Just in case you missed it, I wrote on making offers to candidates over at Fistful of Talent in a piece called I'm Gonna Make You An Offer You Can't Refuse.
Bottom line, you should NEVER make an offer to a candidate unless you are certain they will accept. How do you do that? You need to go over to FOT to find out.
Well, it seems we have finally come to the end of our series on How to Hire Great Recruiters. Today we will look at the 8th competency in our series - Tenacity.
Before we do, I hope you have enjoyed the series and perhaps have been able to use it in selecting recruiting talent for your organization. If you have questions on how I have used this in selecting recruiters in the past or how we use it today at Bearing Fruit Consulting, please feel free to give me a call.
We have had several phone calls and emails on the series asking us for interview question we use when selecting recruiters or for presenting recruiters to our clients. I am happy to make those available to you if you email me at mhomula@bearingfruitconsulting.com.
So, let's move on to the final competency we have identified.
Last week I spent a few days at the ERExpo in San Diego. I had a chance to meet u
p with some colleagues, fellow recruiting leaders and friends I haven't seen in quite a while. I also had a chance to meet and begin building new relationships with some great people and some excellent talent. I will talk more about my time at ERE in a coming post but it was also really cool to meet up with some of the readers of this little blog. I am grateful to those of you who read this site on a consistent basis and I am glad you decided to introduce yourself to me personally. Almost every one of your mentioned the series on how to hire great recruiters and I am happy it has been a good series and might be adding value.
It has been a few weeks but it is time to revisit the series on How To Hire Great Recruiters. Last time we met on this topic we talked about the behavioral competency Tolerance of Ambiguity. I guess it might be advantageous to review what we have covered to this point:
Let's talk about competency number 7 on our list of 8 behavioral competencies necessary for success as a recruiter - Reading The System.
We are coming down the home stretch of our discussion on the eight behavioral competencies necessary to be a great recruiter. You can check out our previous five posts in this series by clicking on any of these links - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
We are receiving a good number of emails offline on this series and many of the emails are really interested in the data behind these competencies and understanding how we know they predict actual performance in the job. Additionally, we have received a number of emails asking for the behavioral interview questions, scorecard and scoring methodology we use to hire great recruiting talent.
Regarding the data, we will share some of the data in a concluding and summary post on this series so hang in there and you will get the information. As far as the actual behavioral interview questions and scorecard we employ to hire great recruiters. Well, I am afraid that is proprietary and only for use by our clients and those organizations who hire us to help them hire great recruiting talent. If you are interested in learning about this tool just send me an email. The link is over there to the right.
With housekeeping items out of the way, let's move on to competency number 6, Tolerance of Ambiguity.
So now we come to part 5 in our series on How To Hire A Great Recruiter. You can check
out the first 4 parts here.
Before we move on I just wanted to thank those of you have commented publicly on this series. Most have agreed with the concepts we have talked about and a few haven't. I like when people disagree with me. I am not under the delusion that I know everything about recruiting. While I do think my past performance in both third party recruiting and leading corporate recruiting teams to distinguishable and well documented success puts me in a unique and blessed position to offer consulting expertise in most things talent acquisition and talent management related; I also know that I am always learning and evolving. Good debate, a constructive and meaningful battle of ideas and respectful discourse on things all combine to drive our profession and industry forward. So, if you haven't publicly commented because you disagree with me, please feel free to get engaged. I also hope that those of you who do agree or just want to add a general comment will also get engaged. I want to hear from you and I value what you think.
By the way, did you know that if you are a regular reader of this blog you are considered a Bleader? Not a fun word really but apparently, not known to me until a recent blog post by one of my favorite wine critics and Senior Editor at Wine Spectator James Laube, this is what blog readers are coming to be called. That was the fun tidbit of information for the day. I know, I digress and it is time to move on. Sorry.
Now, on to part 5 of How To Hire A Great Recruiter where we will talk about the 5th behavioral competency for success in recruiting, Creativity.
Remember the Titanic? Of course you do. And you likely remember Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet frolicking all over the decks of the most amazing ship ever to sail. I really hope this not your only frame of reference to the Titanic.
You also likely know that Titanic was indulgent, elegant, elite and allegedly unsinkable. All of these descriptive words made a ticket aboard its maiden voyage the hottest ticket in town. All of this glamor, glitz, pomp and circumstance masked the tragic fact that the ship was indeed sinkable and no level of presentation and style was going to keep it afloat under the circumstances it found itself engulfed in that cold night in April 1912.
Interviewing and hiring could learn a thing or two from this tragic story. If all you knew of the Titanic in terms of evaluating its worth as a sea faring luxury vessel was the information available prior to April 14, 1912 you would likely be in buy mode. Once you dig a little deeper and look at after sail (analogy after hire) performance you would run for the nearest life raft and stake your claim.
Continue reading "Presentation or Performance - What Matters More" »
So now we have come to the half way point of our discussion on what behavioral competencies a recruiting leader or organization must interview and select for when hiring recruiting talent. I call them the Great Eight (because there are 8 of them - how original of me huh?). In parts 1, 2 and 3 we discussed interaction, spoken communication and commitment to task.
When hiring a great recruiter it can be relatively obvious, or you can test for, what skills and knowledge a candidate has with respect to recruiting. Asking direct questions about past performance and the context in which that performance was achieved can also be an indicator of the type of talent you might have in front of you. But without peeling back the layers of the candidate and really understanding what lurks beneath the surface (motivation, self concept and trait) of a candidate you are likely to make significant mistakes in hiring recruiters. That said, let's move on to competency number four.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, How To Hire Great Recruiters, we discussed the idea that great recruiting is the engine that drives an organization forward. As a result, hiring great recruiters must be one of the most critical hiring initiatives of any recruiting leader or company.
We have already presented and discussed two of the eight competencies we have to come to know predict future superior performance in a recruiter. They are:
Interaction: The ideal recruiter is able to communicate with others in a warm and helpful manner while building credibility and rapport.
Spoken Communication: The ideal recruiter is able to present information clearly through the spoken word. He or she listens well and influences others through oral presentation in either positive or negative circumstances.
Now, let’s take a look at the fourth competency that can predict superior performance in a recruiter – Commitment To Task.
In Part 1 of How To Hire Great Recruiters we laid out some framework around why hiring great recruiting talent is so important and began to share the 8 behavioral competencies Bearing Fruit Consulting finds necessary to succeed as a recruiter today. Recruiting leaders and companies need to do a better job of identifying, recruiting, interviewing and selecting recruiting talent in order to succeed in such a challenging talent economy. In Part 1 we identified Interaction as a key behavioral competency for great recruiters.
Identifying the competency model that is linked to superior performance is the first step to achieving greatness in your recruiting team followed by designing and executing a scored behavioral interview based on the competency model. One of the finest books on this topic, in my humble opinion is Competence At Work: Models For Superior Performance by Dr. Lyle M. Spencer, Jr. and Signe M. Spencer. A premier work in this space I can not recommend it highly enough. I also have to thank and recognize Chris Hallier, one of the high performing recruiters and key thought leaders from the award winning FirstMerit Talent Acquisition team I led, for introducing me to this book some 8 years ago or so. Chris is a phenomenal HR and recruiting talent and if he is not in your network he should be.
Let's take a look at the second of the eight competencies.
Hiring great recruiters is a challenge every company faces today. This is the first in a 
series of posts on how to hire great recruiters. I have written on this subject on ERE in the past but I believe it merits revisiting. Over the course of 8 or so posts I will introduce the 8 behavioral competencies I have found best predict after hire performance of great recruiters. In a talent economy that has become increasingly demanding, hiring for the right recruiting behaviors and then equipping recruiters with the best skill training available must be a priority of any recruiting leader and company. Recruiter training should not only include how to source, one aspect of the recruiting life cycle that seems to get the most attention, but also how to actually execute great recruiting (often overlooked in most training curriculum).
Anyone who has participated in one of our many recruiter training programs, seen me speak or been on one of the recruiting teams I have led is well aware of my feelings about technology in the recruiting space. Essentially I believe that all the technology, job boards, social media, blogs and recruiting software in the world will never replace or generate the kind of results a great recruiter can deliver. If there is a war for talent, which I believe there is, then the next great weapon is the well trained, skilled and artful recruiter.
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