Not gonna lie, this fifth installment was conceived as a self-serving pitch for you to engage my services. But when I really started thinking about the topic, I realized that it was just as important as the other four in the series: know your audience, differentiate your offering, tell your story, work the funnel.
Before becoming an executive recruiter, I had all of the skills and knowledge to implement the first four fundamentals I have shared. I had interviewed hundreds of people, hired at all levels and had 20 years of experience as a marketer, using these principles very successfully to attract customers. But when it came to hiring, I posted and prayed. Sure, I would send a quick email to my network and sometimes I would get lucky, but mostly I took the best of what came to me…and a lot of times that didn’t work out very well.
I was trained in behavioral interviewing but mostly subscribed to the “know it when I see it” model. Why? Because I was busy doing a hundred other things I was responsible to do to drive the business. I was really, really busy. But while I spent money on outside experts to build my SEO strategy or manage my pay-per-click advertising, hiring was something I felt I should be able to do myself. And I would guess you do too.
Now sitting on the other side, I see that post and pray rarely produces the “best” candidates. It can produce some good ones and, if you get lucky, a great one. But the “best” are often happily working in their current role, probably too focused on the hundreds of other things they are responsible for to drive their business, so you need to go looking for them. And just like the specialists that can get your SEO in place more quickly and effectively, a recruiting expert can do the same for your hiring.
I’ll post another day with my thoughts on evaluating search partners – the pros and cons of different models and structures. There are benefits and drawbacks to each, it just depends on your company needs. But the one non-negotiable in choosing a recruiting partner is transparency. It does no one in the hiring process any good if the wrong person is hired based on incorrect or incomplete information.
You need to work with a partner that brings honesty, transparency and a point of view to the process. And you need to be honest and transparent with your partner as well. Ultimately, the recruiter is serving up options, but you are making the decision on who to hire. Everyone needs to have all of the available facts – employer, recruiter and candidate – to make the best decision.
Is it time to think about bringing in an expert? Get in touch.
Want to DIY this thing? Check out the other four installments of this series to learn how to know your audience, differentiate your offering, tell your story and work the funnel.
Interested in learning more? Check out my post 3 Ways Recruiting is Like Marketing. And 3 Ways it’s Not.
Click here for more details on my training, Steal These 5 Marketing Fundamentals to Make the Best Hire