The Recruiting Blog | People First Recruiting

Truth to be told, we are not a contingency recruiting firm so this will be one of the more difficult blogs for me to write.  However prior to joining People First I spent over 15 years as Branch Manager of a few national contingency recruiting firms and I was once a big believer of the model.

With contingency recruitment you are not required to pay a recruiter a placement fee until you have selected your ideal candidate – “payment is contingent upon hire of candidate”.  The other key differentiator with contingency verses retained (which I will discuss in a later blog) is that you are not working with the recruitment firm exclusively.  You can continue to search on your own and work with multiple firms if you so choose.

Here are my views of the pros and cons:

Pros

• You don't pay fees unless the recruiter refers you a hireable candidate
• You can still recruit for the position on your own
• The recruitment can be cancelled at anytime with no fees charged
• You can work with as many recruiting firms as you choose
• You could receive a lot of resumes - fast
• You should have a lot of candidates to interview
• You may be able to negotiate fees

Cons

• You will generally hire a candidate that is available to you quickly but they may not necessarily be the right 'fit', resulting in turnover
• The chance for disputes is higher since the placement will be awarded to the recruiting firm that presents the resume first – determining “who got there first” can be very awkward
• Because of the "who got there first" point, a thorough and targeted search specific to your company and the role is rarely, if ever, performed
• You could face some potentially embarrassing candidate situations if the candidates are working with multiple recruiting firms
• Managing the communication and referral processes of one, two or even more recruiting firms can be challenging
• It takes much longer to bring the recruitment to a successful conclusion

Earlier I wrote that I was a big believer in the contingency fee model. Why?  Because once upon a time I felt that a Recruiter does not add value until the right candidate is found.  I don’t believe that any longer.  My belief now is that finding the right candidate is the end result of a strong, mutually rewarding partnership and, the value we provide the client and candidate leading up to the hire. 

A couple months ago I wrote a whitepaper called “Maximizing Your Recruiter Relationship”.  It gives companies simple tips for hiring and working with a Recruiter to ensure a successful partnership.  From a company perspective, the big question always is “what's this recruitment going to cost me?” 

Over the next few weeks I will be blogging about recruiting fees.  First up though is a summary of what you, the company, should get from the recruiting fees you are charged. 

The job posting

• A job posting is a tool to advertise the job.  There is an art to writing an effective job profile especially once you consider search optimization and key words.  A Recruiter that understands online search techniques knows how to write job profiles so your ad can be found online.  Finally a well networked Recruiter has the contacts to send the job profile to, as well as a library list of free job boards, associations and industry networks. 

Finding candidates

• Print and online advertising alone does not guarantee you results.  That is the “let’s wait and see what we get” mentality.  Sometimes timing works out perfectly though and you hire a candidate from an ad, but did you get the best candidate?  Unless you conduct a search you really don’t have the answer to that.  Recruiters go to the market and search.  They will identify companies or like companies in your industry where candidates are performing similar jobs.  They will identify competitors.  They will look for industry thought leaders. 

Interviewing

• If the Recruiter isn’t certified in Behavioural Based Interviewing at the very least most will have training.  Behavioural Interviewing is based on the theory that the best predictor of future success is past performance.  This method of interviewing allows for a more structured and fair assessment process and it takes away the “gut feeling”.  Fit is also assessed.  Recruiters interview every single day so they are quite skilled at it. 

Reference checking

• A good reference checker knows how to listen for cues, they don’t accept just any answer.  They know to probe, to ask the individual for more information to get an honest reference.  It’s amazing how many companies don’t do references before hiring an employee.  This step in itself is worth the money.

Simply put you are paying a Recruiter to find a candidate, qualify a candidate and present a short list of candidates.  Stay tuned for more blog posts on exclusive, retained, contingency searches, guarantees, refunds, credits and so on.

We tweet, we blog and we Facebook (is that a verb now?). 

Karin and I still consider ourselves newbies to this whole social media arena.  Two years ago we decided to take the plunge and immerse ourselves into the social media world with books, webinars and consulting with the experts.  Through the excitement of new ways to reach out to clients and candidates we were on our way but we still felt we were missing something.  Sure we have a Facebook page, but what do we put on it?  Sure, we have Twitter but what do we tweet out?  This was when the realization hit us that there was another world in which social media could not exist without.  Content.  That realization was made when we attended the Content Marketing World conference in 2011.  Create our own content?  Who knew?  We left re-energized, focused and excited – high fiving each other all the way home.

It is now content that we focus our efforts on.  Whether it’s Karin writing her very first whitepaper, pushing out blog posts and putting together ideas for a certain little purple guy, content has been the soothing balm of our social media anxiety.  We have answered the question of “what do we tweet out?” 

Now we just have to answer the question “how do we find the time?”

Well, we are still working on that.  Count yourself lucky if you have one or two people who you can work with on your social media strategies.  Who despite trial and tribulation and fear due to uncertainty will plow through the learning with you.  I am lucky that I have Karin in this regard.  I have a Manager who saw the potential and who got just as excited about it as I did.  With her partnership, mentorship and encouragement I am now fulfilling a role within our recruiting division that is pretty cool.  Along with sourcing candidates, I lead our social media and content strategies and sometimes, when it’s just right, I can do both at the same time. 

We have learned a lot and the most important lesson in my opinion?  Never stop learning.  With the speed at which social media moves we are all students of it, though there are some who have been students just a wee bit longer than most of us and it is those people that we really want to thank.  Karin does a great job of mentioning those people in her Recruiting, meet social media post.  Head on over and read about the people who helped us along the way.

Annette

Blogging, tweeting, Facebook, and LinkedIn are really quite new to me and People First Recruiting.   Yet more often now, we are getting questions and requests for advice about how individuals or firms can begin their own social journey.   I can’t tell you how surprising this is to us given how new we are at this.  Yet maybe, just maybe the hard work and energy we have been putting into this is starting to pay off - because people are noticing.  Besides it’s great that we can help and when it comes to social media, that’s really what it is all about.
In fact, that was one of the first lessons we learned about social media – be helpful to others.  Share and help others with tips, knowledge and at times advice in the business you consider yourself to be good at.  In our case it’s recruiting.  Helping others by sharing information online (for free) is the essence of this fabulous new way of recruiting candidates and growing our recruiting business.

So for this blog I want to give a shout out to a few of the organizations and individuals who have helped us along the way:

• Matthew Shepherd, a Social Media consultant.  He was our first  “live instructor”.  He showed us the way and set us on the path by teaching us about the various social channels and the ones that are the most appropriate for our business; @MatShepSEO
• Colleen Holloway and Colin Whitney at ThinkShift, our creative, energetic partners who helped us bring life and identify to our brand as well as our beloved Purple Squirrel; @twistntoad and @ColinWhitney
• Content Marketing Institute and the Content Marketing World conference in 2011 – this is where Annette Kohut (our Social and Content Leader) and I had our AHA moment.  This place was where the reason for us taking this social journey in the first place all came together;
• Marcus Sheridan, The Sales Lion.  A passionate business owner that embraced blogging a few years ago.  He was a speaker at a conference I attended and gave me the inspiration I needed to begin blogging myself; @TheSalesLion
• Sociable! A book authored by Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger.  First book I read which put social media and content into perspective for me.

The reality is we are beginners still in training, we’re taking risks and learning through trial and error.   We receive great, and at times not so great feedback and comments yet we remain fiercely committed to this because we believe it is essential to our clients, candidates and our overall business success.  Plus, it’s fun – we wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.
One of the most frequent questions asked is “how do you find the time” and honestly we are still working at this every day.  For me though I am lucky I have a fabulous Social and Content Manager who is also our Talent Sourcer, the amazing Annette Kohut.  Take some time to visit her post Newbies on the social recruiting block, about her experience and thoughts.

Karin

The season might be over but we are still just as in love with our Winnipeg Jets team as we were when it was first announced they were coming back.  A new team into our well established city had no problem finding a warm welcome.

So it got me thinking, we as recruiters know first-hand that organizations often face the challenge of introducing new employees in to a well established team which led me to thinking about the Winnipeg Jets jersey.  So how is this connected?  Well let me talk about my own team.  We’re connected by a strong culture, there is great camaraderie and support.  We celebrate the wins and we mourn the losses together.  With our jersey, you can’t touch it or see it, but you know it’s there – that’s our unifying factor.  It’s our uni-form.

What I have learned from working with so many clients over the years, is the best way of introducing a new employee to an existing culture is to be certain that during your recruitment process you are patient and thorough with your candidates. Ask yourself this question, “could this individual wear our team jersey”?  You can be assured that many candidates will be asking the same question of themselves.  The candidates need information, the good, the bad, the ugly and you have to be willing to give it.  Those candidates need to interview you as much as you need to interview them so if you can, be sure to offer that to them.  Our success has come from recognizing that the candidate fit is as important, if not more important, than the list of qualifications set out for the role.  This is mission critical to retention.

One thing is very clear, when you hire a recruitment firm you need a candidate fast, but you also want the best in the market.  Most times you have worked the search on your own and hit a wall so to speak, or you have a highly sensitive replacement search on your hands. 

When you outsource recruitment you expect there to be a database of candidates available immediately and one important question you will ask is, “how long will it take to find my candidate?”  You may be hoping for the answer to be yesterday but the reality is quite different.

I don’t believe there is a recruitment firm out there that doesn’t want to fill an assignment just as quickly as you do.  Recruiters are busy, they have many assignments, candidates and, clients to juggle and remember most work on commission so they are as invested as you in the search.  The question remains then is whether or not you want the search filled quickly with A candidate or with the RIGHT candidate.  This is where your due diligence in finding the right recruiter is most important.

When a position remains vacant your company is losing money and the company stakeholders are hunting you down every day for an update on the search.  I may be stating the obvious but hiring the wrong Recruiter simply to get the job filled will lose you much more than money.

Consider the following domino effect when speed trumps quality: 

• The hired candidate may be leaving a very good job for what they believed was a better one but because of a quick interview process the right questions weren’t asked or important information was not provided.
• Due to the fast turnaround, the appropriate people aren’t involved in the hiring process which means they aren’t available to be a part of those interviews that would allow for such valuable information to be shared with your possible hire.
• You make the offer and the candidate starts.  Now you are spending time and attention evaluating, training, and re-evaluating  the new hire only to realize they may not be the right fit.  You may find yourself reaching the inevitable decision to let them go.  Now you have a replacement search on your hands.
• Sure you are likely to get a replacement search in the fee you paid to the Recruiter but now you might be incurring new costs depending on what’s in the contract.  Regardless, having to start again is in itself a reason to take the time to have a thorough process.

The honest truth is many engagements do take time to complete.  The candidate pool is tight in North America and some candidates are risk adverse right now; they don’t want to take the chance leaving a stable job. 

Here are a few things you can do to ensure the search moves along:

• Provide a job description to the recruiter.  If you don’t have one, put one together.  There are a lot of resources out there that have basic templates.  Or ask for the Recruiter’s help in developing one.
• Meet with the stakeholders in your company to ensure they are in agreement with the job description and criteria.  There is a world of difference between the “must haves” and the “nice to haves”.
• Meet with the Recruiter who will be filling the job and mutually agree upon a timeline.  Try to involve a few people from your company (this might be the Manager of that particular department or HR).  Whenever possible give the Recruiter a tour of your office.  This is great for the Recruiter to get a sense of the environment as the environment and culture is critical to the sourcing of talent.
• Ask for transparency.  By that I mean, rather than an update each week from the Recruiter that goes something like this, “We’re still having some challenges locating candidates, we have interviewed a few this week but they were just not right.  We are continuing the search”, ask these questions:
• Specifically how many candidates have you interviewed this week
• What were their backgrounds and what industry did they come from?
• Why are they not suitable or interested in the role?
• Specifically how many candidates are you interviewing next week
• What are their backgrounds and what industry did they come from?

I think you see where I’m going with this.  If these questions cannot be answered with confidence by the Recruiter then there could be a problem and your search may be longer than the agreed upon deliverables.  At this point you will know whether or not it is time to have a meeting and serious discussion with your partnering Recruiter.

 

February is the month of love and in a few days it will be Valentine’s Day.  In keeping with the spirit of love, I am hoping you will all indulge me with my love letter to Winnipeg and why I’m so passionate about recruiting for jobs in my beloved city.

I have had a few people (thanks Hawkeye) describe me as an eternal optimist and quite frankly I take that as a compliment.  However I am not the only Winnipegger that is optimistic these days. Our province is humming with optimism – there is a great vibe out there.

Just think of some of the things that are happening in this great city:

• There is the revitalization of Winnipeg’s downtown
• Several Winnipeg companies made the list of Canada’s Best Small and Medium Employers 2012
• We have the new Blue Bomber stadium being built 
• This week it was announced that GE is opening a $50 million aircraft engine testing centre here which may lead up to 50 new Winnipeg jobs 
• Non-residential construction is twice as high in Manitoba than elsewhere in Canada right now
• And of course, how could I not mention the return of the Winnipeg Jets?  (Just last night we watched the Jets beat the Capitals in a shoot out – now that was an exciting game!)

And last Sunday I spent four hours with my family at Assiniboine Park.  I hadn’t been to the park in a while and I was amazed by the changes.  The new warming shack and duck pond was full of people.  The Assiniboine Park Zoo was busy and I was amazed to see the progress of the new Churchill Exhibit.

Although I’m not originally from Winnipeg (my home is Ontario), I love this city.   It’s my love for Winnipeg that makes it so easy to recruit for the amazing career opportunities that are starting to emerge here.

There has only been one time in my 20+ year recruiting career that I considered changing professions and that was back in 1992.  Am I ever glad I didn’t!   Through my involvement in the recruitment industry in Winnipeg I’ve witnessed the growth that is happening here, the pride of its citizens that grow with it and the organizations that are doing great things. 

Yes, we’ve experienced some economic struggles in the past but with any city anywhere that pain can be felt at any time.  To see a city start to have some faith in itself, as well as some passion, well that just makes my job recruiting here that much easier. 

Keep up the good work Winnipeg!

 

Curious to know what Winnipeg jobs are currently available?

If you are involved in the recruitment of staff for you organization, then the scenario below should be familiar to you.

• The need for a new recruitment is identified in your organization.
• You assemble the stakeholders, have several meetings and discussions concerning the ideal candidate’s qualifications and experience.
• You develop the job profile, bring together the recruitment and selection team and begin preparing your search strategy.

Then, the search begins

• You look under every stone to find people who have the skills you and your stakeholders desire.
• Several promising individuals get pre-screened, interviewed and qualified.
• The qualified individuals have now been narrowed down to a short list of 1, 2, 3 or more.
• Stage two interviews start and a finalist begins to emerge!

You have found your Purple Squirrel, you are sure of it.

But you’re not quite done.

Now the “courting” phase begins – a time of getting to know each other, of not wanting to look too eager but also not playing hard to get. A time of uncertainty and excitement as you imagine how well this candidate will fit into your organization. Yes, it might sound like dating but in the world of recruitment the courting phase is the moment of truth, the point where the rubber meets the road. You might want 'The Candidate', but will they want you?

So you meet again to discuss the position, you answer questions, you talk about career and advancement opportunities, training plans and on-boarding plans and compensation. Corporate information is given, company tours occur, more meetings with supervisors and colleagues, and finally a lunch or a dinner meeting. You are convinced this candidate is the one.

After a de-brief with the stakeholders, it’s unanimous, they agree with you and an offer is drafted. You are thrilled to extend an offer to the candidate and so you wait with bated breath for them to accept and a day or so later the candidate calls you and…

respectfully declines.

Never mind the disappointment that sweeps over you because right now you have to deal with the panic that’s setting in when you realize you have no one else.

And why is there no one else? Because you stopped looking as soon as you thought you had found 'the one'.

This scenario happens more often than many of us would like to admit. It is what we like to call the euphoric stage of the recruitment, where everything is sunshine and lollipops and the possibility of a no doesn’t exist so we aren’t prepared when it happens. It’s what leads us to stop the recruitment when we shouldn’t have. Now you have to start all over again.

However, it doesn’t have to be this painful. Sometimes these simple reminders can help you avoid intense frustration, disappointment, time and money.

• It ain’t over ‘til it’s over - even if an offer is extended.
• Dedicate time everyday to focus on the search. Even if you have a shortlist of great candidates.
• Be creative and willing to ask for help.  Involve everyone in your organization – creating awareness ensures a solid candidate flow.
• Don’t rely solely on job postings yet don’t remove any until the position is filled – potential candidates should always be encouraged to apply.
• Keep your stakeholders advised along the way – help them with these reminders as well. They too can get caught up in that euphoric stage.
• And the last reminder?

Happy Hunting!

 

Does your organization work with a recruiter?  Have you always wanted to?  To learn more about getting the most out of the recruitment process download our whitepaper:

The Groundhog is the most famous member of the Sciuridae family who gets world attention one day a year.

We decided to have some fun here at the office and take this moment to shed light on the more elusive, lesser known cousin that we recruiters celebrate not just one day, but every day:

The Purple Squirrel.