Bearing Fruit Consulting

The Sklar Brothers on Recruiting Calls...err...Telemarketers

Yesterday I revealed some of the results from the prospect and candidate survey data we have collected over the last 3 1/2 years.  The focus in that post was on what prospects and candidates really think about recruiting calls.  I had several direct emails and calls asking for more details and I have set up some follow up calls with those individuals to discuss the findings in greater depth.  There is another post coming on what professionals say about their experiences once they are engaged with a recruiter and then at least one summary post. 

One email I received yesterday mentioned a funny video by The Sklar brothers on telemarketing and thought I might get a kick out of it since many of our survey respondents felt like they were getting telemarketing calls from so many recruiters. 

I watched it and thought it was pretty funny so I am sharing it with you.  Enjoy...but realize they could just as easily be talking about recruiters making their calls.

Jokes.com
The Sklar Brothers - Telemarketers
dians.comedycentral.com
Joke of the Day Stand-Up Comedy Free Online Games

What Prospects & Candidates Say About Recruiting Calls

Some of you know I have a Recruiting Call Hall of Shame.  

Essentially this is a grouping of voice mails I have received from recruiters trying  to recruit me or looking to network for referrals.  Let me tell you they are absolutely terrible. 

Embarrassing really.

I really want to post clips of these calls on the blog so that all can join in my  complete and utter disgust with how bad so many recruiters are at making calls.  My attorney tells me that would be a bad idea because if someone recognizes their voice on the call it could mean legal trouble. 

If these calls weren’t real they would be funny. 

Late last week I talked about all the candidate data BFC has been gathering since our founding in 2006.  From this data I introduced a series of posts on What Prospects & Candidates Say about Recruiters.  If you are interested in all the data and the basics of who exactly we gathered the data from please go back and read that introductory post.

There is really no way to cover this topic and the data in 500 words or less so please forgive the length of this post.  I think this information is really important to our industry and I want to try and present the information in groupings that have synergy and context regardless of the length.  That means there will likely be more posts than just two.    

The total survey sample is 2,000 prospects and candidates (500 annually for the last 3 ½ years) across various geographies and industries with salaries over $50,000 annually.  Additionally, we requested survey data from prospects and candidates that were or are engaged with us over the last 3 ½ years.  This adds an additional 349 professionals (those who responded) to our survey data.  The total sample size (for those of you who can’t do the math) comes to 2,349.  I think that is a lot of professionals and represents a significant enough sample size to draw some reasonable conclusions from their responses.  I am not a statistician so someone may take issue with my assertion here.  Let’s get started by focusing on how recruiters are perceived when they first make contact with and attempt to engage a prospect or candidate. We called this the Recruiting Call.  

Are you ready?  If so, you can get the details after the jump.

What Prospects & Candidates Say About Recruiters

Ever wonder what your candidates are saying about you when you aren't there? When they talk behind your back, which they do, what are they saying?

If you are a recruiter or involved in recruiting you sure better wonder and you had best be concerned. There are few things as important as how you are perceived by prospects and candidates. Unfortunately, the news isn't so good when it comes to prospect and candidate perception of recruiters in both third party and corporate.

When I started Bearing Fruit Consulting (BFC) in June of 2006 I thought about this at length and began to collect data from those prospects and candidates we contacted and or engaged with in an effort to improve our level of engagement, service and recruiting technique. In 2007 I decided to continue this practice but then go one step further and actually ask potential prospects and candidates in multiple industries and across different geographies what they think of the recruiters they get calls from and those they engage to assist with their career move. We have done this each year since and recently completed our 2009 sample and survey. Now that we have 3 ½ years of information I decided to share some insights from what we learned. If you have ever been a participant in our recruiter training or if you have been a client we have shared some of this information with you as we collected it but I felt it was about time to share this a bit more publicly.

I plan to share this information in two posts to follow this one. The first post will focus on how recruiters are perceived when they first make contact with and attempt to engage a prospect or candidate. We called this the Recruiting Call.

The second post will focus on what prospects and/or candidates have to say about their experience once engaged with the recruiter. Not surprisingly we called this the Recruiting Engagement.

More after the jump!

Paying Your Employees To Quit - Brilliant!

Sure you say.  Pay our employees to quit.  What could be so brilliant about that?

Bill Taylor (FastCompany, Mavericks at Work) over at Harvard Business Blogs tells the story of Zappos and their practice of paying employees to quit.  The gut reaction from most is say that is nonsense, a gimmick and it flies in the face of all that is holy in the HR space regarding turnover.  That is exactly why it makes sense - it flies in the face of all that is holy in the HR space.  Here is the money from Bill's blog:

So when Zappos hires new employees, it provides a four-week training period that immerses them in the company’s strategy, culture, and obsession with customers. People get paid their full salary during this period.

After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for what Zappos calls “The Offer.” The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” Zappos actually bribes its new employees to quit!

Why? Because if you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for. It’s hard to describe the level of energy in the Zappos culture—which means, by definition, it’s not for everybody. Zappos wants to learn if there’s a bad fit between what makes the organization tick and what makes individual employees tick—and it’s willing to pay to learn sooner rather than later. (About ten percent of new call-center employees take the money and run.)

I think it is total brilliance on the part of Zappos.  The cost of keeping disengaged and disloyal people who have a very high probability of being poor performers is significantly higher than dropping a quick $1,000 on them and sending them on their way. 

Ideas like this work, they make sense and they get resuts.  They also take daring and courage which is exactly why most companies won't do it.