harsh . . . but it's true.  It's nothing personal - it's just that the top headhunters in our industry are paid big bucks to find the best and brightest. Ideally, this is talent that is recruited right out of the competition (talent that is actually not even looking to move or considering a move, that is until you seed the possibility in their mind).  At the point that they even start to process a move and talk it over with their loved ones, you probably have about 3 months to make right with them or they're gone.

Why did I decide to post this today?  It's pretty simple - because there is a candidate that I have an exclusive relationship with (i.e. they are confidentially looking for a new opportunity), that asked me to contact Company X on their behalf.  When I made the call to facilitate a confidential meeting between that candidate and that company, I was told "we don't even look at people here unless they use our corporate site."  What?  You mean that if a superstar candidate, who is not wasting their time by looking at phantom jobs on Monster, wants to confidentially meet with you to discuss an open position, you won't talk to them?  On top of that, this wasn't a $10/hr position - this was a VP, Business Development position!  So in other words, you're saying that this candidate should take her time away from making BIG deals with key customers to take an hour to try to navigate your 'careers' page and 'build a profile'? (a profile that may or may not even spur a call back to them?)

The best and brightest don't build profiles on your career page.  They also rarely talk with anyone in HR more than once (that is unless that person in HR has worked in a sales function and knows the true economic value of the ice-breaking conversation).  At the end of the day, this is what I call a "broken" process.  And what follows a broken hiring process?  Other broken processes inside the company, instantaneously making that company an easy source to recruit from.