Recruiters!! Are You Actively Recruiting Passively?

How many passive candidates are you in contact with today? Do you have any phone or in person meetings with passive candidates this week? If your answer is no, then it is time to change that answer.

Recruiting in this new economy is tougher than it has been in many years. I have asked many industry vets with 20+ years of recruiting under their belts what they think of this current job market. They all have told me that this is the worst they have ever seen it. Companies are really taking their time to find the “perfect” candidate.

So if you are recruiting for a client and your candidate has some glitch in their background, you can count on them being put on hold in hopes for a better option later on.

What is causing this mass procrastination by employers? There are three main culprits:

1. Per position it is not unlikely for an HR professional to receive 200+ applicants. Pre-recession, most of those 200 applicants would not have met the qualifications for the job. Today, many of those 200 applicants are highly qualified for the job. So employers have a larger pool of qualified candidates to select from.
2. More than ever before you are competing with in-house recruiters who cost a lot less than your professional fees.
3. Employers are hiring passively and are not in a hurry to expand their workforce. That is not expected to change till Q2 2010.

Today, the only way to add value to your clients is to differentiate your talent pool from all of their other sources. Keep in mind, their in-house recruiters are on all the job boards already. They are using other recruiting services who are also on all the job boards. And active candidates are applying with them in hordes.  So don’t waste your time recruiting from job boards. You will be broke by the end of the year!

What you can do to rise above all this activity is to present candidates that they could not find without you.  These are folks who are still employed and meet all the criteria that your client is looking for and haven’t updated their resume in 5+ years. Believe it or not, employers will pay more for this type of candidate under current economic conditions. The element of security and proven expertise is very valuable right now.  This is why a truly passive candidate has great value in this job market.

This is no knock against the highly qualified candidates who are actively in the job market, but to compete we have to produce better results.

Passive recruiting is a 24/7 activity. Your call volume needs to be in the 50 – 70 range on a daily basis. Be responsive and stay focused. There is a lot of money to be made and its being made by those of us who are presenting truly passive candidates. My pipeline is full of passive technical candidates who I attract or reach out to on a daily basis.

I am recruiting candidates today that I might not place for 6 months to a year from now. But the seeds I am planting now will bear the same fruit that I am feeding off from seeds I planted last year. I want you to do the same as well. So scour your data sources and start connecting with everyday professionals who are in the market.

Keep in mind, “networking” is a loose translation of “passive recruiting”.  And networking can and should be done all the time. By doing so, you will find great candidates at the grocery store, amongst friends, on Facebook, at seminars… all over. Just keep your eyes and ears open and keep your business card handy!

Part 3: The 3 “M’s” of Technical Recruiting and What Makes Technical Candidates Different

What are you motivated by? Money? Recognition? Bills? I am motivated by achieving the highest quality of life for me and those around me. This is just one of my motivations. If you are like me, then you are motivated by a number of things, not just one. My motivations guide each decision I make.

When recruiting, I have found that by understanding the motivation behind your candidate will give you a better idea of what decision they are likely to make. Will they accept your job offer or will they hold out for a better opportunity. These choices are guided by the things that motivate them and if you don’t know what they are; then you might as well turn off the lights and go home!

When I was a Top 10 biller at the world’s largest recruiting company, I was taking the time to understand the motivation behind my candidates. When I first started recruiting, I was just asking canned interview questions and got nowhere fast. In an environment where my job security was based on the number of candidates I placed, I learned very quickly what it took to get the candidates placed with my clients.

This brings us to the 3rd and final “M”; Motivation. In the last 2 parts of The 3 “M’s” of Technical Recruiting I talked about Marketing and Management. Motivation is the ingredient that ties it all together. So how do you find out what is motivating your candidate?

I have a good friend who is a Software Engineer. We have known each other for 10 years. He and I met on a project I needed his expertise on. I originally hired him to help me write some code on a website for one of my companies. Later he and I became friends out of mutual respect for one another’s area of specialization.

Over the years I have made a lot of friends with technical backgrounds in this way and they all have a common theme in their job requirements. Complexity. Technical candidates are highly motivated by things that are “complex” and “cool”. For example if you offer an Electrical Engineer two choices: 1) Developing electrical layouts for a control unit that waters large golf courses. 2) Developing electrical layouts for the flight module on an unmanned space drone. Which one do you think the EE will take assuming all else is equal?

From my experience, the EE is going to work on the space drone. Engineers and other technical folks love to be challenged. They thrive on learning new technologies and contributing to the latest and greatest products being used today. Of course technical professionals are motivated by money, family, lifestyle… pretty much everyone is. But they differ in the amount of complexity they want out of their work.

I don’t want a lot of complexity in my work, because that will only hold me back. My line of work is complex enough to keep me up at night writing in my blog. I don’t need more. But I know Engineers who I talk to every day that tell me they want to be challenged or want to learn some new technology. Right now everyone wants to go green with the rest of the New Energy drivers. Hey, I can’t blame them, I too want to go green and recruit in that budding industry.

So when you are recruiting your next technical candidate… go ahead and ask them about a tough work situation they have been in and how they handled it. But if you want to know what their hot buttons are, find out what technology motivates them and see if that is offered in your job opportunity. Also ask them if any other job they are reviewing offers this same technology. If it does not and yours does, then I can almost guarantee you have your next placement in the bag.

As usual, don’t take my word for it… give it a shot!

Part 2: The 3 “M’s” of Technical Recruiting and What Makes Technical Candidates Different

In part 1 we discussed the first “M” : Marketing. We learned why it is crucial as recruiters to help our highly technical candidates market themselves effectively throughout the job search process.

The 2nd “M” is Management. In this section we are going to learn the best management style for highly technical professionals. This knowledge is important because it will help you match your top candidates with the most desirable managers. Ultimately this will lead to happier candidates which will lead to more referrals from your candidates and more business from your clients.

Hands down the best and most prefered management style for the most technical of hi-tech candidates is the Participatory Style. There are 3 reasons why this is the ideal style.

1. Leverage
2. Ownership
3. Space

Starting with Leverage. Let’s face it, technical professionals are smart. I am smart, but not that kind of smart. I can solve challenging problems but don’t ask me to put a biosphere on the moon. That requires a whole different kind of smarts. And in order to leverage that brand of smarts, you have to let the technical professional participate in the early stages of the project. There are things this person knows that management does not know. And it will be highly beneficial to the overall success of the project if all the brains with the high IQ’s contribute to the project plan.

Once management has gathered the necessary input, then the project can be outlined and duties passed out. This method of gathering information and then repackaging it and distributing it can be found most abundantly in the Participatory Style of  Management. It’s also the best way to achieve point number 2.

Ownership. Techies know they are smart, but every now and again they need to show people how smart they are and also face a challenge that requires them to crank out some powerful mental wattage. We all need this stuff, it’s called an ego boost. And when you allow a highly technical professional to contribute in the early stages of the project, then they will have a higher sense of involvement and ownership of the overall project. This gets them  intimately involved with the project and failure of the project becomes highly unacceptable. They will feel like  critical piece of the bigger puzzle as opposed to an interchangeable part of an ongoing project.

Lastly, they need Space to operate. Remember, technical professionals are smart and very capable of operating independently. They have worked long and hard to be good at very complex things. So managers who understand that have the confidence to give them the space they need to work.  They will give them the objective and latitude to execute, and will get the best results. Technical professionals thrive in this enviroment because they are given the freedom to use their special skills to tackle a specific problem.

On the other hand, if a manager unilaterally decides the course of the project and then tells each person what to do and demands it done by a certain point; this will inevitable lead to a highly toxic environment with very high turnover. They see this Directorial Style of Management an insult to their intelligence, demotivating and highly undesirable.

Although there are many management styles. These three key elements can readily be achieved by the Participatory Style of Management. And of the hundreds upon hundreds of technical candidates that I have interviewed, all of them prefer to work for an intelligent manager who manages in this way.

So when you find yourself representing a highly technical professional, pair them up with clients that offer this type of work environment. Your candidate will thank you for it and will gladly refer their highly sought after technical buddies to you. Don’t take it from me, just ask your technical candidate this question during your next interview with them: “What management style do you prefer best?”

Part 3: Motivation

Part 1: The 3 "M's" of Technical Recruiting and What Makes Technical Candidates Different

Naturally a medical professional is different from a finance guru. But asides from the traditional differences, technical professionals have a few things that are specifically unique to them. From the hundreds if not thousands of technical job seekers I have interviewed and/or placed over the past 5 – 8 years, I have been able to define 3 critical factors that are a common amongst all of them.

I call these defining factors the 3 M’s of Technical Professionals. And here they are:

1. Marketing
2. Management
3. Motivation

I am going to explain how each M relates to a technical candidate and why it is not only crucial but absolutely necessary to remember the 3 M’s of Technical Professionals if you plan on succeeding as a technical recruiter.

The first M is Marketing. The more technical and scientific the professional, the less they are able to market themselves in a business sense. They can talk all the technical jargon from their projects point of view, but to summarize the end result of their effort or maybe explain the larger picture of the project is something they really don’t have to do on a day-to-day basis. As a result if you don’t know what to ask, you may never find the hidden gems in their background that your client needs.

 

Most technical professionals that I have come across are very smart so this has nothing to do with their intelligence. But if you consider that for the past X number of years your technical candidate has never had to explain the overall scope of his or her skills and how it is applied to the bottom line, don’t expect them to do it when they are being interviewed by your client.  The only way to accomplish this is to understand them and help them develop a sales pitch that they will deliver during their interview.

A perfect real world example of this can be found in one of my more rewarding placements. I met a professional who I chose to represent on a critical requirement for my top client.  He had a PhD, worked for Intel for the past 12 years and had an IQ through the roof. But he kept getting disqualified over and over again during each interview he had been on before I met him.  He wanted to move to a better city for his family and that was his primary motivation to making a job change. But for the life of him, he could not understand why he was not winning in interviews. After few minutes of speaking with him, I knew exactly why he was getting the cold shoulder from recruiters, hiring managers and other HR professionals.

His biggest problem was that he was too technical in his conversation and he did not relate what he had done to what the new opportunity wanted. And the types of things he did were so technical that most people were just not understanding him. The frustration of all the hits and misses made him nervous during interviews which resulted in him talking too much and trying to oversell himself. My assessment of him was that he was a technological genius just not really good at demonstrating that to people.

Over the course of 3 weeks I coached him day and night. I invested a lot of time learning all of the projects that he had worked on and how they related to the position I had him in mind for. To achieve this, I had to ask a lot of questions and I had to drill deeper after each question. What this did was help him understand what I was looking for and it helped me to develop his selling points. It took some time, but we finally got his sales pitch down. He was no longer the rambling techie.  He now was an Embedded Firmware Engineer who had recently completed projects working with the specific technologies that my client was looking for. And his application of these technologies was right in line with the positions requirements.

 

After a phone interview and an in person interview, my client could not hire him fast enough. He went into the interview and hit on all the points we had talked about. The marketing strategy worked!

They gave him the royal treatment with a full relocation package worth over $50k, a sign on bonus and a significant raise. And it was in a city where my candidate dreamed of being in. After he settled into his new house he told me, “John, no recruiter before you helped me in the way that you did. Now there are mountains outside the window of my new home, thank you very much”.

He is now working on the technology that is used in the most advanced weaponry that the US military uses in its current wars. It’s not that he was unqualified for all the other positions he interviewed for, he just could not market himself very well. And this is common with a lot of highly technical professionals.

This is a real life example of why helping technical professionals market themselves is critical. Our job as technical recruiters is to really pull out the “wow factors” from our technical candidates. We know what they market wants they do what the market wants… bridge the gap and you will fund unlimited success!

Next M: Management

Part 1: The 3 “M’s” of Technical Recruiting and What Makes Technical Candidates Different

Naturally a medical professional is different from a finance guru. But asides from the traditional differences, technical professionals have a few things that are specifically unique to them. From the hundreds if not thousands of technical job seekers I have interviewed and/or placed over the past 5 – 8 years, I have been able to define 3 critical factors that are a common amongst all of them.

I call these defining factors the 3 M’s of Technical Professionals. And here they are:

1. Marketing
2. Management
3. Motivation

I am going to explain how each M relates to a technical candidate and why it is not only crucial but absolutely necessary to remember the 3 M’s of Technical Professionals if you plan on succeeding as a technical recruiter.

The first M is Marketing. The more technical and scientific the professional, the less they are able to market themselves in a business sense. They can talk all the technical jargon from their projects point of view, but to summarize the end result of their effort or maybe explain the larger picture of the project is something they really don’t have to do on a day-to-day basis. As a result if you don’t know what to ask, you may never find the hidden gems in their background that your client needs.

 

Most technical professionals that I have come across are very smart so this has nothing to do with their intelligence. But if you consider that for the past X number of years your technical candidate has never had to explain the overall scope of his or her skills and how it is applied to the bottom line, don’t expect them to do it when they are being interviewed by your client.  The only way to accomplish this is to understand them and help them develop a sales pitch that they will deliver during their interview.

A perfect real world example of this can be found in one of my more rewarding placements. I met a professional who I chose to represent on a critical requirement for my top client.  He had a PhD, worked for Intel for the past 12 years and had an IQ through the roof. But he kept getting disqualified over and over again during each interview he had been on before I met him.  He wanted to move to a better city for his family and that was his primary motivation to making a job change. But for the life of him, he could not understand why he was not winning in interviews. After few minutes of speaking with him, I knew exactly why he was getting the cold shoulder from recruiters, hiring managers and other HR professionals.

His biggest problem was that he was too technical in his conversation and he did not relate what he had done to what the new opportunity wanted. And the types of things he did were so technical that most people were just not understanding him. The frustration of all the hits and misses made him nervous during interviews which resulted in him talking too much and trying to oversell himself. My assessment of him was that he was a technological genius just not really good at demonstrating that to people.

Over the course of 3 weeks I coached him day and night. I invested a lot of time learning all of the projects that he had worked on and how they related to the position I had him in mind for. To achieve this, I had to ask a lot of questions and I had to drill deeper after each question. What this did was help him understand what I was looking for and it helped me to develop his selling points. It took some time, but we finally got his sales pitch down. He was no longer the rambling techie.  He now was an Embedded Firmware Engineer who had recently completed projects working with the specific technologies that my client was looking for. And his application of these technologies was right in line with the positions requirements.

 

After a phone interview and an in person interview, my client could not hire him fast enough. He went into the interview and hit on all the points we had talked about. The marketing strategy worked!

They gave him the royal treatment with a full relocation package worth over $50k, a sign on bonus and a significant raise. And it was in a city where my candidate dreamed of being in. After he settled into his new house he told me, “John, no recruiter before you helped me in the way that you did. Now there are mountains outside the window of my new home, thank you very much”.

He is now working on the technology that is used in the most advanced weaponry that the US military uses in its current wars. It’s not that he was unqualified for all the other positions he interviewed for, he just could not market himself very well. And this is common with a lot of highly technical professionals.

This is a real life example of why helping technical professionals market themselves is critical. Our job as technical recruiters is to really pull out the “wow factors” from our technical candidates. We know what they market wants they do what the market wants… bridge the gap and you will fund unlimited success!

Next M: Management

The Human Element

I recently conducted a survey of professionals who concluded a job search within the last few months. My main objective was to get feedback from them in regards to any experience they had with recruiters during their search. Although I was not surprised by their responses, I was troubled by one common theme: poor communication and/or feedback.

I believe as recruiters we often forget that we are dealing with human beings and not just candidates or our next placement. There are many pressures on recruiters to be as systematic and mechanical as possible. Some of us have quotas, others are on 100% commission plans that make every second of our time extremely valuable. 

But that is not an excuse for disregarding the professional dignity that I believe is the right of every human we come in contact with.

One thing that has helped me to be a successful recruiter is my perspective. I always try to understand the human needs that my candidates have. I do this by simply asking and genuinely caring about who they are and why they are looking outside of salary, benefits, etc… 

Often times I discover that the engineer I am talking to is not just someone who designs widgets for XYZ company. He is somone’s dad who needs to increase his income to pay for his teens college education. The programmer I  got a call from is someone’s aunt who is  in a very toxic environment that is making her sick, literally.  Although these are fictional examples, I have hundreds of real examples that are very similar to this.

With this in mind, how can I not return a call or how can I not invest the time to set up a system that keeps people with such serious needs in the loop. They called me to help them find a solution to a problem they are having. And it is an honor to have the opportunity to help them resolve it. We are recruiters this is what we do!

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t call everyone that applies to my opportunities, that is nearly impossible especially if they are not qualified. But, if I tell someone I am going to call them or follow up with them; then that is exactly what I am going to do. And everyone get’s an “auto-response” email, just to let them know that I have received their correspondence.

The net result of this level of service and professionalism is referrals, job orders and insider tips. These perks come with relationships that are built by extending common professional dignity to people.

As recruiter’s we are given the opportunity every day to improve peoples lives. It is a great responsibility to ask someone to change jobs or move from one city to another. And if we want to be successful and build long lasting relationships that lead to the big dollars then we need to do a much better job of sticking to our promises.

Not all recruiters are like this, I know many top shelf recruiters who are dedicated to their craft and would do anything for their candidates or clients. But if you are struggling to make it or or are new to the game, then this is the first and foremost quality that you need to master before you can achieve any level of sustainable success!