Category: Uncategorized

Imagine No Recruiters…I Wonder If You Can?

(This blog originally appeared on RecruitingBlogs.com, click here to see the comments that it attracted)

Every day I go over Putney Bridge on my way to work. This may seem like minutiae of my daily commute in South West London but a couple of weeks ago Putney Bridge became the focus for millions of people all over the world, as it does at the beginning of April every year. The reason?…it’s the starting point for the University Boat Race, and has been for 154 years.

Now you may think that two teams of amateur rowers from the UKs top 2 universities battling it out for 20 minutes over 4 ¼ miles is hardly a reason for so many people to be transfixed, and it has to be said that in the 21st Century I’m not sure of the event’s cultural and sporting significance, which makes me think…

…would anyone miss it if it wasn’t there?

Seriously, the rowing teams of the 2 universities would, some alumni of the universities would, and bar and cafe owners in Putney would…but who else? A lot of people watch it because it’s on and it’s a tradition…but traditions sometimes end.

How about 3rd party recruiters?

I was looking through the most recent figures in the UK from the REC (Recruitment & Employment Confederation) and see that in 2008/09 the total number of permanent placements was 582,803. We’ve got a full time workforce of 21.16 million and estimates of average staff turnover range between 10% and 20%…let’s take a conservative estimate of 15% which would mean 3.17 million job changes a year, of which only 18% were therefore through 3rd party recruiters.

It’s amazing to think that all the permanent recruiters are out there competing for about 20% of the job move market. Put another way, 80% of hires are NOT made through recruiters…that’s 4 out of 5. Sounds incredible doesn’t it?

Which makes me wonder…

…would anyone miss us if we weren’t there?

What do you think?

Would 80% of hiring processes remain unaffected?

Would the other 20% of clients/candidates find each other without us?

Could companies use the money spent on agency fees to create their own talent pool?

And how could we add value to the 80% who don’t use us?

I realise that I’ve used an estimate, but even if we revise upwards a bit and get nearer to 30%, that’s still a lot of hires (70%) not made through 3rd party recruiters.

So the question for perm recruiters is…

A lot of companies clearly don’t need us or use us…could the rest learn to live without us?

It’s a Selection Rejection Thing

“I nearly bought one of their products a few weeks ago. I’m glad I didn’t. Won’t be considering buying one again”

So said a candidate to me last week about a company whose brand extends into the High Street. Did he have a bad experience? Bad customer service? Was he let down by faulty workmanship?

Kind of..

He was a rejected candidate…he’d applied for a senior role, had 5 interviews including meeting most of the operating Board, giving a presentation, and also meeting a Director from a different division. At the final interview he had been promised a decision within 48 hours. When time was almost up he got a call saying that there was one more person he needed to speak to and a phone chat was scheduled for the next morning. At the end of that call he was promised a decision the next day, which was a Friday.

But he heard nothing. At 5.30 he put a call in (he reasoned that if there was still some doubts maybe he could assuage them) but got a voice mail. 

He got a call back on the Monday afternoon saying that no decision could be made, that the company had not found a strong enough comparison so were unable to commit. He was told that a member of the Board would call and explain more. 3 days later he still hadn’t heard.

He asked what I thought, and I said: ‘Some companies forget that rejected candidates are consumers and ambassadors for their businesses’

A lot of time is put in to the hiring processes…design, criteria, testing, offer, dialogue, giving the successful candidate a positive impression of the company…and I think it’s easy to short change the rejected candidate(s). In my experience there are 3 things that the unsuccessful candidate wants:

Clarity
About the interview process, the competition, the selection criteria, the TIMESCALE for both the process and the decision, and some indication of where they stand

Closure
What went wrong, why it went wrong, constructive feedback, is there an opportunity in another part of the business, is it worth applying in future or is this now a closed book

Communication
Clear dialogue with the business, preferably with someone that they met during the process, and most preferably with one of the decision makers, a workable timescale with phone calls made precisely when they are promised even if there is no definite news to convey

You can’t sugar coat the message, and you can’t hire everyone who wants to work for you, but candidates you interview do invest time, energy and emotion in your company, your brand, and deserve some recognition of this investment.

Treat them well because they are your potential consumers and your potential ambassadors…

(This post originally appeared on Recruiting Blogs…read the comments it generated here)

They Shoot Recruiters, Don’t They?

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This blog was originally posted on RecruitingBlogs – click here to see all the comments that were posted

Question for corporate recruiters and hiring managers…if a contingent hire goes wrong, which of these is likely to be at fault:

1)      The hiring and selection process?

2)      The onboarding and integration process?

3)      The recruiter who introduced the candidate?

Hands up who answered 3?

I ask this because I was told of a situation recently in which a client decided after 4 weeks that a candidate that had been hired was a bad fit and would have to be released. They asked the recruiter not just for a 100% fee refund but to cover the 4 weeks wages that they had paid too…their justification was ‘well you selected her’ to which the recruiter had replied ‘no, I presented her…you selected her’

At what point, I wonder, does the 3rd part contingency recruiter cease to be responsible for the success of their introduction?

We present candidates who we believe are as close a match as possible to what the client has briefed us to find, yet after this presentation the clients’ processes, over which we have no control and very little input, take over…interview process, selection criteria, offer, pre-joining communication, induction and onboarding, integration…that’s a whole lot of actions where something can go wrong that may influence the new employees ability to fit straight into the role and culture.

And what happens if an employee thinks that the company has misrepresented itself, its culture, its talent development agenda, the scope of the role offered? All these are often cited as reasons that people fail to settle and become disenfranchised early in their employment.

Most recruiters offer a refund/rebate facility and yet many employers feel the need to negotiate these more favourably. Why? This leads to the recruiting process starting from a position of negativity, of risk minimisation, as if you are almost expecting the hire to be unsuccessful. I did have a client once who laid down their terms for a rebate…100% for a 2 month period if the candidate proved to be unsuitable, but if it was the candidate who left, for any reason, then the company expected no rebate as they felt it was their responsibility to represent their business and culture, and the role and expectations, and the recruiter could not influence this.

I’ve rarely found another client willing to share the responsibility, which will, in effect, recognise that the hiring company has a large role to play in whether or not their new member of staff succeeds. Too often when an employee leaves within the first few months it is the recruiter who made the introduction who is held to account, but is this just an easy option? Would the hiring process be any different if the recruiter offered no rebate/refund?

Maybe it’s hard to say ‘How come we couldn’t keep this person, we went through a long interview process, bought them in and got the approval of the team, went through our usual induction programme…where did we go wrong?’ and easier to say ‘where did we get that guy from? Find out what the rebate is and tell them if we get another dud candidate from them then they’re not a supplier anymore’.

I know I can’t speak for all recruiters. I know that there are too many who abdicate their responsibilities of careful matching and selection, of getting to really know their clients and being able to add value to the hiring process, who don’t properly reference and check…yet there are many who do all of these things, and present strong candidates in good faith that their clients have robust hiring and induction processes in place to maximise the success of their new hires.

So I return to my original question of who or what is at fault if your new hire is unsuccessful. How many companies have an inquest when this happens? Supposing it is a direct hire or a referral, what would usually be the reason? And why is this different if the employee was introduced through a 3rd party recruiter?

Do you feel that there are times when we’re justified in saying…

…Don’t Shoot, I’m only the Recruiter

This Is Why You Should Hire Me! – Is Your CV a Sales Document?

This blog was originally posted on RecruitingBlogs – click to see the comments that were posted

No getting away from it, your CV is a sales document. Instead of typing the words ‘Curriculum Vitae’ or ‘CV’ at the top, put in ‘Why You Should Hire Me…’ and see how you write it. There’s little point just creating a list of duties or responsibilities; you will not get hired solely because of what you have done, but more because of what you have achieved within those duties and responsibilities, and how you can successfully build upon them and deliver in your next role.

Your whole CV should be your mission statement, your ‘This Is Me’ moment. It may be the door opener, getting you an interview, but when you get in front of a hiring decision maker you need a strong CV to present to. Written well, it can set the tone for an interview, manage expectations and enable you to play to your strengths.

When you write your CV, think about these 4 questions:

What are my biggest achievements?

Forget the CV format; just close your eyes and think of the 5 or 6 biggest achievements that have really meant something to you. They can be things that made a difference, or really stretched you out of your comfort zone, changed the way that the company did something, or required a lot of influencing. Whatever they are, they’ve got to be quantifiable achievements that will give whoever reads your CV an insight into how effectively you operate.

Where have I added value and made a real difference?

Too many CVs reflect a list of duties and responsibilities that look like they have been cut and pasted from a job description. You need to bring the CV to life, give it colour and substance, let anyone reading it know what you have done that really made a difference to your company. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic sea change, it can be something that simplified or enhanced a process that was already there.

What is most important to me about my job?

So many candidates list the ‘biggest’ duty under a job title. Invariably it will be something to do with managing people, or standing in for a senior colleague, or having taken a lead on a project, maybe around recruitment or talent. Whatever is listed first is quite often the thing that means most to you, the key achievement…you need to make sure that it’s relevant for the type of role that you want. There is little point listing management as your major responsibility or achievement if you aren’t looking to apply for a role involving management.

Why am I reading this?

Last question is not for the jobseeker, but for the person reading the CV. They’ve got a vacancy to fill and your CV has come to them, whether directly or through a third party. Why are they reading it? How does your CV fit with what they want? If they have to hunt for the clues and piece it together then chances are they’ll move on to the next one.

What do you think? What other questions should jobseekers ask themselves when they come to write their CVs?

Fear and Loathing in Social Media

At last! 

NOW is when it starts to get REALLY INTERESTING!!

What does??….Social Media!

For too long social media, and in particular Twitter, has been one long love-in…Woodstock, peace and love, one great happening…we’ve been awesome, we’ve been rockstars, we’ve loved everything everyone has written…

…or have we?? Is it just that no-one has wanted to make the first move to shoot from the hip, tell it like it is?

Suddenly it’s all changing…there’s Debate! Opinion! Disagreement! Argument!

What we say on Social Media? Who reads it? How do they interpret it? How do they judge it? Are they snooping or are they sourcing? Do they hire or do the fire because of it?

…and guess what…we don’t all agree with each other! Yay!

All of us…

…the employed, the self-employed, the under-employed and the unemployed…

…consultants, advisors, directors, experts, gurus, enthusiasts, commentators, copywriters, marketers, coaches, trainers, conference organisers and conference disorganisers…

…blogging, microblogging and guest blogging…

Debates are starting…

This morning a debate started at 5am (UK time) about use of social media websites for referencing…it spread from Australia to UK to US….and it’s still going…and we don’t agree…

Follow it Andy Headworth’s blog…the comments are long and passionate

And a new thread is staring courtesy of this morning’s blog from Aaron Dodd

Then turn to Alasdair Murray’s blog ‘A Job Description Isn’t a Sales Tool’ and look at the range of comments, the disagreements, and the tangental diversions!!!

Then there’s Felix Wetzel’s excellent blog…he posted about communities, Bill Boorman didn’t agree and was offered a guest blog to reply…and the debate twists and turns and rages on

In my opinion, this is what it should be…honest debate, lots of opinion, theories debunked, ideas written about and read and absorbed…

This is the conversation we ALL need to be a part of

Never Mind The Quality…Feel The Width

Although I believe it was created for a TV sitcom, the phrase ‘Never Mind The Quality…Feel The Width’ has long been used as an expression signifying quantity over quality.

It certainly neatly summarises many modern recruiters…but I wonder if they are entirely to blame?

Volume and speed seem to have taken over from matching and selection, from the ‘throw as many CVs their way and they’re bound to hire someone’ approach of many 3rd party recruiters to the ‘have you got any more CVs, I don’t think that we’ve seen enough’ procrastination of many internal recruiters/hiring managers.

To an extent, recruiters have largely helped to bring this on themselves for four main reasons:

1)      Not really understanding their market, nor taking a detailed, qualified brief, has led to a service model where sending a number of CVs and letting the client select who to interview is often now the norm

2)      Not properly sourcing for a specific role, but just posting an ad on a job board leads to numerous responses which lazy, or heavily sales targeted, recruiters can’t really be bothered to properly assess

3)       Recruiters’ KPIs in many agencies include numbers of CVs sent per vacancy or number of ‘send outs’ per candidate as metrics. Too many consultants look at a new vacancy as an opportunity to send out a number of CVs.

4)      In an attempt to seal an exclusive vacancy, recruiters are often encouraged to offer a number of CVs to a client as a way of closing off the need for that client to brief a competitor.

But don’t run away with the idea that this is necessarily all the fault of recruiters…

…how many times do you hear a client say ‘there must be someone else out there’ or I can’t believe that there aren’t more candidates looking at the moment’…

I spoke to an internal recruiter the other day regarding a difficult to fill senior contingency role and was told that the 2 key decision makers wanted to review a large number of CVs – 20 had been mentioned – to ensure that they had really covered the market. This for a role in which finding 3 relevant CVs in the current market would be a challenge. The role is seemingly an urgent one, yet they want to get it right I was told. Logic would seem to be that if they review a large number of CVs then they would feel more comfortable with the final decision…

Is it a chicken and egg situation? Do clients now expect to see a large number of CVs because their recruitment suppliers feel that sending a large number of CVs qualifies as good recruitment business? A way of showing your client that you speak to lots of candidates, have a wide network and therefore there is no need to contact a competitor?

Or do recruiters send over the volume of CVs that their clients ask for? Do corporate recruiters now expect to see a range of CVs as part of a hiring process? As a way of ensuring that they have thoroughly ‘searched’ the market?

Let me know what you think….

The Conversation That Never Sleeps….

Social media is a conversation; it’s a number of platforms, a set of tools that enables conversation, engagement, transferal of thoughts, ideas and information…

It’s New York New York…the City that never sleeps

Its Old Man River…it just keeps rolling 

It’s a neverending networking event!

So many times I hear ‘I’d like to try Twitter, give it a go, see what it’s all about, but I don’t have the time’ and I say ‘just dip in and join in the conversation…you can dip in and out, or you can stay around a bit longer, make some contacts, read some interesting stuff you won’t see anywhere else’ 

I believe it changes the way we communicate, because there’s no end! If you phone someone – a client, a candidate, a contact – then there’s a beginning and an end to the call, and if you want to move forward you need to conclude with an action. You can’t just pick up the phone an hour later and say something else. 

But with social media, there’s always a chance to pick up the conversation, anytime! Whatever you talk about, you’re engaging with people. As long as you’ve got something interesting, engaging, informative or just plain funny to say, then people won’t mind hearing from you. 

There are very few HR professionals and recruiters from the UK on Twitter, which is a shame. I would love to be able to build an online rapport with them. I speak to many in the US and chat about all sorts of things. I have often asked them ‘if I was US based, then you could well be my client or my candidate – if that was the case, how would you feel about the conversations that we have?’ 

They usually tell me that it wouldn’t make any difference, that the business and personal can easily mix…this is who I am, take me or leave me. They feel the same about Facebook. In the UK though I think it’s a bit different, it’s more…

No Facebook Please, We’re British! 

Will it change? I think it will, eventually! 

So for this post I’m going to throw down the challenge to everyone from the UK reading this who is not blogging, tweeting, contributing to groups on Linked In, or generally joining in the conversation… 

Come on in, the water’s fine….!

Good Leadership Starts Before Your People Do…Is it a Question of Respect?

I’ve been thinking about Leadership quite a bit over the last week or so, since the Leadership track at TruLondon 2, which provided some thought provoking, controversial and animated debate.

The discussions arising from this track, and in particular from one person discussing their own leadership style, have already started developing on 2 excellent blogs by Jon Ingham (a vlog, actually) and Bill Boorman – I recommend that you read them!

I often interview candidates who cite a lack of clear leadership as reasons for dissatisfaction with their jobs, and quite often that dissatisfaction seems to set in soon after starting their roles. What strikes me is that many leaders seem to get it wrong from the very beginning.

If you’re going to hire someone in to your team or company, then I believe you owe it to that person to give them every opportunity to succeed.

Five areas where leaders often come up short for new employees are:

Managing Expectations – do they really understand what job you are hiring them to do? Have you made it plain what will be expected of them? What their deliverables are? What resources will be at their disposal?

Onboarding – what happens from the moment they accept the offer? Do they feel part of the team? Is anything done to include them before they start? What induction programme have you in place? How will they be integrated into your team or your culture?

Clear vision and strategy – do your people know where the business is going? And how you want to get there? Do they know what their team has to achieve, and how they are going to achieve it?

Consistency – once there is a vision and strategy is it consistent? Nothing is more confusing than leaders who don’t think and contemplate, but who have a tendency to draw quick conclusions, act and move on.

Recognise your people as human beings with emotions, feelings and a life outside work – self explanatory, but decisions that you make that affect your new employees will also inevitably affect their families and friends. For me, one of the saddest things I heard at the TruLondon Leadership track was when a guy who seemed to run a hire and fire culture seemed almost proud that he had fired someone after 5 days as he didn’t think the guy would make it, even though this person had resigned from another job to join him…well that person had to go home and face other people (possibly a partner, maybe even children) and tell them he’d lost his job…and why.

For me it’s a question of Respect…Respect your people and they will Respect you.

What do you think? In what other areas do leaders sometimes not come up to scratch?

Networking, Learning but I still got Those Talking Gen Y Blues – TruLondon thoughts

Following last Thursday’s adrenaline rush of a blog I’m now looking back on TruLondon from a slightly more reflective angle!

There’s no denying that it was great event, and it enabled me to meet and engage with so many interesting and passionate people, from the UK and US, Canada, Holland and Switzerland. Whilst day 2 was certainly more ‘organised ‘than day 1, nothing could detract from the fact that overall there were some very insightful debates.

Three things struck me about the whole event.

Networking… it provides a fantastic networking opportunity. With a mix of HR professionals and recruiters, sourceologists and technologists, job boards and journalists, there is always someone interesting to talk to. My favourite parts are always the ‘break outs’ or the mini tracks where 2,3,4 or 5 people leave a track and start their own discussion. Through this you really get to talk ideas and experiences, sometimes without even knowing who it is you’re talking to!

Learning…  there is a lot to learn. Some of it from listening and some from asking. There is also variety between different tracks, from listening to track leaders debate amongst themselves, to debating with them and finally to those tracks where the leaders often pass their knowledge on. I sometimes wish the attendees would open up more on these and get involved, but then maybe that is something that we all need to work on in this embryonic format. I’m certainly keen to attend unconferences elsewhere to see if there are cultural differences in how we absorb information and ideas.

Got those Talking Gen Y Blues…without doubt my favourite comment of TruLondon came from Charlie Duff when her headline for Day 1 was ‘HR practitioners claim that Gen Y talk is nonsense, but can’t stop talking about it’ …and indeed they can’t!

Talk of Gen Y, the uniqueness of their position, the skills they bring to the workplace, their audacity, creativity and expectations, seemed to permeate through many tracks…and when the debate finally got its own track, then things got quite feisty – an agenda of technology, economics, sociology and geo-politics in one mass of opinions, hopes, fears and convictions.

Without getting shouted down, I’m not sure that their position is so much different to any other generation.  Every age group has wanted it all, and every age group has often had a far sharper and detailed knowledge of current technology and societal mores than their elders. (Dare I say that some of the social and political talk of change sounds not dissimilar to that we’ve read from the ‘hippy’ generation?)

What they do seem to have though is a conviction and confidence that has often been lacking before, but I think are in danger of turning themselves into a cause. However with over 20% of their age group in the UK unemployed, and with companies needing to find ways to best utilise and harness their talents and attitudes, I somehow feel I’ll be Talking Gen Y for some time yet…

All in all TruLondon was an extremely successful event, offering the chance to meet so many new people and learn so many new ideas…and leaving you wanting more. Just reading the tweets and blogs since Friday has made me realise how many people I never really properly got to talk to…

…hopefully I will next time!

Trains, Planes and Automobiles – #TruLondon and the Power of Twitter

If you organise it, they will come. And they did, from far and wide…representing recruiting, HR, technology, job boards, branding, marketing and many other disciplines. Some had laptops, some had smartphones, some had cameras, and all had a lot of ideas and passion.

I met loads of great people today, and there were plenty more that I didn’t get time to talk to. Hope to put that right tomorrow.

So exciting to put faces to names, personalities to tweets. And for me, Twitter is what today was all about. Without Twitter there wouldn’t be a TruLondon and I wouldn’t have met so many great people. I know them all from Twitter, and whilst they all feel like friends and contacts, you can’t beat meeting in person. Real face time.

As for today, it was by turns chaotic and thought-provoking, disorganised and inspiring…exactly what an UNconference should be!

I talked candidate experience.

I talked job boards.

I talked Gen Y (when do we not!)

I talked blogging.

I talked employer and employee branding.

I talked social learning.

And I met loads of intelligent, fascinating and inspiring people!

I was called a rockstar!

I was called enigmatic!

I was told I was talking BS on HR Happy Hour!

I was shouted down for making a ‘political rant’ in the Gen Y debate!

And I didn’t mind one bit!

And that’s not all…

I popped out at lunchtime and had coffee with 2 Twitter buddies, one of whom I’d never met before…she happened to be in Central London today.

This evening I went to a gig with three friends that I first met through Twitter. Turns out we all liked the same band. Midlake – an evening of glorious, cosmic country folk from Denton, Texas.

February 18th 2010 – a day when I did so much with so many people, all of whom I met through Twitter.

Friends tell me that they don’t ‘get’ Twitter. They don’t have the time and they don’t see the point. They’ve got enough friends and contacts without spending time online meeting new ones.

They’re wrong…

They should have spent today with me!