This one is for recruiters. Especially recruiters with a couple of years experience, who think they are good. In fact you may think you are pretty damn good!

Well, there is a huge threat facing you. And it’s not social media, or technology or the economy, or RPO, nor the rise of  in-house recruiters.

It’s you.

To be more specific, it’s your attitude. And to be even more precise, it’s your arrogance and complacency. I can’t tell you how many promising recruiters have fallen off the rails, because of early success, which they have mistakenly understood to mean they ‘know it all’.

One of the things I always look for when hiring new recruiters at Firebrand is “coachability”. I don’t even know if that’s a word, but I sure know what it means.

The ability to learn new skills, the willingness to change, a mindset which seeks improvement, and the ego which accepts there may ‘be a better way’.

I see it all the time, and have done for decades. A new recruiter has raw potential, works hard, gets some basic skills, and has some early success. God knows, we all love recognition, but why is it in this business that ‘prima donnas’ bloom so early and with so little reason? Actually I know why. We all worship at the altar of ‘fees’ in this industry. And some companies will excuse ignorance, arrogance and lack of real understanding of client and candidate need… as long as a recruiter bills. In fact they reward it. So little recruiter Johnny, who knows 2% of f***all, is now a hero because he stitched together a good quarter of billings! No wonder he thinks he knows it all!

And that is the danger period. For you. Usually after about 2 years. Complacency emerges. The barriers to learning go up. In reality, little Johnny plateaus, stagnates, and unbeknown to him, starts to whither!

Give me a dollar for every recruiter who told me ‘we always do it this way’, ‘this works for me’, ‘I know what I am doing’, or heaven save me….. ‘that won’t work in this market!’

I would be a very rich man.

Or even worse, the ‘silent antediluvian’, who does not voice disagreement, but just avoids or ignores any new tactic or advice, any technological advance. It’s not that they want to sabotage. They are just closed to any new ideas whatsoever.

Dinosaurs, who are always looking backwards, scoff at training sessions, and maintain excel spreadsheets of candidates or hard-copy résumés in their bottom drawers. FFS!

Intransigent fossils, who dismiss success by new-comers with fresh ideas, as ‘luck’, and complain that new technology, designed to help them become more efficient, merely  ‘gives them more admin to do’.

And slowly these people start to fail. And the more they fail, the more they blame it in on their employer, on the economy, on the market, on the technology, on their colleagues, on their clients, even on their admin support! Anyone, anywhere, but the real culprit. Themselves.

You want to be great at this job? Forge a real career?
 Then you have to understand the concept of your “Skills Briefcase”.

Imagine all your skills, capabilities, competencies, and knowledge – and then place them in your imaginary ‘skills briefcase’.

The question is simply this. What skills, what knowledge, what tactics, what relationships, and what competencies will be in your skills briefcase one year from now….. that are not in there today?

Or, what is in there now that was not there 12 months ago?

Nothing?

Hmm.

Tackle skills you are not good at and perfect them. Look for a mentor. Seek training and coaching. Tune into industry trends and changes and grab what you need.

Above all, be open to learning the nuances of this tough job we all do.

Anyone can match a résumé with a job description. That takes a week to learn. And you may even make some placements. But it’s the craft of recruiting I am talking about. The art. The skill of it. That takes years. Decades. Forever.

Great recruiters are sponges. For life. You are never totally ‘on top of your game‘ in this business. You can always get better.

And if you don’t, others around you most certainly will.

And then, for you, it’s welcome to the 80% of recruiters who enter our industry…and fail.

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No doubt you have been overwhelmed with high-level forecasts from wise recruiting soothsayers about 2012 being the year of mobile recruiting, the critical importance of building talent communities, the rise of employer branding… and many other trends that, truthfully, you hardly understand and definitely have little control over.

These people are smart, and much of what they say is spot on. But a lot is total hogwash too, no more than a distraction, and certainly most of it, you personally, cannot act on.

So what about the desk recruiter? The person doing the day-to-day slog? What resolutions can you make, today, that will equip you for a better year. Indeed, a better career?

Here are mine.

Fire lots of clients …now.

That’s right. Your eyes do not deceive. 2011 was truly the year of the tyre-kicker. At Firebrand we were overwhelmed with clients ‘testing’ the market, using multiple recruiters on the same brief, comparing our talent with internal candidates, withdrawing jobs at the last minute, even rescinding on offers.

2012 is the year to sort out these serial time-wasters and fire them. Don’t forget, you can choose who you do not work with. You have to prioritise your clients, and triage your job orders. Work on only those where the client is committed to working with you. Indeed you want a laser-like focus on clients who give you a return. The rest? Coach them on ways to work together. Give them another chance. Then kill off those bikers!

Spend less time on social media.

What? This is blasphemy! Spend less time? Who is this dinosaur? Well, I may be a dinosaur, but I am a dinosaur with 10,000 twitter followers, a blog read by 5,000 plus people every week, a busy Facebook page,  and many thousands of LinkedIn contacts.

So I know two things about Social Media.
i) the benefits
ii) how much time it wastes.
And you need to learn from this. Of course social media is a critical channel for recruiters. If you have not developed a social media profile yet, then get going. But don’t confuse the much touted mantra from the ‘experts’ that is ‘all about engagement,’ with banal banter and time-wasting that will lead to nothing. Don’t con yourself. Use social media wisely, with focus, with intent, with a plan …… and with a limit on how much time it sucks up. While we are on this topic, spend less time on your computer.

Spend more time on the oldest social networking tool we have – the telephone.

Yes, I know, seriously old-school. Yet it is a fact that recruiting is still about influencing, connecting, persuading, negotiating, listening, selling and closing. And if you think email or social media can do those things better than face-to-face or telephone contact…you are… how shall I word this? Ah yes! Dumb as mud.

Focus on $ productive activities.

There are so many distractions these days. So easy for a recruiter to ‘be busy’. On social media. On research. On admin. Your goal for 2012 is to spend as many hours as possible on dollar-productive activities. And those are the activities that lead to an invoice. And typically they are the ‘contact’ activities. Talking to, and meeting, with talent. Talking to, and meeting, clients and prospects. They are the money-moments. Again don’t fool yourself. A ‘busy day’ without lots of these activities, is not a dollar-day.

Increase innovation and time on talent acquisition.

Remember, not everyone is looking for a job, but everyone is available to change jobs. 2012 is the year for you to actually do something about tapping into the passive 90%. The future of recruitment is that everyone is a candidate -  all the time. And it is up to us to convert them into active candidates, not wait for them to come to us.

Focus only on things you have control over.

I am sick of hearing and talking about the shaky economy, fickle clients, the situation in Europe, the stock market gyrations, elections in the US, the talent shortage, what the Chinese may do with the currency. I mean seriously, can YOU do anything about those things? Of course not, so don’t waste your energy and denude your motivation with this stuff. Focus on what you can impact and control.

And mostly, those are the things I have outlined in this blog.

Wishing you all a fantastic 2012.

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2011 was a tumultuous year in recruitment. Global financial turmoil, the impact of social media and the rise of internal recruitment teams and RPO.

‘The Savage Truth‘ clocked up close to 50 blogs during the year, trying to make sense of it all. For those who like this kind of detail, The Savage Truth received 235,000 page views in 2011 (so far) with average time on each page being 3 minutes 19 seconds.

Below is a list of the most popular 2011 posts largely in order of ‘views’, but also taking into account Re-tweets on Twitter and the most blog comments this year.

If you missed these posts, just click the links below:

1. Being a recruiter rocks! (255 RTs, 56 comments)
2. “God, I hate recruiters!” (108 ‘strongly worded’ comments)
3. Recruiters, toughen the f*** up! (Over 5,000 social media shares!)
4. Two killer questions great recruiters ask every time
5. Sorry guys, women are better recruiters than men (46 contentious comments)
6. Recruiters, at last! Social media for dummies (285 RTs)
7. HR and internal recruiters, YOU need to lift your game too (40 fascinating comments)
8. 15 reasons why ‘exclusivity’ is in your clients’ best interests
9. Don’t be a LinkedIn ‘tart’!
10. 15 sure signs your ‘client’ does not take you seriously
11. 5 signs your new recruiter is destined to fail!
12. Fun and money – The two reasons to come to work
13. Recruiters: 8 reasons why your client meetings suck
14. My biggest ever recruitment stuff up!
15. Stressed recruiter? Take a chill-pill
16. What George Clooney taught me about recruitment
17. Client or not, behaving like a jerk… means you are a jerk
18. Discrimination in recruitment. Not only good – essential!
19. Recruiters, everyone is a candidate – all the time
20. You take the holiday – not your business

I hope you have enjoyed The Savage Truth this year, and see you in 2012!

Cheers

Greg

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Yes, that’s right. Generally, women in recruitment do a better job… and make more money.

I have been a recruiter for 30 years. Hired and trained thousands of them. Owned and run recruiting businesses in more than 20 countries. I should think I have worked with and against many of the best recruiters on the planet.

So I have a bit of a sample to judge from.

Not every woman. Not every man. Obviously. The best recruiter I ever knew was a guy. Some women are catastrophically hopeless at this job.

But, overall, generally, on average… women do it better.

Here is why;

• I have found women are far better listeners than men. They are more empathetic. It helps, because they get deeper into the candidates true motivation, the client’s real needs… and they make a better match. Bluntly put, many woman recruiters simply care more about the human element. It might not sound ‘commercial’ but actually it means they end up with more satisfied customers, and over time, that pays.
• You are not going to like this guys (and before you lynch me, remember, I am one of you) but women are more resilient than men. Sure, often they show frustration and emotion much more readily than the average guy, who tends to suck it up and try to tough things out. But actually I have found a steel backbone in so many women in this business. They cry a lot, but they bounce back! They keep going. Maybe it’s fear of failure. Maybe it’s just pure inner strength. I can’t count the guys who have lasted 6, maybe 12 months and dropped out, telling all and sundry as they leave to go back into banking or accounting, that “recruiting is not a real job after all”.
• And then there is the money. Mostly, recruiters get paid on results. The more you bill, the more you earn. And in a world where women routinely earn less than men doing the same job, that’s very attractive indeed. Indeed, women have told me straight out. “In this job I can earn more than the person sitting next to me, man or woman, because it’s a level playing field. I bill, I earn. It’s transparent. And I love that!”

So there it is. Overall, woman make better recruiters than men, and indeed I imagine there are far more woman recruiters than men, although I have no statistics on that.

What I do know is that last week I announced the Top 10 Billers worldwide for the 2011 year to date for Firebrand Talent Search.

The gender split?

Seven women, including the Top Three Billers in the world.

And three men.

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Stress at work is dangerous. Seriously. I believe it leads to medical issues, and it certainly will harm your relationships and overall quality of life.

And that is bad for us recruiters because we do one of the toughest jobs around. The ‘all or nothing’ nature of what we do is designed to induce stress, it seems.

Over the years I have seen recruiters reduced to highly destructive and antisocial behavior as a result of the stress they feel, as they fight to achieve targets, deal with major disappointments, and cope with rude clients and ungrateful candidates.

Drinking too much. Drug abuse. Anger directed at colleagues. Wild mood swings. Dishonest dealings. Depression. Rapid weight gain or loss.

All unfortunate. All harmful.

But what can you do about it? Pressure and stress is part of what we do. It’s not going to go away. The reality is we need to learn to cope. Have some releases that ease the pressure and redress the balance.

Here are a few things I recommend, when it comes to battling the stress tsunami.

• Have a good cry. Seriously. Or, once the phone is put down, let off some steam. As long as it’s not directed at a colleague. As long as it’s quick. As long as you bounce back fast, it’s OK! In fact, given our job, it would be weird not to melt down occasionally. I was not much of a crier myself, but when things went seriously wrong it was not unknown for me to let slip a few choice expletives, punch the desk, bang my head on the wall. It’s OK. Let it go. You will feel better afterward. But then… move on!
• Get perspective. Breathe. Again, I am serious. Push back from your desk. Suck in the big ones. Deliberately and consciously shift your thinking. Dump the negatives. ‘It will go well’, not ‘it’s all going down the gurgler’. I believe in PMA (Positive Mental Attitude). And I also believe that we can control how we react to situations. Jump off the stress treadmill. Take a chill-pill. Recalibrate your attitude. Whatever crappy thing just happened, it’s not that serious.
• Recognise the warning signs. This is simple, but big. If stress is building and you can see it’s getting worse, sometimes discretion is the greater part of valour. Take evasive action. Avoid that irritating client call. Stop making sales calls for an hour where you are getting nowhere with rude clients, and call 10 of your best talent instead. They will be pleased to hear from you and that will cheer you up right there! Leave the office early. You can make it up tomorrow. Call someone who will cheer you up.
• Set an achievable goal. One you can get, and that will make you feel good. This is key. A massive sea of work is piling up all around you. You can see no way you can get it done. Every call you take seems to pile more and more on you. The ‘to do’ list is getting ever longer.  So here is the trick. Cross everything on the ‘to do’ list out, except the top 3 big, hairy important things that must get done. Forget the rest. You were not going to get to them anyway, were you? Scratch them out and get the big 3 to 5 things done. Then go home. Successful.
• Sweat a little. This is my most personal tip. I reckon exercise reduces stress exponentially. In fact I have month’s gym session in my diary ahead of time – 3 or 4 a week – and I don’t change them for anybody (unless my wife tells me to. Obviously.). And I go in the middle of the day. Just around the corner from my office. It suits me because I work long hours and it does not really matter when I take the break, as long as I take it. For you it might be different, but if you feel the stress building, don’t hit the grog or buy that burger to give you the comfort you crave. Run, gym, bike or even just a swift walk. For me it’s a lifesaver. Someone even told me that if they have a difficult meeting with me, they try to arrange it after my gym session, because, inevitably, I am ‘much calmer’.

Being a recruiter means stress. It never fully goes away no matter how good you are. You have to manage it. Because if we can manage the pressure, being a recruiter rocks! Hope these tips help you!

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You call them ‘clients’ and you think they see you as a business partner. Take this quick test and maybe… think again! Tick each statement that applies to you.

1. They won’t meet you to provide a new job brief. It’s emailed, or given over the phone, or maybe its just a few lines in an email.
2. They give you jobs in competition. And you are not even first.
3. When you do eventually arrange a meeting, they keep you waiting for ages, or even stand you up altogether.
4. They don’t return your calls.
5. They routinely don’t interview the candidates you present.
6. They won’t give you sound reasons for rejecting candidates that they have declined to interview.
7. They demand urgency from you every step of the way, but are slow to come back in a timely fashion themselves.
8. They don’t give you feedback on the candidates they interview from you.
9. They arrange second interviews with preferred candidates directly.
10. They ignore your advice on salary and conditions and… pretty much everything actually!
11. They raise issues and information, critical to the hire (that they have never told you) with the candidate.
12. They make an offer direct to your candidate without going through you or even telling you.
13. They haggle your fee, after the deal is done.
14. They offer perm jobs to your temps without telling you.
15. They flirt inappropriately or ask you out on a date.

Score yourself here. Tick each statement that applies to you.

0-5 – Nice job, your clients are treating you as a ‘partner’
6-10 – More work needed to elevate your status to ‘trusted advisor’
11-15 – You don’t have clients. You have tyre-kickers and ‘bikers’

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The biggest cause of placements going wrong, is people making assumptions.

Placing a candidate starts with building a relationship with that candidate and establishing ‘terms of engagement’, if you like. Usually, it is essential to develop a rapport and a tight co-operation to ensure the right match is made.

From a candidate point of view, working with a recruiter to find a new role should be painless. In fact it should make the process much smoother overall!

A good recruiter will coach candidates on how to extract the full value that a recruiter can offer.  This quick video is designed to help candidates do just that, but it is also a primer for recruiters on how to work with talent. Indeed if you wish to show this to every new person you interview… it can only help!

Watch video on YouTube

Be prepared. Not only the obvious things like résumé and references, but also prepare your thinking. What type of role is ideal? Who have you approached already? What are the three things you must have in your new role? What specific examples of your success can you point to? What challenges have you overcome? And prepare your questions too. Don’t leave your recruiter interview thinking, “I wish I had thought to ask that!”

Be transparent: Don’t inflate your achievements. Don’t say what you think the recruiter wants to hear. Be honest about your aspirations and your salary expectations. And make sure you share openly your real reasons you want to move jobs. The recruiter is your ally, your representative in a competitive field. And the recruiter needs accurate data to ensure you get noticed.

Be yourself. A good job match includes of course an accurate “cultural fit”. Your recruiter needs to know the ‘real you’. Then she can make the perfect match. So avoid pretending to be what you are not. Sure, it’s an interview, so put your best foot forward, but let the real YOU shine too.

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Next week, I am speaking at the global ‘Big Biller Summit’, and ‘Savage Truth’ readers are invited to attend as my guest, for free.

I am pleased that my very popular recent presentation ‘The future of recruiting. New Kool vs Old Skool’ is being showcased at the summit. And you can access it here, for free.

Secure your free pass now!

This event runs from October 25-28, 2011 and is the world’s biggest ‘virtual’ conference for recruiting and staffing professionals. You can participate by telephone and/or the web – you don’t even have to leave your desk. That means you save the time and cost of travelling to a traditional seminar, and most importantly you won’t lose a day’s production.

I am not the only speaker! There are 16 presentations from recruitment experts from all over the world, all addressing key issues relating to peak recruiter performance.

You can see all speakers and full summaries of topics on registering.

To claim your free ticket, register here.

My presentation, “The future of recruiting. New Kool vs Old Skool” is a one-hour highlights version of my recent presentation to the recruitment industry in Australia, which were sold out.

Key topics I cover include

• How our industry is changing and how recruiters need to adapt
• Changing expectations of clients and candidates
• Talent communities and talent pools
• Using social media to grow your business
• Technology and recruitment – where to now?
• “New Kool” skills all recruiters need
• “Old Skool” tactics that remain key in the new era

Hope to ‘see’ you there.

Regards,

Greg

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Most people who become recruiters do not last. There are many reasons for that. Poor hiring decisions and inadequate training being high on the list.

But there is another key reason why so few people actually last in the hurly-burly world of agency recruiting.

It’s a frigging hard job!

So I know that sometimes you question why you do it. There are times you hate what you do. There are days you go home feeling deflated, worn-out and frankly, useless.

The world is littered with ‘ex-recruiters’, burnt out, scarred and resentful about their all-too-short recruiting career.

Seriously, the guy who cut my hair last week told me he had ‘been a recruiter once’.

It’s true too that being a recruiter can be the greatest job of all, but even so, to survive you have to know the pitfalls, prepare for them, minimise their impact where you can, and push through the inevitable challenges this job will throw you.

• Recruiting is uniquely tough because it’s the only job that I know where what you are selling can turn around and say ‘no’. Think about it. I sell you my car. You agree to buy the car. I agree to sell the car. We agree a price. The car does not then jump up and say “Hey you know what, I am not going to go with this new guy”. Don’t laugh. That happens to recruiters every day. We do everything right. Take a great job spec. Impress our client. Recruit great talent. Make the match. Manage the process. Architect a fitting deal for all parties. Secure a great offer. Get everything agreed and at the last minute – our product – the candidate – says, “ Nah, I changed my mind, I will stay where I am”. And that is it. All over red rover!

• Recruiting is a killer because for us, it is all or nothing. Sure, a tiny percentage of our work is retained, but mostly recruiting is first prize or nothing. Our business is not like the Olympics where you can pick up a respectable silver or bronze for competing well. For us it’s gold…or its donut! We do all the work, spend huge amounts of time and expertise, and manage the process with skill and diligence. But if our 5 great candidates get pipped by a late runner from another recruiter, or an internal candidate, then it is big fat zero for us. That’s tough. Hard to take. Especially when it happens often. And it does.

• Recruiting grinds you down because you do so much work you don’t get paid for. When you hear the words “I am feeling burnt out” from a recruiter, what that actually means is “I just can’t stand doing so much work for so little return”. Contingent recruiters are lucky to fill one job out of 5 they take, and place one candidate out of 10 they meet. And combined with the ‘all or nothing’ fee model most work on, it means lots and lots of hours for which we don’t get paid, and equally importantly see no tangible success. And success, in the form of happy clients and happy talent, is the bedrock upon which our self-esteem is built. And once that crumbles, it is the beginning of the end.

So what to do?

• Firstly recognise that if you are going to be a recruiter, these challenges come with the job. In the memorable words of my Under 16 rugby coach, ‘Toughen the f*** up’ and prepare yourself for plenty of disappointment.

• Secondly, work hard to mitigate the risk of these things happening to you. Hone your recruitment skills, your talent management skills, and your job qualification ability. Build trusted advisor relationships and work to get exclusivity on orders to increase your job-fill ratios. Great recruiters, who move from transacting to consulting, start to win more than they lose.

• Finally,  never forget that if you choose to be a recruiter, you have made a Faustian bargain. You have chosen a career fraught with pitfalls and sometimes it feels like a living hell, But do it right, and the fun and money we need for a great job is within our grasp, because being a recruiter can really rock too!

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There are only two reasons to come to work.

Fun and money.

And you have to have both. One of them will not be enough. Not if you want to love what you do, that is. Having a job where you get just one or the other, often seduces you into thinking you have found your dream job. But in most cases that dream fades like mirage as you realise a key ingredient of  ‘job love’ is missing.

And for recruiters, where our job is so hard, and the disappointments so many, you simply have to have them both for it all to be worth it.

Fun and money.

But let’s dig into what I mean by ‘fun’ and ‘money’.

At work, ‘fun’ is much more than just having a giggle. Fun means working in a business where you believe in the vision and the ethos. That’s where ‘fun’ begins. To do a challenging job well, every day, you have to be doing something that has meaning to you. Fun on the job means working with people you like and respect. Fun at work includes collaboration, mutual support and a strong bond of shared goals. Fun means winning more than losing, continuous learning, constantly growing as a business person, and doing something you know impacts people in a positive way. That’s fun. And it includes traditional fun too. A workplace where we can have a laugh, where we can socialise easily, enjoy each other’s company and celebrate group and individual success. A job that enhances your self esteem and sense of worth. That is fun.

Is that how it is for you where you work?

If you are going to thrive as a recruiter, indeed in any role, you need to have ‘fun’ the way I define it here.

But what about ‘money’?

I don’t simply mean the amount you get paid, as important as that may be.

I mean working in a business that is financially successful, for a start. If we have a great product or service and deliver it well, we will thrive. And that is where you want to work. Profit is not a dirty word. Profit is like oxygen. We don’t wake up every day with ‘profit’ as our only goal, but like oxygen, we sure notice when it’s not there!

Making money means we can invest in people, learning, marketing and technology. And that is fun! And ‘money’ means getting a fair reward for the effort applied and the result achieved. So a heavy element of reward for result is a good thing. And that means if you are good at your job, you get well rewarded. And financial success is important in only one way. More choices in life. And that leads us back to fun!

So there it is. You can read many books on employee engagement and motivation at work. Put them all aside. You don’t need them to evaluate whether you are in the right job, recruiter or not.

Want to love what you do? Work with the ‘twin sisters of the holy grail’ - Fun and Money

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