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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Recently I was honoured to present a keynote address to the RCSA National Conference in Hobart.

In that speech I laid out 10 trends that I believe will impact the recruiting profession and which we need to factor into our strategies and business planning.

1. Expectations of clients are rising and will continue to rise. Clients want insights, not just résumés. They want better service. They want specialist level consulting advice. And they want it faster and globally.
2. Clients and talent are savvier, more discerning, and more sensitive to quality. Right now, publicly listed recruiters are reporting rising revenues and profits. But at the same time we see increasing numbers of small recruiters going into liquidation. Big firm or smaller player, clients will not accept the second rate, the cumbersome or the old-fashioned.
3. Employers will continue to aggressively build their in-house capacity to recruit staff.  Clients will develop corporate in-house recruitment teams, build recruitment technology, enhance employer branding, and use social media. And all of these will be used to cut recruiters out of the process. It’s a major issue for our industry and we have to offer something measurably different to be seen to be providing value.
4. An increasing majority of vacant jobs will not be advertised anywhere. Forget web advertising vs. print media. More and more jobs just won’t get announced at all. Networking, social media, and skilled, specialised recruiters will fill most jobs before they ever hit the mainstream media. That has huge implications for us in the way we develop business, access talent and make the match. And also for the skill-set of our recruiting staff.
5. Talent will become smarter and wiser to the way our industry works. They will be far more discerning about the recruiter they work with. They will take charge of their job search and of their employee brand. Technology has made things so much more transparent for job seekers and the pathway for them to connect with employers is now wide open, potentially leaving third-party recruiters out in the cold. This raises massive questions around the way we engage with candidates and our entire talent acquisition strategies.
6. Reputation and Brand – of recruiters – will become our most valuable asset. And we will not be able to influence brand via traditional PR and media anymore, because social media is so viral, so transparent and so powerful, that your business can be destroyed or made by it at lightening speed. Our brands are being defined by the voices of strangers.
7. Referrals will become the primary sourcing channel for all levels of positions. Not print, not job boards – but word of mouth, reputation, networking and referral programs.
8. Customers’ loyalty will become key. And by customers I mean both clients and talent. Churn and burn will not work. We need to retain what we have, and develop it intelligently and consistently.
9. On top of all this, there will be increasing pressure on price. Clients will not pay the same for what they used to get.
10. To sum it all up, yesterday’s “delivery” market will become tomorrow’s relationship market with both clients and talent.

I am writing this on a plane on my way back from a week visiting the Firebrand offices in Japan. It was a great week, and the business is tracking well, but as I had not been to Japan for a while, I spent my time meeting with virtually every recruiter, looking at activities and shining the light on efficiency and productivity shortfalls.

People often ask me about staffing in Japan, and how “different “ it must be to the rest of the recruiting world. Well of course Japan can be a perplexing place to an outsider, but 10 years of running a staffing business there has taught me that, at the very core, success in staffing in Japan depends on exactly the same skills, metrics and activities that drive success anywhere else.

As you would expect, across a team of many recruiters we have a blend of exceptionally high performers, some solid fee generators, and a handful who are struggling to meet targets and objectives. Just before I left Tokyo, I debriefed with the local Regional Director, and it became clear that once again we had been reminded that a few very clear basics are what drive success in this business, and we agreed to refocus everyone back on to these priorities.

I have blogged previously on my core belief in what drives recruiting success

Activity X Quality X Target Market

And certainly that formula holds true in Japan as much as anywhere else. However I found that under-performers in Japan were falling short in one or more of three specific key areas. As I jotted up my notes from the weeks work, I reflected that these ‘Three Commandments’ could well serve as a blueprint for staffing success, anywhere, anytime

. • Specialisation

Recruiters are easily seduced. A client wants help with a hire that’s outside our area of expertise and we jump right in. And then we find we don’t have the skills, knowledge, or connections to do a good job. We waste time, we get frustrated and we actually risk damaging our client relationship when actually we were trying to go “above and beyond”. And think of the opportunity cost working in areas we are unlikely to ever revisit. Successful recruiters are specialists. They know a niche and they work that niche. Specialisation is critical because it creates a perception that the recruiter is a recognised industry expert. This status appeals to both prospective clients and candidates. Furthermore, it gives recruiters instant credibility with passive candidates, which will be increasingly crucial. Don’t dabble. Don’t allow distractions. Go deep.

• Order qualification

This is just so critical. Most of us work a contingent business model. We only get paid if we fill the job. Yet so many recruiters try to fill every order that hits their desk. This is patently a mistake because all orders are not equal and nor are all clients. The most successful recruiters in our Japan business, as everywhere else, are brutal order qualifiers. Is the client serious about hiring? Is the order fillable? Are the hiring criteria reasonable? Salary appropriate?  Working exclusively on an assignment with each client is a Firebrand goal. It is in the clients interests, the candidate interests, and of course our interest too. Our recruiters in Japan who do work more orders exclusively, bill exponentially more

• Talent selection

In financial markets they talk about canny investors being “stock-pickers” which refers to an ability to select ‘diamonds in rough’, investments that will outperform over time. Great recruiters are “talent-pickers”. We would love to place every person who approaches us or who we interview. But that’s not going to happen. In fact spreading your talent activity too thin will dilute your ability to find people work. Candidate selection is key. Selecting the best ones will be an art, developing relationship with them will be a skill that many of today’s transactional recruiters will find hard to adapt to. We have to be nimble enough to understand the trends in clients needs and adjust our candidate activities to meet that need

There are many, many things that make for a successful recruiter, but the “Three Commandments” (which may as be almost as old as the original ten!) still hold true, and I am finding it’s those recruiters who are applying age old, proven strategies to their work, who are flourishing most in the recovery

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As the talk of a recovery in the hiring market gains momentum, recruiters are gearing up for how they might take advantage. But before we think about us, let’s talk first about the mindset of clients as the market recovers. We need to remember that clients will be bruised from layoffs and cutbacks too. They will be under pressure to deliver. They may be confused themselves about the strength of the market and whether it’s time to hire. Their own corporate strategies will have changed, culture will have evolved, management style will have shifted, corporate needs will have changed, and indeed there is a good chance that their own manager may have changed under a restructure or a downsizing.

So initial hiring will be tentative. There may be some tyre – kicking by clients. Clients will want to get an “exact fit” because they will be terrified of making mistakes.

So that brings us to a key recruiter skill. One that has been blunted by lack of use during the boom, “burn and churn” years. That is the importance of asking drill-down questions so as to truly understand client needs. Bear in mind the client may not know themselves what they really need. Taking a job order may well be a journey of joint discovery. We need to take great job orders, be consultative and question clients’ briefs carefully.

Think about your clients’ mind set when things pick up. What do they want? And what do they need from you at this time?

It could be the start of a beautiful relationship!

Increasingly it’s becoming clear that a real recovery in recruitment demand is looming over the horizon. In Australia we are seeing little surges of temp demand, and in Asia our job order flow at Aquent is strengthening slowly but surely. Europe is more problematical for the moment, but certainly the RCSA (Recruitment industry body in Australia and New Zealand) must believe an upswing is probable, as they have asked me to speak on that very topic over the coming months right across the country.

http://www.rcsa.com.au/event/month/2009?title=Riding+the+recovery&event_start=&event_end=&tid_1=All

Perhaps one of the most important things we need to understand is that when the recovery comes, it’s going to be a different market. In the boom it was a ‘delivery market’. Orders came to us freely. Referring candidates fast was the decider. Recruiters were able to horse-trade talent around town, and secure placements almost in spite of their consulting skills, rather than because of them Many recruiters lost the hunting and sales mentality during the protracted recruitment market boom, which by my estimation lasted at least from 2002 till 2008, but if you take a longer view and count the 2002 slowdown as merely a blip, then probably it lasted a 15 years or more!

And of course that lack of business development and relationship-building acumen is what has hurt many consultants in the downturn, and forced lots of them out of the business all together. But we lost something else in the boom market and I believe it’s going to hurt us even more as demand returns. Many recruiters have totally lost skills in client and talent control. And what I really mean by ‘control,’ is the ability to influence outcomes, to manage expectations, to negotiate compromise and to broker deals. It’s these skills that the successful consultants will need as things pick up.

You see, I am convinced that we fell into bad habits during the years of plenty. We must be careful that we don’t become married to yesterday’s tools and techniques, because we might be in for a nasty shock if we complacently believe that we can simply revert to methods we used pre-recession. “Phone-jockey” tactics, like cold calling as well as relentless job board advertising and email blasting of resumes, for example, are methods that may have become outdated. The future is not so much cold calling, but more niche networking.

Recruiters will need to be skilled with building online relationships. But there is a catch. Online is not enough. The fully rounded recruiter will have the smarts to integrate their online activities with real world relationship building, via live networking and referrals. When all is said and done, the ability to impress and influence, personally, will be the key.

So get ready for the switch. Yesterday’s ‘delivery market’ becomes tomorrow ‘relationship market’.

Are you ready to cope?