2014 Best of The VET Recruiter Table of Contents

Transcription

1 2014 Best of The VET Recruiter Table of Contents Blog Posts 4 Ways Hiring a Team of People Gives You a Competitive Edge page 2 5 Reasons to Speed Up Your Company s Hiring Process page 3 4 Main Reasons Companies Use Executive Recruiting Firms page 4 5 Reasons Why Using a RPO Firm Doesn t Work in a Specialized Niche page 5 There Are No Coincidences When It Comes to Hiring Top Talent page 7 Newsletter Articles Why a Prescription Without a Diagnosis is Search Malpractice page 8 4 Ways Recruiting (and Hiring) Top Talent is Like Marketing page 9 A REAL Recruiting Firm Helps Build Companies, Not Throws Resumes page 10 6 Things Companies MUST Do When Extending an Offer of Employment page 11 3 Reasons Why Hunting for Talent is Better Than Trying to Gather It page 13

2 4 Ways Hiring a Team of People Gives You a Competitive Edge As we ve explored on numerous occasions in our monthly newsletter, superstar candidates are still very difficult to first find and then successfully recruit. In fact, considering how many people are currently in the market for a new job both employed and unemployed it could be stated that it s even more difficult to find the best of the best in terms of candidates. After all, passive superstar candidates are not applying for your open positions or even looking for a new job, for that matter. That s why, when you find top talent and you re able to hire them, it can provide a tremendous boost to your organization. However, what if you hire an entire team of people, especially if they represent top-notch talent within the industry? There are four ways that hiring a team of people at once can give your company a decided edge. 1. You gain a talent advantage over your competition. This one is self-explanatory. More talent for you means less talent for your competition. 2. You gain a strategic advantage over your competition. Your advantage doesn t stop with just talent. You also gain an advantage in terms of what that talent can provide, all of which can help make you the unquestioned leader in your industry. 3. You increase your return on investment. Hiring a team of people, especially if done at approximately the same time, results in more production, more synergy, and ultimately, more profit. 4. You position yourself for future growth. More profit means more money to invest in additional tools, resource, and employees for fueling even more growth. If hiring one superstar is difficult enough in today s environment, how much more difficult is it to hire an entire team? It s easier when you enlist the services of an elite executive search firm, one that has experience with recruiting multiple A-level candidates at once. 2

3 5 Reasons to Speed Up Your Company s Hiring Process Hiring the best talent for your company s open positions is essentially a sales process. The best candidates in the market have a choice of positions from which to choose, and it s up to the companies to sell not only their position, but also their company and everything that s associated with it. As any good salesperson will tell you, speed is of the essence during the sales process. The same holds true of the recruiting and hiring process. The longer your company s process takes, the less likely you ll be to make the sale or in this case, hire the best candidate available. Now, the optimum way to speed up the hiring process is NOT to skip steps or eliminate people who should be a part of it. The optimum way is to set a deadline for filling your position with the best candidate available and then stay focused on meeting that deadline. Below are five reasons to speed up your company s hiring process: 1. The best candidates are interviewing with multiple companies at once. Consequently, they could receive a better offer from your competitor before you even have a chance to extend your offer. 2. The candidate may receive a great new project, promotion, raise, etc., which could convince them to stay where they are instead of making a career move. 3. If the process stretches out, the members of your own team can become distracted by the work that s currently on their desk. As a result, important information could be misplaced and communication breakdowns become more commonplace. 4. Companies are continually revising their budgets. If you take too long to hire somebody, there s no guarantee that you ll still have the funds available to fill the position after your company s next budget revision. (So in essence, you re not just racing against other companies, but you could also be racing against your own company.) 5. Candidates want to feel wanted. They usually feel wanted at the beginning of the process. However, that feeling fades over time, to the point where it disappears completely if the process takes too long. This last reason is perhaps the most important one. People want to feel as though they re wanted, and candidates who feel wanted by a company are more likely to accept an offer of employment from that company. 3

4 4 Main Reasons Companies Use Executive Recruiting Firms No matter the unemployment rate, the degree of difficulty involved in finding top-tier talent remains the same. That was true before the Great Recession, and it s true today. Actually, it could be argued that for companies attempting to find the candidates they need on their own, the difficulty is even greater. That s because with as many job seekers as there are in the marketplace, those companies can quickly be overrun with resumes and applications. As a result, it takes longer to find the candidates they want to interview and potentially hire, and by the time they do find them, those candidates are typically no longer available. Needless to say, that s a misuse of time, energy, and resources. On top of that, there s the cost of keeping a position open for an inordinate amount of time, not to mention the cost of a bad hire. The cost of the latter is especially expensive, depending upon the position involved. Taking all of that into consideration, below are four main reasons why companies use executive recruiting firms to find top talent: 1. Time savings As discussed above, a company s HR department can be overrun by resumes and applications, keeping it from making any substantial progress in its search for qualified candidates. Executive recruiters take care of almost everything, meaning that company officials can devote more time to their everyday tasks, increasing their productivity. 2. More passive candidates, less active job seekers While active job seekers aren t necessarily bad, chances are good that passive candidates aren t going to apply to online job postings. In fact, some of them aren t even really looking for a new job. However, they would be open to considering a new opportunity... IF that opportunity was presented to them. Executive recruiters know where these passive candidates are and how to present such opportunities. 3. A partner throughout the entire process A quality recruiting firm will partner with a company throughout the entire recruiting, interviewing, hiring, AND on-boarding process to ensure a successful hire is made. A recruiter s work is far from done once the candidate accepts the company s offer of employment. That makes the company s job far easier to accomplish. 4. Eyes and ears within the industry and in the marketplace Executive recruiters work in the trenches day in and day out. They know what s happening in the employment marketplace overall and their clients industry in particular. They know what the top talent is doing, and they know what the top companies are doing. This is all information to which companies want access, and they have access when they partner with a recruiting agency. Many companies partner with an experienced recruiting firm to find the candidates they want, and they do so for the reasons listed above. If you have an important position you need to fill or you want to stay more in tune with industry developments, align yourself with such a firm. 4

5 5 Reasons Why Using a RPO Firm Doesn t Work in a Specialized Niche Let me start by saying that I can certainly understand why companies would want to outsource all or part of their recruiting activities to an external service provider. After all, hiring is a crucial part of a company s ability to compete and grow in the marketplace, and the last thing its officials want is for it to suffer because they can t devote the proper amount of time to it. However, in the case of a specialized niche such as Animal Health, using a RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) agency is not the answer. One of my clients is an Animal Health company that was recently told by its parent company, which operates in the field of human pharmaceuticals, that it must use a RPO firm. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that doing so can be a waste of time, energy, and resources, ultimately resulting in a slower and less effective hiring process. Based on that experience, below are five reasons why Recruitment Process Outsourcing doesn t work well in a specialized niche: 1. It makes the hiring process longer. The hiring managers have to get approval from Human Resources, Human Resources outsources the search to the RPO firm, and then the RPO firm hires an outside recruiting agency (like mine). Why? Because in a specialized niche like Animal Health, an outside recruiting agency is the only one with the resources and experience necessary to find and recruit the candidates that are needed. 2. It complicates the hiring process. Using a RPO firm puts additional people between the hiring manager and the potential candidate. When I find candidates, I send them to the RPO firm, which then sends them to the hiring manager. It s like playing the telephone game; information can get lost because there are too many cooks in the kitchen, so to speak. 3. It s more frustrating for hiring managers. Since the process is more complicated and it takes longer, hiring managers experience more difficulty filling the company s open positions. The longer the hiring process takes, the more likely top candidates will drop out of that process, and the longer a position stays open, the more the company loses in the way of productivity. Loselose. 4. It jeopardizes the company s branding message. A company brands itself with every interaction it has with a candidate, because that candidate forms an opinion about the company. If a candidate has an unfavorable experience during the hiring process because of unnecessary complications, that candidate is not going to think poorly of the RPO firm... they re going to think poorly of the company doing the hiring. 5. It s more costly. Let s say that in the best-case scenario, a company does hire somebody when using a RPO firm. Well, then it has to pay two fees: it has to pay the RPO and it has to pay the outside recruiting agency. That alone should be enough to deter a company in a specialized niche from using a RPO firm. Talented people are an organization s most important asset. Why not handle your most important asset by using a successful and experienced recruiting agency in Animal Health, which knows the industry (and the top candidates within it) better than a generalist RPO firm? 5

6 The best process for recruiting and hiring in a specialized niche is when a recruiter has direct contact with the hiring manager and there is no RPO firm in the middle. It s simpler, it s faster, and ultimately, it s more effective. My connections are deep and wide, and a company does not have to go through a RPO firm in order to put them to work locating the best talent in the industry. All a company has to do is contact me. 6

7 There Are No Coincidences When It Comes to Hiring Top Talent Hiring the top talent in the marketplace is not a crapshoot. It s not a matter of dumb luck or good fortune, either. As a company, either you re doing what it is necessary to find, recruit, and hire the top people in the industry or you re not. I was recently talking with a professional in the Animal Health industry. He reached out to me to inquire about career opportunities for himself. During the course of our conversation, he mentioned that his current employer is opposed to recruiters and doesn t use them. In addition, he said that he doesn t know why that s the case, even though he s asked to use recruiters in the past because he s experienced difficulty finding and hiring top talent. The company s HR department told him that he could not use recruiters. As it happens, I know for a fact that the company has used recruiters in the past. That s because I ve placed some of the company s top people, and many of them have been there for years. In fact, I placed one of the most respected employees within the company. He s been there for more than 10 years, and he s contributed significantly to the organization during that time. Now, when I worked with this employer, they had some of the best talent in the industry. Top candidates wanted to work there, and I was able to help attract those candidates and place them at the company. Based on this recent conversation, plus others that I ve had with people in the marketplace, landing grade- A candidates has now become a challenge for this employer. Specifically, it has struggled to compete with other companies companies that are using recruiters to gain access to top talent. Is this a coincidence? I ve been in the business long enough to know that there are no coincidences when it comes to hiring top talent. When this company used recruiters, it had no trouble first identifying and then hiring some of the best candidates in the industry. Now that it doesn t use recruiters, it s clearly experiencing problems finding the candidates it needs to stay competitive. As mentioned above, companies do what it is necessary to find, recruit, and hire the top people in the industry or they don t. A if you post it, they will come approach does not produce exemplary results. What does produce exemplary results is enlisting the services of an experienced recruiting firm with a proven track record of success. For that, no coincidences are needed. 7

8 Why a Prescription Without a Diagnosis is Search Malpractice There s a reason why doctors and physicians diagnose what s wrong with their patient before choosing a course of action or providing a remedy in the form of a prescription. That s because if they don t know what s wrong in the first place, they won t be able to effectively solve the patient s problem and improve their health. Sounds like common sense, right? Well, you d be surprised by how many companies fail to conduct a proper diagnosis of their hiring needs before attempting to take a course of action (i.e., write a prescription. ) In fact, you might be surprised by how many search firms do the exact same thing, which only exacerbates the situation if a company has turned to them for expert advice. For a search to be effective and successful, a diagnosis of the company s hiring needs is paramount. To that end, there are a series of questions that should be asked before the process begins. What are the exact qualifications for this position? What is the job description for the position? Has the job description changed since the previous employee held it? If so, what about it has changed? To whom will this person report? Who will report to this person? What will be the on-boarding procedure for this new employee? Is this position part of a larger hiring need? If so, what is that need? Which managers and officials should be part of the hiring process? What role(s) will these managers and officials play in the process? What is the projected timeframe for this hire? (Hint: ASAP is not an acceptable answer.) Believe it or not, this is just a sampling of the questions that should be asked at the outset of any search. If you re not asking these questions, then the search firm you ve hired to conduct your search should be asking them. When it comes to hiring, one size does not fit all. Every search is different and unique and needs to approached and handled as such if the right candidate is to be identified and successfully recruited. Writing a hiring prescription without first conducting a diagnosis is the equivalent of search malpractice for companies looking to hire the best candidates available. Without first knowing exactly what you need and why you need it, you drastically reduce your chances of being able to get it. So be sure to secure the services of a firm that conducts a proper diagnosis, so you and your company can stay far away from search malpractice. 8

9 4 Ways Recruiting (and Hiring) Top Talent is Like Marketing It s a foregone conclusion that you have both a team within your company that is responsible for hiring new employees and a team that is responsible for marketing your company s products and/or services. However, did it ever occur to you that your hiring team could learn a thing or two from your marketing team? Well, it can, indeed, as pointed out in a recent article by Dan Finnegan titled Recruiting is Marketing 4 Lessons Your HR Team Can Learn From Your Marketing Department. According to the article, there are four ways that recruiting (and hiring) top talent is like marketing, which translates into the following four action steps: 1. Market (and then SELL) the opportunity. Your open positions need exposure, and they need it beyond an online job posting. Sure, social media is also an option, as well as your company s website, but using an experienced executive search firm will also help get your positions in front of more of the qualified candidates you want to interview. And once you start scheduling interviews, you must shift gears from marketing the position to effectively selling it. Let candidates know why the job is so great and why they would love to have it. 2. Build an organized recruiting process. Keep track of your candidates using a software database, or you can also use a search firm that already has a database of the top candidates in the industry and keeps in regular communication with them. Then make sure that your recruiting process is detailed and efficient and that everybody participating in it knows their role (and everybody else s role). To hire the best talent consistently, your process has to run like the proverbial well-oiled machine. 3. Stay top of mind and visible in the marketplace. Out of sight, out of mind is the rule and not the exception when it comes to passive candidates. They aren t going out of their way to find you. In fact, YOU have to go out of your way to find them... and then stay in front of them. This may be easier if you re a larger company, but smaller companies and start-ups might need to invest more time and energy in this area. 4. Always keep improving! Track the results of your efforts to promote your open positions, recruit top talent, and then hire that talent. Look at the best employees you ve hired during the past year. How did you hire them? What worked best? How about the best candidates you didn t hire? What went wrong in those instances? Analyzing and learning from mistakes is the best way to improve your recruiting and hiring process. Hiring new employees with a marketing mentality is one way to become proactive in your quest for the best candidates available in the industry. By contrast, companies that are reactive and believe that the best candidates are simply going to fall in their laps are apt to find that reality will stand in stark contrast to their expectations. 9

10 A REAL Recruiting Firm Helps Build Companies, Not Throws Resumes There are many recruiting firms working in the employment marketplace that tout themselves as a REAL recruiting firm. However, for quite a few of them, that is simply not the case... and here s why. A REAL recruiting firm partners with companies, making a commitment to help build them up and achieve grow through the identification, recruiting, and hiring of exceptional candidates that become topperforming employees. A firm that is not a REAL recruiting firm does not make a commitment with a long-term vision in mind. Instead, its recruiters focus more on the short term, throwing resumes, so to speak, in an effort to see what sticks. The central difference between these two types of firms is that the REAL recruiting firm is primarily concerned with filling the position with the absolute best candidate possible first and the recruiting fee second. The other firm is concerned primarily with the recruiting fee first and filling the position with the best candidate possible second... if at all. Needless to say, the first firm is the one that provides the best candidates and gets the best results for its clients, even if it takes a little longer and involves more work to do so. Below are five things that a REAL recruiting firm will not do: 1. Present candidates that are not qualified in terms of skills, experience, or both 2. Present candidates without a proven track record of success 3. Present candidates that would not be a good fit within the organization, culture or otherwise 4. Attempt to make a candidate look better than they actually are in the hopes of filling the position more quickly 5. Throw resumes at a company without meticulously screening the candidates to make sure that they are definitely a fit for the position What has been your experience working with recruiting firms? How many of them would you classify as REAL recruiting firm? Which ones would you not classify as such? Make sure that any firm with which you partner is just that a partner in the entire recruiting and hiring process. You want a firm that s committed to the long-term growth and health of your company... and not distracted by the short-term financial gain of a quick recruiting fee. 10

11 6 Things Companies MUST Do When Extending an Offer of Employment When it comes extending an offer of employment to candidates, companies would love for candidates to accept their offer every single time. In fact, there are those in the recruitment industry who believe that an offer should not be extended unless it s known with 100% certainty that the offer is going to be accepted. In theory, this makes perfect sense, since because in theory, the interviewing and hiring process has proceeded exactly as planned for all parties involved. But in practice, this is not always the case. Companies make offers and candidates reject offers, and sometimes it seems as though the rate of rejection has been increasing in recent years. That s why it s more important than ever for companies to ensure that they make a minimum of mistakes during the interviewing and hiring process especially during the offer stage. With that in mind, below are six things that companies MUST do when extending an offer of employment: 1. Communicate. Candidates want feedback, not just during the offer stage, but throughout the entire process. If you don t communicate and provide timely feedback at the beginning, by the time the offer stage rolls around, you might not even have their full attention. 2. Set expectations. Let the candidate know what is going to happen and what they can expect. This will put them more at ease, and as a result, they ll be able to concentrate more on what your company has to offer and how beneficial it would be to work there. 3. Follow through and follow up. Do what you say you re going to do... when you say you re going to do it. This is the best way to build trust throughout the process, and the more a candidate trusts you, the more likely they ll be to accept your offer when you present it. 4. Address the candidate s primary motivation. Why do they want to change jobs? More specifically, what s the number-one reason? If you don t address that reason, then you sharply reduce the likelihood that they re going to accept your offer. 5. Be consistent with what you re offering. The candidate should have a fairly good idea of what the offer is going to contain. If you plan to surprise them with anything, make sure that it s a pleasant surprise (i.e., something they weren t expecting, but are happy to be offered). 6. Let your recruiter make the formal offer. This is perhaps the most important thing that a company can do. The candidate has been working with the recruiter throughout the entire process. In the majority of cases, they expect the recruiter to be the one who formally makes the offer. In this fashion, it s much like a real estate transaction. The buyer doesn t make an offer to the seller directly. Instead, they work through an agent. We ve seen the company attempt to bypass the recruiter on a number of occasions, and more than once, the candidate was put off and rejected the offer, leaving company officials to wonder what had happened. It s an unfortunate situation, but also one that s completely avoidable. 11

12 How many offers has your company made to candidates during the pat 12 months? How many of those offers were accepted and how many were rejected? Are those acceptable percentages? How many of the items listed above are part of your to-do list during the offer stage? If you re neglecting some (or all) of these items, then an audit of your process should be conducted. After all, your ability to recruit and hire strong talent is only as good as the strength of your recruiting and hiring process. 12

13 3 Reasons Why Hunting for Talent is Better Than Trying to Gather It Question: Three organizations were acquired. What did all three of these organizations have in common? Answer: They were not utilizing outside recruiting firms. That spawns another question: Is this a coincidence... or perhaps a cautionary tale for companies regarding their philosophies about recruiting and hiring? It could very well be the latter. While these organizations were cutting costs and not investing in resources to help them hire the best talent, their competitors were doing just the opposite. As a result, they struggled, they didn t grow, and eventually they were bought. I recently heard Bill Self, the head men s basketball coach at the University of Kansas, speak at the Animal Health Homecoming Dinner. During his speech, he talked about how the team or organization that has the best talent is almost always the one that wins. Does Bill Self know what he s talking about? Well, he s led Kansas to 10 straight Big 12 Conference regular-season championships. It seems as though the man knows a thing or two about talent. So what is the connection between these three companies that were acquired and Bill Self? If you want to win as a company, you have to invest in obtaining and retaining the best talent. It is very difficult to do this without enlisting the help of a good external search consultant, someone who makes their living by identifying the best talent in the industry. However, to take things a step further, there are reasons why an external search firm is more effective than relying on internal recruiters. To use a simple analogy, external recruiters are hunters, while internal recruiters are usually gatherers. Below are three reasons why hunting for the best talent is better than trying to gather it: 1. The majority of top talent is not actively looking for a new job. First of all, they re employed. Second of all, they re very busy. That means simply finding them requires a proactive approach ( hunting as opposed to gathering ). 2. Top talent MUST be recruited. Even if you find these candidates, in most cases they must be convinced to consider your opportunity. You have to instill interest in them and convince them that your opportunity is the next big step in their career trajectory. 3. You can t gather talent from your competition. If the best talent in the industry includes people who are working at your competitors, do you expect them to come knocking on your door? More than likely, they will not. Recruiting and hiring a top employee from one of your competitors is a major coup for your company, in more ways than one. The three organizations that were acquired were not hunting for talent with an external search firm. The extent of their recruiting strategy more than likely consisted of gathering what they could. You can t find the best talent with that strategy. 13

14 Gatherers gather resumes from job board postings. Hunters find the best talent and recruit the best talent. Which would you choose? 14