The Quest for Candidates in a Tight Job Market

This isn’t so much of an article, as it is continuing a conversation.

Daniel Roth, Editor in Chief at LinkedIn, was interviewed on CBS This Morning this week. The interview was posted in my feed, along with a question to recruiters:

How are recruiters winning in a tight job market?

I posted a reply, and received a question requires a space bigger than LinkedIn comments allows me to respond.

My reply to the above question:

I recruit leaders for top hospitality companies (such as CFO, VP, GM, etc). My clients are winning because:

A. As a trusted partner, hiring execs share with me their business challenges, so when I send them an “outside the box" kind of candidate with good business reasons, they’re open to considering the person. They have made some great hires this way. Sometimes it meant creating a new position, and it's a win all the way around.

B. Timing is everything. We pre-schedule interviews before we even know who the candidates are, so that when I find them a good one, we can set the person up immediately for an interview.

C. Hiring Execs I work with understand that some of the best candidates are happily, gainfully employed. They’re open to meeting some people I introduce for exploratory conversations without a full pre-interview deep dive. In other words, not every executive is going to spend an hour with me to share all of their accomplishments when they’re not even looking for a job, but they would be open to my setting up a brief conversation with a CEO.

All of this obviously takes a great amount of partnering and trust, but it gets you far ahead of the game, vs. being reactive.

Momo E then directed these questions to me:

I have a few questions:

1. Are a corporate headhunter?

2. Do you believe in alternative forms of recruiting?

3. Do you believe in recruiting through social media?

4. Who are your trusted partners? hashtag#AskingForNetworkingPurposes

My response that won’t fit in a LinkedIn comment (therefore this article):

Momo, In answer to your questions:

1.    Currently I’m an “agency” recruiter. But having recruited for 20 years, I’ve done both corporate and agency recruiting. About 10 years of each.

2.    There are always alternative forms of recruiting, and they are worth a shot. But at the end of the day, nothing beats good old-fashioned relationship building. I’ve been in this a long time because people know I’m a person of integrity. I’m not going to aggressively try to fit a square peg in a round hole. Nothing brings me more joy then when you make that perfect match and years later the hiring manager and the candidate are both calling to thank you because it was the best decision they’ve made.

3.    You need to go where your talent hangs out. So yes – social media can work incredibly well for certain kinds of candidates. Starbucks has a good playbook on this and has done well. Here’s an article on SocialHire.com about that.  As someone who only recruits top level management these days, I live on LinkedIn, I read the trade rags (or websites) that they read, and go to events they attend. While I might try InMail as a way to connect, I don’t count on it. I’ll find my target candidate’s contact info and contact them directly. And I leverage my existing network whenever possible, to ask for introductions.

4.    When I wrote of “trusted partners” above, I was speaking of the hiring executives with whom I’ve developed strong partnerships. It’s incredibly helpful when the CEO or COO (for example) can be candid with me to tell me specifically what their challenges are, so that I can recruit a solution to address those challenges. Example: Division X has a leak in the boat – people are quitting left and right because the leader is incredibly hard on them. I then know to find someone who not only has the hard skills to do the job, but has the soft skills to walk into that situation and rebuild that part of the boat for smooth sailing into the future. It’s super helpful for me, and the candidate, to know what the candidate will be walking into. Meantime, the executives will try to coach the incumbent and give them every opportunity to turn things around. Recently that happened (incumbent turned it around), and the execs hired a candidate I sourced anyway, for another division. A win all the way around!

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So there’s our conversation so far. Please join in! Recruiters – Do you have any good tips for recruiting in a tight market?

I almost jokingly asked if scientists have perfected the cloning process yet. But seriously, what fun would that be? Might as well have AI run the world. And let’s face it, as long as we have humans, we need humans to lead them. Quirks, flaws, awesomeness, and all.

#Recruiting #sourcing #hiring #TalentAcquisition #TalentManagement #ExecutiveRecruiting #Headhunter #jobs #ExecutiveSearch