You will not believe this....

Recently I was attempting to secure a position with a large financial services organization as a Sr Talent Acquisition Specialist. I did what I do and I went to LinkedIn and searched for the VP of Talent Acquisition and called. To my pleasant surprise I was immediately connected to the person, not a voice mail! In the course of my conversation I was told that the organization does not accept phone calls from candidates or resumes sent directly to the recruiters. I was told that if one of the "excellent recruiters on the team" determined that I was a "fit" for the position I would be contacted. This was stated in a very professional cordial manner and I was complimented for my tenacity. I did attempt to overcome the objection to the call and my asking to send a resume directly to a recruiter or calling the recruiter three times and was denied three times, again with the utmost professionalism. I do respect the VP's position. I was informed that because of the volume of applicants that managing individual contacts was unproductive.

Wait, this is a Talent Acquisition position we are discussing correct? Aren't Talent Acquisition professionals tenacious by definition? We hunt, source and seek out new Talent by definition, correct? When I was managing Talent Acquisition pros I was impressed if they called a Sr Manager directly to introduce themselves and the reason for the call. I encouraged and modeled the behavior. I have had a successful career doing this and I have trained others who are currently being successful using this technique among others to the "right thing."

If organizations want to Post and Pray when seeking a specialized talent/skill set so be it. I would be so bold as to say good luck and if you don't want to interview a Talent Acquisition Specialist that is tenacious, then you may want to re-think your Talent Acquisition Strategy or do much praying. Just saying...

A Warm Cold Call for the Passive Candidate

I have never liked the phrase Cold Call. When I was trained to become a Recruiter, we learned to use the phrase Warm Call. Well, after all, that is what the inititial call is isn't it? If the call is cold you will, well be cold. The candidate or client for that matter will be cold. It is really that simple. I don't need any "guru" to tell me differently.

I was recently interviewed on the @Animal Radio Show http://snurl.com/fzl4i. During the interview I was asked to Warm Call a Passive Candidate. This was unrehearsed and improvised. Here is the 10 minute audio clip http://cli.gs/coldcall. I will let the clip speak for itself and allow you to think what you would like to. The Passive Candidate is Craig Fisher of http://www.alistsolutions.com/ and @Fishdogs.

Social Recruiting...all that Twitters may not be a Glitter

After I participated in the @animal http://cli.gs/DBSPy9 Radio Show I became more introspective about how I use Social Media as a Social Recruiting tool. What do I use SM for? How do I integrate SM with Full Life Cycle Recruiting? How do I use SM to source new Client Partners and new Human Capital Partners? I am defining SM as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Blogs. I am sure there are more, but for the sake of this article these will suffice. I have my own bias of LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs and telephone with a healthy component of Boolean Searches to glean information.

What happens after I Source Human Capital Partners and Client Partners using all of these SM tools? Is my work completed? Do I simply introduce the two to each other and receive compensation, a multitude of referrals for new business and move to the next project?

I think not. As a Human Capital Specialist I must build a relationship personally with the Human Capital Partner and Client Partner, This relationship is built on trust. I establish this thru frequent, meaningful and professional contact with both parties. I ask the questions embedded with the Power Words "Who, What, Why, Where When and How of both Partners. I discuss with them how I have conducted myself in similar scenarios. I assist them in identifying and defining their challenges and how my brand can meet those challenges by eliciting their buy in. We create a partnership. My skills facilitate this, not SM. SM maybe the delivery mechanism for this, but SM does not make it happen. I use SM as a way of verifying what was agreed upon, better said I use email to verify and validate the level of commitment of all involved. I use the telephone to actually build the relationships with my Partners, wow what a surprise-:)! A series of in person meetings when possible is the best way, but present day logistics make this challenging. Together with my Partners we measure our progress, make adjustments and achieve our mutual goal; the hire.

My skills at asking questions as a Human Capital Specialist, which include the use of Social Media, may qualify me as a Social Recruiter. But I was successfully recruiting by using my social skills long before the Social Media tools existed as many of you were. Now we have evolved and adapted. Social Darwinism applied to Human Capital Acquisition and Client Partner development?

That is my take.

The Dreaded Word...Metrics

In my experience most Recruiters or Human Capital Sourcing and Talent Acquisition Specialists (I like writing that:)) dread the word Metrics. I will agree that in our profession the most basic Metric is number of hires in a defined time frame ie 30, 60, 90 etc days. Oversimplified? Yes I do believe it is.

Metrics is much more than that. Metrics, when used correctly, is a road map for the successful hires. Allow me to outline some KPIs.

• Date position was opened and made available to the Talent Pool.
• Number of Candidate Partners applied thru the ATS and whatever other tool (s) used ie Job Boards.
• Number of Candidate Partners Sourced, this includes passive candidates.
• Number of employee referred Candidate Partners. I have seen numbers that indicate 30% or more of a company's hires take place thru this mechanism.
• Number of Internal Candidate Partners.
• Number of Candidate Partners interviewed by the Recruiter.
• Number of Recruiter Candidate Partners that were interviewed submitted to the Hiring Manager Partner.
• Number of days from when the Candidate Partner applied to the interview with the Recruiter.
• Number of days from when the Candidate Partner was interviewed by the Hiring Manger Partner.
• Number of days for the Hiring Manager Partner to make an offer to the Candidate Partner.
• Number days from when the Candidate Partner, who was made the offer, applied to the position.
• Number of days from when the offer was extended to the Candidate Partner to accept or decline the offer.

There are many ways for us to dissect and analyze this data. These are by no means all of the KPIs, but this does give us an impetuous for discussion. An Excel spread sheet can be built to record and average this data quite readily. This data can be a powerful tool for Recruiters, HR Partners and Hiring Manager Partners to analyze "productive activity".

Thoughts on where we are........

I am very confused. Not that is not a normal state of mind for me lately, but more so than ever. My confusion is about the current state of our profession. There are many excellent Recruiters, Talent Acquisition Specialists and Sourcers employed and looking for employment. From the many on line resources we have access to we all see much of the same information regarding all of the open positions in virtually every occupation. We are all overwhelmed with 24x7 information from all media with unemployment figures. Most recently 667,000 claims last week.

Have you all noticed that there are so many openings and so many potential candidates: I ask who is going to work? Who is putting these candidates to work? I had a very interesting conversation the other day with Ami Givertz from RecruitingBlogs.com. Ami is a very intelligent person. He mentioned that there is a geographical push at work here. As they say in Real Estate; “location, location, location.” The jobs just are not where the people are for the most part or vice versa. I agree very strongly with this. There are many qualified candidates that simply cannot relocate for a variety of reasons. Oh yeah, has anyone relocated recently and had to move an entire household? The cost is staggering. From what I know, a company is not going to pay relocation for an Oracle DBA or an SAP person. You all understand this.

This is the background for what my issue is: What can Recruiters do about this? I have no answer but I do have some thoughts about this. Deeply engage your candidate partner in the entire process of what they are experiencing and expecting. Be responsive to the candidate partner. Work diligently with your client partner to help the Hiring Manager or HR person understand that feedback from them is crucial to the candidate and in filling the position. Set a schedule with both the candidate partner and the client partner for when you will be expecting feedback to share with both partners. Be transparent with the candidate partner and client partner. At all costs avoid the Black Hole; Information flowing only in one direction.