How To Become A SUCCESSFUL Corporate Recruiter!

How do you go from being a corporate recruiter to a SUCCESSFUL corporate recruiter?

You have to break the rules! Lou Adler says you have to break the rules because the old rules don’t work anymore.

Some of Lou’s thoughts:

1. Stop using traditional job descriptions when taking an assignment from a hiring manager. Instead find out what the person needs to do to ace the performance review. These are the same performance objectives  provided to new hires during the onboarding process, so it makes sense to use the same approach when defining the new job. Also, by clarifying job objectives up- front you get buy-in from the hiring manager, the interviewing team, and the candidates before the person is hired. This list of performance objectives is called a performance profile.

2. Don't allow candidates to decide if they’re interested in the job. Instead you determine if you're interested in them. To pull this off, you need to be a bit vague about the job, move a bit slower, and get the candidate to describe his or her background first. If you determine the job represents a real career move, you can then reel the person in. If not, you can get some great referrals by asking the person about some of their LinkedIn connections.

3. Dump traditional behavioral event interviewing since, according to Lou, it doesn't help hire better people or more accurately assess the candidate’s ability to ace the performance review. To replace it, try these two foolproof questions that will enable you  to defend your candidates from managers who are superficial interviewers, including those who still use behavioral event interviewing.

Lou says, "One of the questions involves getting a very detailed example for each of the performance objectives listed on the performance profile. This generally takes 15-20 minutes each and we assign each interviewer a few to dig into. We then share this evidence in a formal debriefing session when evaluating the candidate. This process naturally eliminates the superficial thumbs-up or down voting process, by going narrow and deep rather than broad and shallow when conducting the interview."

4. Don't use KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) and competency models when screening candidates. Part of the problem here is hiring the supposedly “well-qualified” person who doesn’t want to do the work required, or doesn’t fit too well with the hiring manager, team or company culture. The other problem is eliminating great people with a slightly different mix of KSAs who are demonstrated top performers. Many of these are vets and diverse candidates who have non-traditional backgrounds, so this opens up a new pool of top performers for us.

For an example of how this works, just consider all of your best employees who get promoted internally or transferred to bigger jobs. They all have less of the K and S, and more of the A, M (motivation to do the work listed on the performance profile) and T (ability to work with and influence comparable team members). During the phone screen have the candidates describe their most significant accomplishment. I then look at what KSAs, behaviors, and competencies they used to accomplish these results. Surprisingly, some of the best people have far less experience than would have been expected given their performance. These are the high performers you present to your clients.

5. Don't sell candidates on the job; have them sell you. During the screening and interviewing process, look for career gaps and voids between the candidate’s major accomplishments and the performance objectives listed on the performance profile (e.g., scope, span of control, budget, impact). Ask candidates to tell you about comparable accomplishments they’ve handled that required them to stretch themselves. You learn a great deal about a candidate this way, and in the process of convincing you that their qualified, they’re also convincing themselves that this job offers a real career move. This not only makes the compensation less important, but it also allows the candidate to convince his or her friends and family that your position offers the most upside potential among other competing opportunities.

So there you have it. Be prepared to break the rules and, in the process, you'll hire more great people than ever before. If you want more ideas from a fresh perspective send us an email at info@mittonmedia.com.