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Recently I was asked by one of our Sydney Talent Agents to join her on a client visit to a high profile Ad Agency group. I jumped at the chance because I love speaking with clients, and we were booked to meet two very senior people, both at Executive Creative Director level.

We arrived on time (5 minutes early actually, as is my wont) and waited in the trendy, borderline pretentiously creative reception.

And we waited.

And waited.

At 10 past the meeting hour we asked the receptionist for an update. She looked a little confused. She made a call. She clearly got a disconcerting answer, and then disappeared out of sight.

We continued to wait.

Eventually she came back and it was clear she had bad news.

The Creative duo had been “called into a meeting”. She paused, and then added (in what I could see was a moment of embarrassed inspiration) “by the CEO”

We explained we had an appointment, confirmed the day before. She offered to call the HR Manager, and she did, but that person was unavailable. I could see she was the innocent party here, and very uncomfortable, so I asked if we could have a 2 minute chat with one of the ECDs, to set up another time, but she got even more flustered, and we left on the basis they would call to reset the meeting.

Neither of them did. Ever.

They never contacted us again. Not to apologise for wasting our time, not to reset the meeting. A meeting they had both firmly agreed to at the outset, verbally and via follow up email.

Then, three weeks ago I spent 5 days in Tokyo. On that trip I met with 7 clients, all at CEO, Marketing Director or VP HR level.

I was struck by the demeanor of these clients when it came to dealing with us, their supplier. Most were Japanese, but two of the people we visited were Westerners, living in Japan for some time.

On each occasion we were clearly expected and were greeted as honoured guests. The receptionist buzzed, and within few moments a PA or assistant greeted us and showed us to a meeting room. We were rarely left in the reception for more than a few minutes.

Always, refreshments were offered. Water, tea and many times small cakes and biscuits as well.

On not a single occasion did the person we were there to meet keep us waiting. CEO or not, the meeting with us started on time.

The shortest meeting we had lasted an hour. Length of meeting does not dictate quality of course, but it does mean that your presence there is taken seriously, and that time has been allocated.

To cap it off I was struck by one final act of good old-fashioned manners.

At the conclusion of every meeting, the senior person saw us not only to the door, not only to reception, but actually walked us to the lift and waited till it arrived. They then shook hands, thanked us for our time and pressed “ground floor” for us, and waited till the door closed.

Compare this to our super-cool ECDs in Sydney who stood us up without a second thought, or even the courtesy of coming to reception to tell us why.

It’s amazing the effect this all had on me. I now remember each person I met on that trip vividly (I do about 100 client visits a year, and many events, so that’s not always true!), I feel a high level of commitment to these clients in terms of Firebrand filling their needs, and I follow up with the local office, even now, to check on progress. And, truthfully, I felt a little better about myself, and what we do for a living.

And it got me thinking. Being ‘the client’ does not make you special. Being special is what makes you special.

I like to think I treat my suppliers with respect. But this lesson from Japan made sure I will give it extra thought from now on.

In a position of ‘power’ or not, being rude is being rude. And being a jerk is just, well, being a jerk.

Last week I blogged on the importance of “job order triage”. Great recruiters ruthlessly prioritise the briefs they work on, and put most effort into the highly fillable few.

Well, what about the candidates to invest time in?

Some recruiters take the view that as there is a talent shortage, every candidate needs equal help and focus.

Afraid not. Big mistake.

You need to discriminate when it comes to talent selection. Obviously not on the basis on creed, colour, ethnicity, or any other irrelevant, illegal or immoral prejudice.

No, you need to discriminate on the basis of the answer to one golden question.

Is this candidate placeable?

And a placeable candidate is one about whom you can answer YES to these two questions.

• If put in front of the right clients, will this candidate likely be offered a job?
• If offered a job on reasonable market terms, is this candidate likely to accept it?

There it is – the definition of a placeable candidate. Obvious huh?

Well not so obvious if you see the bumbling efforts of most recruiters when it comes to deciding who they spend their precious time on.

Common errors include working on the candidate with the most marketable skills (cool but what good is that if his salary expectations are 25% above market?). Or working on a candidate who deep down has no real intention of leaving where they are, but in fact have had a bad week and are just flirting with leaving. After you have done all the work to find them a job, their current employer will easily woo them back with money, or emotional blackmail, or both.

But a great recruiter knows all this before they ever start trying to find someone a job.

Placeable candidates. The ones you should discriminate towards when it comes to effort, typically have all or most of these characteristics:

• They have skills and experience currently in demand.
• Their salary expectations are reasonable and they present as an affordable option to a potential employer.
• They have legitimate and tested reasons for leaving where they are now. You have dug down and unearthed their true motivators to leave and you believe you can find them these things in a new role.
• You have pre-empted the possibility of a counter offer from their current employer.
• They interview well. Likeable, personable, communicative.
• The candidate buys into your “rules of engagement” where you explain how you and he will work together, and during the process they deliver on that commitment. (For example returning your calls, attending all interviews etc.
• The candidate agrees to allow you to exclusively handle their job search.

Remember this: Finding someone a job is only half the battle. Getting them to accept it is the other half.

So “discriminate” to your heart’s content. Work hard on candidates who will get a job offer if put in front of a client and will accept it once it comes.

This post is for anyone who manages people, or who hopes to in the future. It will probably draw some flak too, but that’s because I don’t really believe in generational differences. I think it has been largely hyped and exaggerated. I have plenty of employees at Firebrand who fit into the so-called ‘Gen Y’ age bracket. And I don’t see the negative characteristics often ascribed to this ‘generation’. Mostly, I see hard working, highly focused individuals who want to do well, have fun and make a difference. And many of them have been with us years, defying the job-hopping Gen Y stereotypes.

Often, too much talk of how to ‘manage the generations’ leads to skipping over some of the difficult things that need to be done when managing people. And I reckon those things need to be done no matter who you are dealing with.

One of the ways I define great leadership is that the leader actually cares. Bureaucrats do not make leaders. Administrators don’t make leaders either. But before we go any further on the subject of “caring” for our people, a key word of warning on this.

Unfortunately there is too much hype nowadays about the idea that leaders must show concern for their teams. Apparently you have to give a figurative cuddle of support to ‘Gen Y’ staff on the hour or they will resign and go Llama farming in Peru. Codswallop. You cannot fake the fact that you care about the people in the business. There is nothing worse than a manager returning from the latest interpersonal skills training program with “concern” for others beaming from every orifice. It’s not real and everyone knows it’s not real.

Real leaders don’t need training programmes to convince their staff they care. What’s more, real leaders empathise with the people they lead. By this I mean the leader knows what a recruiter does, knows how hard it is and knows the inevitable peaks and troughs.

I have always found it key to any success I have had as a manager of recruiters, that I have worked a desk myself. I feel the recruiter’s pain to this day. I have had shocking months, offers turned down and phones slammed in my ear.  So I do understand the bruises the job will give you. I also like everyone I work with on an interpersonal level, so I really do care when someone is having a bad month or day.

But some times the empathy you need to have is of the “tough” kind.

View video on YouTube

Tough empathy means giving your consultants what they NEED not what they want.

That means often telling people things they don’t want to hear, or setting work practices and goals that at first they may not agree with, or like at all. But that’s OK because tough empathy works – and tough empathy is about what’s needed at a particular point in time, not what’s preferred by the consulting team. After all, the team may want something, or prefer something else, but they don’t after all ultimately carry the responsibility for the business, do they? You do though.

At its best, what tough empathy means, is a balance between respect for the individual and the business imperative to achieve the task at hand.

So it could mean sitting with a recruiter who is failing, but who you know can make it. It will mean putting that person on a rehabilitation plan. It means closely managing activities, imposing time management regimes, setting daily goals, and providing intense coaching. It’s confronting and scary for the consultant. It’s frankly not that much fun for the leader either. Yes it’s tough. But you are doing it because you care about their success and their future – and at a deep level they know that.

Do you see what I am saying here? The recruiter knows you are doing something difficult for you, and difficult for her, because you care about what happens to her.  And the power in that dynamic is almost immeasurable.

Some people think that to be a great leader you have to be liked by all. That could not be more untrue. People in our industry, regardless of  ‘generation’ are not looking for friends when they look to their boss. They are looking for direction, support, honesty and clarity. And even though they may not know it at first, they may be looking for the occasional dose of tough empathy too.

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We don’t mean to be tentative, do we? We want to be bold, strong and confident when dealing with clients. Yet time and again, we use words that are stumbling blocks. Our fear takes over. And we use tentative language. Words that offer the client a reason to doubt us. Phrases that reduce our credibility.

Tentative language: How do you know you’re using it? 

Do you use words like ‘normally’? The client asks you, how much do you charge? Do you start off by saying, ‘Oh, normally’. 

Disaster! Right there. The battle is lost.

You’ve stepped onto a landmine. When you say “normally”, the client knows at once that your price is negotiable. She knows you are not sure of your price. You may not even believe in your value. And hey presto – the client is in the driver’s seat. 

There are many words we all use that prevent us from being in the driver’s seat -  

’Approximately’. ‘Usually.’ ‘I feel that…’  ‘Sometimes’. ‘Our average price’.  ‘Ballpark figure’.  All of these words send an instant message to the client’s brain that you’re a bit unsure. Just a little insecure. 

The insecurity spills over.

When the client (or talent for that matter) hears insecurity in your words, they can’t but help simultaneously hear the insecurity in your work and your service.

Don’t say “Firebrand is one of the leading marketing, creative and digital search companies in the world”. You have qualified the statement by prefacing it with “one of the”. Say “Firebrand IS the leading marketing, creative and digital search company in the world”.

When a recruiter says to a client “ For this job, we charge $20,000 and we deliver an outcome in two weeks or less”, your client is instantly impressed. The client didn’t hear tentativeness in your price or your ability.

Talent are sensitive to tentativeness too. Don’t say, “this job might have some of the things you are looking for in a new role”, or “this job is probably worth looking at”. Why would that compel me to go to see that client? Say, “This is an exceptional company with a superb client list and an excellent culture. What’s more it fits all the criteria you outlined for a job move, including more client-facing time and the international travel you are looking for “ (This is an example of course. What you say has to be true!)

Specifics impress. Remember, it’s not just you that’s having the uncertainty in the sales situation. The client is walking in unknown territory as well. As a client what would you prefer to hear? “The job will be advertised tomorrow, my database will be fully searched by Friday night and my research team will map the market in a week, and I will have a shortlist in two weeks or less” or “We’ll get down to it and get the job done soon.”

As a Talent would you rather hear “You have great skills and I am going to market your resume to clients A, B and C by Tuesday.” or  “I will do my best to get you interviews with suitable companies.”?

Think about your words. Think about your voice tone. It can make all the difference. One thing is certain. Stop using tentative language. It isn’t doing you any good.

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This is one of my favourite topics. I believe this is what will differentiate the winners from the losers in recruitment. In the end, a recruiter is as good as the number of candidates that she or he can close.

That is it.

So what recruiters are going to need in the next 3 years, is the ability to architect the deal. Something I feel we as an industry lost in the boom era.

I use the word ‘architect’ because it suggests designing, building, creating, managing. And these are the complex and subtle skills you will need to thrive going forward.

In recent years recruiters did no placement process architecture. What 90% of recruiters did, and still do, is pure introduction. That’s all we did. We were like organisers of a speed dating night. Throwing loosely compatible people together in an artificial environment for a short time and hoping they would fall in love!

That won’t do any more.

Those recruiters who understand that the human touch is still our primary tool in making a hire work, are those who will be most successful.

So how do we get better at ‘Placement Architecture’? There are three components to building strong hiring process, and these are skills you are going to need:

1. Take the time required. Recruitment is a series of discrete human interactions, and great recruiters will manage, control, and influence the outcome of each of those interactions to maximise success.
2. Listen better than ever before. Uncovering, questioning, and understanding are sadly undervalued recruiter skills that we need to hire and coach back into our business. Most recruiters do none of this. They act on the client’s word as if it is the true gospel, or they tell clients what to do without asking questions first. It sounds counter-intuitive, but great recruiters will purposely be “slow to understand”.
3. Question everything. The biggest cause of placements falling through is people making assumptions. Recruiters taking what they are told at face value. Ask for the “why and how” of everything that does not ring true, and don’t stop asking until you get an answer.

The good news is that the role of the recruiter, per se, is not under threat from technology or anything else. But the bad news is that the days of the dinosaur recruiter, unwilling to adapt, are well and truly numbered.

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Running a great recruitment business is difficult. The competition, the compliance, the cash flow issues and most of all, the people complexity creates an ideal environment to screw up.

Here are 10 of my biggest blunders, some of which I have made several times. I offer them up as a guide on what NOT to do when running a recruitment company.

1. Focusing too heavily on consultant activity levels. Slavishly counting activities, measuring ratios, chastising shortfalls… at the expense of ensuring the quality of those activities was high and consistent. Lots of activity, done badly, will actually send your business backwards, and focusing on activity for activity sake can be tremendously demoralising for the team, and distracting for the leadership.
2. Focusing too little on activity levels of consultants.  This is the flip side of the same coin and it’s just as big a blunder.  Allowing consultants to “free wheel” appearing busy by doing lots of ‘stuff’ without ensuring clarity and focus about what their key activities must be. Letting consultants spend 90 minutes in an interview with a junior person because “they want to get it right” and agonising for hours over the wording on a resume are great examples. Quality is important, but you also have to churn through a lot of the key actions that drive making the match. It’s a management task to keep that on track.
3. Allowing consultants full autonomy over which clients and which jobs they choose to work on was a mistake. Most recruiters are somewhat “tarty” by inclination, trying to work with everyone on everything. Specialisation is key, working with clients who will partner with us is key, gaining exclusivity and working on fully qualified briefs is fundamental, as is working with people who pay our bills. Not prioritising our WIP has cost me plenty, time and time again.
4. Hiring potential consultants because they had a great academic background and fantastic careers in a previous job, which was not recruitment, but in a field we specialise in. I have learned that when hiring recruiters we need to focus more on intrinsic attributes that drive success in recruitment, such as competitiveness, empathy, resilience, listening skills, passion, integrity and work ethic.
5. Opening offices in remote places without strong, committed, proven, loyal local management. Everything depends on leadership and it gets more crucial with every kilometre the remote business is away from HQ.
6. Retaining mediocre people (who may be very nice people) in the hope they will miraculously become superstars despite mounting evidence that they will always be underperformers. This is a massive opportunity cost and I make this mistake even now.
7. Hiring managers and recruiters on massive base salaries on the back of “impressive” track records (which are often not what they seem) or promises of huge performance. I learned that you must always link high earning with high performance. The big money comes after the big delivery, not before.
8. Allowing managers of smallish teams (2 – 8 people) to evolve into non-billing managers. This is a massive mistake.  We need “player/managers,” people who bill, rain-make, business develop and also manage the team. I have allowed managers to become backroom crunchers of numbers and process managers, and that’s not where the value of a leader lies, nor can you secure any leverage out of that kind of role.
9. Assuming that a good recruiter will make a good manager. They are entirely different skill sets. Promoting your highest billing recruiter to Team Leader because she wants a “career” can destroy her progress, dismantle her billings, and disintegrate the team.
10. Listing my own company Recruitment Solutions in 1998. It was too small a business really to be floated. Profit of only $4M.  The IPO was a financial success, but it was not the right thing for the business. It cost a lot to be listed, we lost control to non-executive directors and you have to answer to shareholders and fund managers. Watching share price means you spend less time on the important things like customers and staff. I am immensity proud of Recruitment Solutions. It was stand out business and produced literally scores of people who now own their own successful business. But we should not have gone public.

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It’s a fact of recruiting life that clients will push you to negotiate your fees. And with so many recruiters quick to drop fee percentages to secure briefs, that can be a hard discussion to deal with.

The starting point for successful fee negotiations is, strangely enough, to get the conversation off the fee percentage, and on to the question of what it is your fee is actually for.

And of course, bundled up in that conversation, is your ability to sell your differentiator. What have you got and what do you do that gives your client special value? That’s where you want to focus. At Firebrand Talent Search we emphasize our niche focus, our unmatched access to creative, marketing and digital talent, our multiple branches in Asia Pacific and Europe, our specialist knowledge and understanding of clients needs, our proprietary testing software which means we know candidates have the design skills we say they do, and then we wrap all this up in 110% money back guarantee.

But all recruiters will have differentiators, and it’s important you know how to articulate them.

So when a client does ask you to drop your fee, go through your entire recruitment process explaining all the things you do to secure the right person. Take your time. Start at the beginning and don’t miss anything out. Talk about your screening, your interviewing, your talent generation strategies such as social media and networking. Talk about your database and the fact you have several offices tapping into talent. Explain how you act as an advocate for the client, and how you will qualify each candidate in terms of fit, salary and skills. When you drill down on this, you find we do a lot!

That’s the point. Tell your client.

Then, and only then, ask the client why she feels a reduced fee is appropriate. This is important. Get the ball firmly into the client’s court. The client is asking for a discount. She should be squirming – not you. When it comes to fee discounts you don’t have to justify why not – she has to justify why!  It’s a shift in the dynamic and it’s very powerful indeed.

Its not as simple as this of course, many clients will continue to push for a fee discount regardless, and then you have to make a commercial decision. But the starting point is not to haggle over a number. Get the attention of the service you provide.

Talk about what you do, explain your process and your insights and your connections and your value adds.

That’s a far better place to start a discussion on discounts!

Successful recruiting is about lots of small interactions, handled well.  The real job of a recruiter is to manage outcomes in the interests of both client and candidate. This week I have another micro recruitment consulting tip – the key skill of managing the candidate’s expectations around salary.

It’s not that we want to find a person the lowest possible salary we can. Not at all. But it is crucial to know what the absolute minimum salary is for a candidate to move for the right job.

That is the key.

View video on YouTube.

Too many recruiters take a stated salary expectation at face value. Often that number is inflated and largely wishful thinking.  However, if taken as a true guide, it could mean the candidate misses out on the perfect job because you, the recruiter, did not understand what his or her true motivators were.

Managing expectations on salary starts in the first interview and it involves coupling the perfect job sought by the candidate to the lowest salary they would accept. Sure it’s a technique and it’s a test but it does clarify what the salary tipping-point really is.
And you have to know that or you could be the recruiter who has the candidate, has the job, but watches another recruiter put the two together because they did a better job of uncovering the candidate’s salary floor.

And that is an ugly prospect.

You need to drill down on what the candidate would accept for the right job.

Without that how can you effectively manage the candidate’s job search?

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The savage truth is that most recruiters have no idea how to build relationships with their clients, nor how to develop business opportunities through their day-to-day interaction with customers.

It’s an ironic tragedy, but the more technology we have available, the less recruiters actually use that technology to connect with clients and candidates in a meaningful way.

View video on YouTube

Walk into most recruitment consulting offices now days, and its like walking into a typing pool. Everyone bashing away at emails, texts, and social networking updates.

Now here is the point. About 70% of the e-mails we send are unnecessary, or at least the message could have been better delivered verbally. Sending email is a missed opportunity much of the time. It’s also supremely unproductive.

Recruiting is about relationships. Selling is about hunting, persuading, seducing and consummating. Email is bland, annoying and often not read by our clients.

Please do not misunderstand my message here. Email and the newer technologies and communications platforms have incredible application and I use them all the time. I am after all engaging with you via a blog and via a video too, right now.  But I keep asking myself “what outcome am I trying to achieve, and am I more likely to achieve it by phone or face-to-face?”

Our job as recruiters is about compelling people to action. What we do, or should do, is create outcomes and facilitate decisions. Email does not do that. Your job is about selling, understanding and building trust. Email does not do that.

Success in recruitment is about connecting. Technology is an enabler. If you want to compete, make sure you and your team talk to clients and candidates on every possible occasion. Ask questions, listen actively, and solve problems.

Challenge people in your office. Why send an email?  Why not pick up the phone or even go and see the person?

Less email, less typing, less laptop, less desktop. More talking, more listening, more asking, more necktop!

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This is the third blog in my series on great coaching for managers of recruiter teams.

Last week I expanded on the importance of ‘Live Feedback’ as a coaching tool, and today we turn our attention to the sadly under-utilised ‘Real Life’ approach to consultant coaching.

One of the major learnings for me about effective coaching is that telling people how to do things is only fractionally as successful as showing them how it’s done. Neither is as good as having consultants actually try the task to perfect it.

Real life situational coaching is best done on an individual basis, and can involve simply sitting down next to the consultant, listening to the way they make phone calls and providing feedback and guidance.

Occasionally, it is important to reverse the roles, and you can make the phone calls, allowing the consultant to evaluate the way you are approaching the task.

An excellent example of this type of coaching is where you have a consultant whose approach is selling a job to candidates over the phone is lacklustre or generally poor. Instead of lecturing the consultant on how to sell the features of a job to a candidate, you pick up the phone, call that consultant’s candidate yourself, while the consultant is sitting there, and brief the candidate on the job. It only takes a few minutes and the learning is substantial.  And you earn huge credibility by actually doing the job ‘live’. And of course you are being productive, because you are executing a task that could well lead to revenue.

You are doing the job while teaching the job! It’s beautiful, beautiful thing.

Where possible, make your own recruitment consulting visible to the team, so they can learn from real situations as they occur. Instead of locking yourself in a room when you have to make those difficult phone calls (e.g. fee dispute, counter offer) gather your team around you. Explain the issue, brainstorm with the group how best to tackle it… and then make the call right there, in the spotlight. Yes, its nerve wracking. But the learning is intense, and so is the respect you garner but putting yourself out there.

You will certainly never be accused of not ‘walking the talk’.

Real Life. Nothing like it when it comes to coaching recruiters to greatness.