Bearing Fruit Consulting

The Usual Suspects...& Prospects & Candidates

In blog post after blog post I have used three terms that, to some, might seem to be interchangeable.  If you read recruiting articles, blogs and tweets you will see each of these three terms thrown around and utilized with little regard for what they actually mean. 

The terms are suspect, prospect and candidate. 

The latter two are the most often used,  most often confused, most often transposed and the most loosely bantered about.  Looking back over my past posts, both here and in other forums, I may even be guilty of using these terms far too loosely.  Honestly, I think it is lazy of us (those in the recruiting space) to continue to use these terms so interchangeably.  That is especially true of prospect and candidate.  Suspects, prospects and candidiates are not the same and therefore should not be treated the same during the recruiting process.  Continuing to use these terms interchangeably is likely a reflection of a common recruiting mistake - applying the same technique and recruiting process to everyone being recruited. 

Fail! 

Let's define what each of these terms mean.  Once we define them maybe we can talk about building relational recruiting strategies for each as they journey through the recruiting process. 

Recruiting Is Not For You...Or Is It?

Recruiting is a great profession.  I would say it is a calling.  I say this because YOU rarely find recruiting.  Most often it is RECRUITING that finds you. 

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?  Me, I wanted to President of the United States.  Good thing for all of us that didn't happen.  I can promise you this; you probably didn't want to be a recruiter when you grew up. 

Little kids don't grow up wanting to be recruiters.  They don't call their friends and invite them over for a nice game of "Headhunter", "Sourcing" or "Let's Hire Someone Today". 

This is a calling that seeks YOU out. 

It is not for the faint of heart and it's not a place to tread water until something better comes along.  It is also not a place to start your "HR Career", though sadly many do just that.  Many companies throw gas on this misinformation fire by making recruiting the entry level position to human resources when exactly the opposite should be true.  HR roles should be the entry level roles to recruiting. 

So many start recruiting and try it and so many fail to succeed.  It is the Ironman Triathlon of careers. 

Recruiting provides unsurpassed and unlimited opportunity for anyone who is prepared to commit themselves.  This is especially true in third party recruiting. 

In this "opportunity" lies the great trapping of recruiting.  It lures in the uncommitted with promises of large fee's, excitement and adventure; the thrill of the hunt. 

It teases you into "giving it a try".   "I love to work with people so I decided to be a recruiter" are words like nails on a chalkboard to seasoned recruiters. 

Those drawn to this craft without a firm grasp of real commitment, without knowledge of the ups and downs, close their eyes and visualize success as though it has already happened.   

But guess what?  Your degree doesn't matter.  Your profession doesn't matter.  Your title doesn't matter.  Your specific industry or position specific expertise doesn't matter.  Who you know doesn't matter.  What you have read doesn't matter.  Your qualifications and test scores don't matter.  Your resume doesn't matter.  How much money you have made doesn't matter.  None of these will be of help to you in the recruiting world.

What matters is you - how committed are you?  How hard will you work?  Will you focus on recruiting activity development (being RAD as I call it) or just focus on activity?

Only YOU can help YOU.  It is YOU. 

This is what levels the playing field.  This is what separates those that DO and those that DON'T; those that win and those that lose in recruiting. 

It all comes down to YOU. 

How hard are YOU willing to work?  How often will YOU pick yourself help when you fall or make a mistake?  How much perseverance do YOU have?  How thick is YOUR skin?  How willing are YOU to learn and try new things?  How much time will YOU invest in being RAD?  How do YOU value meaningful relationships?   How many times will YOU pick up the phone to build those relationships?  This  list goes on for a while as you can well imagine.

Because it is about you, the individual, so many fail.  So many come here and leave; so many have recruiting on their resume with a date in the past.  They come, they fight and they fail.  They fail because there are no excuses to be made when it is you.  You can't pass the buck, there is no one left to blame, entitlement is out the window and old man accountability is in your face.  You don't eat, pay bills or live unless you perform. 

Do you love it or do you fear it? 

Maybe a little of both? 

It should be a little of both if you are honest with yourself. 

It is YOU!

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!

Hanging Out With The Cool Kids at Fistful Of Talent

Just wanted to point you all in the direction of my latest post over on Fistful Of Talent.  The title of the post is Hanging With The Cool Kids In The Talent Pool and it appears today. 

I consider the whole posse over at FOT to be "cool kids" so I feel as though I am blessed to be in their company.  Seriously, there are some really smart, witty and innovative HR and recruiting practitioners in that group. 

I still can't figure out how I got into that group!

D is for DELIVER - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

So we have come to the end of our series on Creating the Ultimate Candidate Experience.  All good things must come to an end but I am fairly confident we are going to end on a bang. 

Or at least a loud noise.

A quick recap on making your candidates feel L.O.V.E.D.  So far we have covered:

• L is for Listen
• O is for Own
• V is for Validate
• E is for Educate

And now it is time for D which stands for Deliver (on your promises).  This one may seem incredibly obvious but it is often the most difficult to execute.  With competing demands on recruiters time (especially if you are in a corporate gig where you get pulled into HR meeting after HR meeting...after HR meeting after HR meeting) delivering on what you promise can be a huge drain on your existence amidst the sea of everything else you have to do.   

In our annual passive candidate surveys and our post recruiting call and recruiting engagement surveys with those we interact with we hear, quite frequently, that many recruiters promise too much and deliver very little.  In a world in which the hiring manager or client controls the purse strings it is easy to neglect the candidate when it comes to honoring commitments and promises.  Candidates don't pay fee's, complete evaluations of your performance or run to your boss the minute you don't present 10 perfect candidates for an open requisition.

After the jump, here are three tips for Delivering:

E Is For EDUCATE - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

All You Need Is L.O.V.E.D. and the BFC "love in" on how to create the ultimate candidate experience continues.  It's probably a good idea to recap where we are and what we have covered.

First, we introduced the basics of creating the ultimate candidate experience in the form of an acronym - L.O.V.E.D.  The goal is to make every candidate feel L.O.V.E.D. 

We then began breaking down our acronym and started, logically, with L is for  LISTEN, moved on to O is for OWN and then V is for VALIDATE.  The emails on this topic have been very interesting and there has even been some discussion of these posts around the blogosphere.  Many have requested that I share a template for a Candidate Bill of Rights which I will be sure to do in a later post.

Let's move on to our next letter in the acronym - E is for EDUCATE.  More after the jump.

V Is For VALIDATE - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

The BFC version of a "love in" continues today.  As we have been discussing, creating the ultimate candidate experience requires that you make every candidate feel L.O.V.E.D.  We started the series with an overview and then moved on to cover both L (for Listen) and O (for Own).  Today we move into a discussion on V and, continuing with our Sesame Street style for this topic, V is for VALIDATE. 

No, I am not talking about Stuart Smalley type validation (you probably have to be over a certain age to get that reference) and this isn't about self help affirmation therapy or anything remotely close to that.  Once a candidate is in process with you or your organization, providing validation at different steps is critical to creating the ultimate candidate experience.  That said, if this tactic is overplayed it could lead to serious problems for you when it comes time to make the offer and close the deal.  Validate as a tactic has to be used very carefully but, when executed well at the appropriate times, it becomes a powerful weapon in creating the ultimate candidate experience. 

Let's take a look at what validating a candidate means and what it looks like.  More after the jump. 

Moving from ATS to TRMS Over at FOT

Is that enough of an acronym tease for ya?

Just a quick note to alert you all to one of my latest posts over at Fistful of Talent on converting your ATS to a TRMS.  I provide some guidance on how to take your ordinary, process swamped, compliance focused, administrivia driven Animal Tracking System and tweak it to start getting more TRM from it. 

Have a read...if you aren't sick of reading my stuff  yet.