Subscribe to The Savage Truth, ‘Like’ our Facebook page, and connect with Greg on LinkedIn to ensure you get your recruiting brain-food fix.

*****************************************************************

Recruiters often complain about the fickleness of clients. Clients don’t return our calls, they don’t give commitment, and they don’t follow through.

Often true.

But, is it always the client’s fault? Does the relationship flounder because you don’t put in the effort you should? Indeed, do you commit the cardinal sin of slipping into ‘chronic client complacency’? Honestly, I have done it myself, and paid the price. I see it happening all around me too. Bet you see, and hear, it too.

• “That’s my client”
• “Oh don’t worry about that client, she only uses me”
• “I get all their work”
• “I don’t need to take this job in person, I know this client so well and he is 100% loyal to me”

Sound familiar?

And what’s more, it’s often the very best clients we take for granted, lose focus on, and spend less time nurturing. Which is mega-crazy when you realise how much time we spend on new business development, with prospects who have never spent a single $ with us!

2012 is the time to get ‘client fit’.

That means honing up every aspect of the client relationship. Keeping it oiled and supple and vigorous and healthy. Take this little quiz to check your ‘client fitness’ (Good, regular clients I am talking about, not one-hit wonders or prospects).

1. Have you seen your client contact, face to face, in the last 3 months?
2. Do you see that person at least 4 times a year?
3. Do you take every permanent or search order, in person, if at all possible?
4. Have you met every line manager in the client business who could potentially be a hiring manager for you?
5. Have you met your client’s boss?
6. If your client is a line manager, have you asked to meet the HR team, and gone to see them, and asked “What can I do to make your job easier”
7. Have you studied your clients website, closely, recently?
8. Do you subscribe to your client’s blog, newsletters, Twitter feed and Facebook page?
9. Have you tried, and do you try to use, your client’s products and services?
10. Are you connected to your client on LinkedIn?
11. Do you massage you clients’ ‘social ego’ by re-tweeting his tweets, commenting on his blog and “Liking” his Facebook page?
12. Have you asked, “What is there about my service that I could do better, or what could I add”?
13. Have you found a good reason to get your client into your office? (A quick sandwich lunch in the Board Room, to meet your CEO… whatever!)
14. Have you followed up with every placement you have ever made at your client company, and do so every 6 months?
15. If you have temps on long-term contracts at your client’s site, do you ‘make yourself big’ by going to see them, handing out Easter Eggs, running on-site training, bringing in morning tea, and generally making sure you are ‘visible’?
16. Do you know who your clients’ clients are? And do you know lots about them?
17. Do you keep up to speed with your clients’ industry, and especially their competitors, and know what the key issues and trends are?
18. Have you done an annual or bi-annual ‘Business Review’ with your client which is like a mini performance review, where your work is summarised, assessed and communication both ways occurs to make the relationship better?
19. Do you know what the 3 biggest staffing/HR issues are for your client, and do you discuss them often, with a view to assist?
20. Do you keep up to date with your clients’ benefits structure, vacation allowance, their social media policy, and any other factors that could influence the interest of a future hire?
21. Do you regularly provide your clients with value-adds that you don’t charge for, like salary surveys and market updates?
22. Have you agreed ‘standing briefs’ with your client? Clearly mapped out skill-sets that your client is always interested in – even if they have no specific role for you? Most companies are open to hearing about ‘that special someone’. You need to know who that is, and float them in.
23. Are your most current terms of business up to date and signed off by the client? Or are you still operating off the terms they signed in 1999?
24. Have you introduced your clients to another recruiter on your team, or your manager, so that client ‘feels the love’ and knows they can call on someone else if you are out or away?
25. Have you specifically thanked your client for their business, maybe over lunch or with a small gift, or even just a visit where thanking them was the sole purpose?

OK, feeling exhausted with your fitness test? Score yourself now;

0 -10: You are a slob. Totally out of shape and unworthy of keeping your clients. Commit to get fit! Or accept you will die a young recruiting death.
11-15: Come on mate! Lift your game. You have some things right, but a long way to go.
16-20: You are a ‘client-fit’ amateur athlete. Working hard, looking pretty good, but still carrying a bit of flab.
21-25: You are a superbly honed, ‘client fit’, Olympic-level superstar. Nice job!

*****************************************************************************************************

Subscribe to The Savage Truth, ‘Like’ our Facebook page, and connect with Greg on LinkedIn to ensure you get your recruiting brain-food fix.

******************************************************************************************************

There has been a great deal of criticism of Agency recruiters lately, quite a bit of it from me.

But a recent theme is emerging where Corporate HR managers and internal recruiters have launched some scathing attacks on the process followed by recruiters.Truthfully, many of these criticisms are valid. As an industry we are guilty of shortcuts, shoddy service and overselling. It’s not true of all recruiters, but it does happen… a lot.

But, as with most contentious issues in life, there are two sides to this debate. And in the case of the relationship between third-party recruiters and internal HR, it is time for a little clarity on how the HR side of this uneasy relationship can improve, for the greater good.

These observations are my own, based on decades of dealing with HR through countless economic cycles. But to make sure I was taking the pulse of the current Zeitgeist on this, I asked for input from 40 recruiters I know across the globe. And they were very keen to have their say, and much of what they said cannot be reproduced here! But I have summarised their perspective in the 8 points below.

HR and internal recruiters, bring it in tight, I have a secret to share. Recruiters want to make you happy. We really do. We know that some of our number are a pain in the butt for you. But please don’t tar us all with the same brush. In fact some of your number are as bad as the worst of ours. Seriously.

So we promise to lift our game. But we need you to make some changes too.

1. Please don’t be so defensive when dealing with recruiters. We are not the enemy. We are not even bad people. We know you were once an Agency recruiter yourself, (and we will take your word for it that you were “really, really good” at it), or maybe you have an honours degree in HR, but please don’t lord your ‘power’ over recruiters, who should be your partners and not your ‘vendors’, as you so often call us. Arrogance is not an attractive trait, and it’s not a great foundation for a working relationship.
2. Please understand that we are not competing with you. We are offering to support your talent acquisition endeavors. Yes, we get that your job includes cutting the cost of outside recruitment, but we are pretty sure your CEO did not mean doing that at the expense of missing out on the best talent. Help us to help you.
3. Please appreciate the need for urgency in talent acquisition. Requesting candidates, and then not responding to a short-list for six weeks is not in the interests of your employer. And when you do finally ask to see those candidates, please don’t be shocked, even angry, with us, that they are not available any more. Good candidates have options, and they will exercise those options, to your detriment. Please work with us to secure the very best talent available. For you.
4. Please don’t see yourself as the gatekeeper between the recruiter and your hiring managers. We understand you are managing the process. You are in charge. We respect that. But please, accept you will seldom have the depth of understanding of the role that your line managers will. So let us speak to that manager, to refine and calibrate the search criteria. You lose none of your control by doing this. But you increase the chance of your organisation making a great hire. Keeping us from talking to line mangers is counterproductive. Your company does not need you to be a gatekeeper. They need you to be a conduit.
5. Please invest time in us. This might mean you need to work with far fewer recruiters than you currently do. And that’s a good thing. For everyone. Don’t make us compete on speed. Make us compete on quality and access to talent. We can only do quality work if you take the time to fully brief us on your hiring needs. In detail. And preferably face to face. In recruiting, as in life, you get what you give.
6. Please don’t delegate your most junior internal recruiters to brief us on your senior roles. We are not snobby. We will deal with anyone you require us to. But please make sure the person we work with has enough knowledge to communicate all the job requirements, and enough clout to ensure line managers respond quickly.
7. Please, oh please, communicate with us. Return our calls and emails, not just out of common courtesy, but also because we are representing your employer brand to the talent market. Keep us hanging, you keep the talent hanging. They don’t like it, and they wont like your brand as a result. Be upfront with us about the status of each role. If it’s likely to be filled internally, tell us. If it’s about to be put on hold for a month, tell us. When you interview our candidates, make the time to provide detailed feedback – so we can service out talent, but also so we can refine the search.
8. Please, take our advice. We understand you have been burned by less scrupulous operators, but please don’t lump us all together. Actually, it’s your responsibility to find a good recruiter and build a strong relationship with them. Sure, set your expectations of us very high, but apply those same expectations to yourself. You want us to listen and understand. You need to do the same. Listen to what we have to say on salaries, on urgency, on market trends and on which candidate to interview. If we get it wrong, warn us, and if we get it wrong too often, fire us. But remember if you treat your recruiter like a transactional drone, chances are, that’s what you will end up with.

The truth is that many of the very best business relationships I have had in my recruiting career have been with smart, demanding, Corporate HR professionals. I love dealing with those people. But they are rare, like good recruiters, I suppose.

It works best when the communications is open and the expectations are clear. But always built on a platform of mutual respect and understanding.

So, recruiters reading this, lets go and fix our processes. Listen to the voice of HR clients, unhappy with what we do. Let’s get our house in order.

But please HR and internal recruiters heed my call. Invest in your relationship with a great recruiter, or a small set of quality, specialised recruiters.

The rewards will astound you.

**************************************************************************************************************************
For fresh, regular recruiting brain-food, subscribe to The Savage Truth

Great recruiters need to understand their industry, their company, the competition, and the business environment for the types of people they place. You need to be a mile deep and an inch wide!

I find that recruiters are easily seduced. In fact, truthfully we can be a bit tarty. 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 of working in areas we are unlikely to ever revisit. Interviewing candidates we are never going to place. 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. That is absolutely key if you are serious about this business. This expert status appeals to both prospective clients and candidates. We all want to deal with an “expert” right?

Furthermore, it gives recruiters instant credibility with passive candidates, which will be increasingly crucial. Clients are already seriously questioning the value of our fees. We have to elevate ourselves to a trusted advisor relationship.

And for that to happen we must not dabble.

Don’t allow distractions.

Go deep.

****************************************************************************************************
Keep in touch with new ideas. Subscribe to The Savage Truth

Regular readers of my blog will know that I have predicted for some time that clients will expect more from recruiters as the market recovers. I have said that we can expect pressure on our fees, particularly as employers invest in other ways to access talent.

But it’s also true that market forces will prevail. At Firebrand Talent Search we have seen a marked easing in pressure on our fees and in fact in some countries, fee levels are on the rise.

In Singapore for example, where Firebrand has a strong business in the marketing, media, advertising and creative sectors, we are finding that many clients have taken the focus off fee percentages, and are now concerned entirely with accessing the best talent.

In 2009 our fees dropped to between 20% and 25% in Singapore, while now 25% and beyond is routine, and in many cases we secure retainers too, which makes for a much better business partnership.

In Australia we have not seen fees rise in our Firebrand offices, but we have seen the downward pressure on fees ease significantly and we now secure all our work at our term sheet rates. Clients are aware the fight for talent is hotting up.

Japan too has seen fees rising back to 30% and beyond. In one particular case, a client of Firebrand is offering “bounty” fee levels to ensure they capture the best talent. This gaming software business routinely offers Firebrand 40% and 45% fees for specific roles, for a defined time period – usually three months.

This month this client offered us a 60% fee (on a USD $60,000 job!) and our Tokyo team promptly filled the order, securing a fee in the vicinity of $40,000.

This trend is fascinating to me. I have never really seen a situation where the client is driving fees upwards. We would NEVER suggest a 60% fee. Yet this clients’ rationale is “Top talent is hard to find. We want the best. We are competing with other employers. We want the recruiter to be motivated to find us the best.”

And it’s working. The candidate we placed into this role had very rare user interface skills and the Firebrand team found him, a Japanese speaker, in Melbourne!

Once again the true value of our business is laid bare.

Access to talent.

That’s where it’s at.

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!

Please subscribe to ‘The Savage Truth’  for alerts on new postings, recruiting information and more. It’s free and takes 20 seconds to do. Subscribe

***************************************************************************************************

Most of us are told that recruitment is a sales job. And it is.

But the truth of selling is badly misunderstood. Selling in old-style recruitment means volume of calls, pleading for client visits, and pushing people into jobs where maybe the fit is dubious, at best.

But in fact the real selling in staffing is based on an ability to uncover and understand. Uncover and understand our customers needs and motives, that is. So being a great recruiter is going to require many so called ‘soft skills’, like listening, probing, uncovering and questioning.

Successful recruiters will have the interpersonal skills to really get to know their client hiring managers on a person to person level, including their leadership style and knowing the type of employee that responds to that style.

And so as the staffing market recovers, it’s important we start talking about things we never considered before. Like the client mindset.

Let’s think for a moment about the mindset of clients as the market recovers. We need to remember that clients will be bruised from layoffs and cutbacks. 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 changed, 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 the importance of asking questions to truly understand client needs. I have been on thousands of visits to clients with recruiters. Most recruiters ‘talk at’ the client. Few really seek to understand. Bear in mind the client may not know themselves what they really need. It may be a journey of joint discovery. We need to take great job orders, be consultative and question clients briefs carefully.

The biggest cause of placements falling through is people making assumptions. Recruiters taking what they are told at face value. You need to develop a relationship with your client and talent where questioning is actually welcome. It’s like a doctor asking questions while  working towards a diagnosis. Why is a candidate really wanting to move jobs? What are her true motivators? What is a client’s real ceiling when it comes to salary they will pay? Why does the job require the candidate to have 10 years experience in a certain environment?

Traditionally recruiters are the best of talkers. But now we have to learn active listening as a core skill, and we have to question everything.

Last week I blogged on why so many recruiters have a shallow understanding of what ‘competitive’ in our business actually means.

And so how do we thrive in a competitive world? What is the way to differentiate in 2010 and beyond?

Well it’s not cool to say it out loud, but as far as I am concerned it’s what technology cannot do that our clients will continue to pay for.

It’s a source of constant amazement to me how many of us in this industry have been completely seduced by the technology spin doctors. We are terrified that the Internet will wipe out our business. We agonise over social networking and how it will change the talent-sourcing model. We quake at the power of LinkedIn, and we are hypnotised by the thought our competitors will develop a piece of technology that somehow will make our service redundant.
.
Don’t get me wrong. Technology is reshaping our business and having leading-edge technology is crucial, in as much as it allows your consultants to compete on an even playing field, and gives them the tools to give clients and talent what they really want.

But technology will not destroy our industry. At least not all of it – and definitely not the part we want!

And here is why.  Finding a job or recruiting a new staff member is not a commodity purchase. We are not dealing with the same psychology which drives i-Tunes, e-trade or amazon.com.

This is important because it means that the real value provided by quality recruiters will still have a market.  That is, screening, evaluating, persuading, assessing, negotiating, advising, consulting and acting, as an advocate for employers will still have tremendous value.

It is on these competencies that we need to compete.

But it’s also more than interpersonal recruiting skills (which by the way were largely lost during the decade-long hiring boom that preceded the GFC). Talent management is where the real battle for recruitment dominance will be fought. Building talent communities and managing effective communications channels with those communities is where the holy grail lies.

And we will need to compete in other ways too. Customers will increasingly call the tune. And by customers I mean talent as well as clients. The customer experience will build or tarnish your brand like never before. This is where social media will be able to destroy your business. Get it wrong and your brand will be brought down at viral speed. That’s where we have to compete. How we deal with customers and manage their expectations and experience with us.

Lack of personal interaction is doing our industry no favours. In fact I consider it one of our deepest flaws. Many recruiters use technology to avoid connecting personally with talent, when in fact the real advantage of technology is to get much closer to many more quality candidates.

So social media and technology generally is a threat to you only if you fail to recognise this fact…

… there will continue to be a market for tailored, personalised, high quality business solutions based on an advisory, consultative model, where access to talent is the differentiator.

Don’t be sucked in to competing on the basis of who can commoditise what we do the best. Don’t play the low margin, process game.

As your competitors claim, “we are bigger, have cooler technology and therefore we can do it faster and cheaper” or technology-driven platforms push to cut out recruiters altogether, your premise for doing business is…

“I can solve your problem because I understand your need and I know where the talent live”

There is one word you will always find in any analysis or even casual discussion about the recruitment industry.

Competition

Get two recruiters or more together, in any setting, and I bet that 90 % of the conversation will be about how competitive its all become and how to beat the competition.

A few years ago my office was at 275 George Street in Sydney. That building has 12 floors, and at that time it housed 14 recruitment companies! Seriously. We used to loose candidates on the way up in the elevator!

But what does competitive really mean?  And if we competed effectively in the past, will the same tactics work for us going forward?

Well I first started to compete as a recruiter in Australia in January 1980. Since then I have been able to get first hand experience of what the very best our industry has had to offer in terms of competition here and all over the world. And many of those recruiters have built superior businesses through quality service, innovation and exceeding customer expectations

…but the vast majority have not!

For almost all my recruitment life in Australia in New Zealand, as well as my exposure to the industry in the UK, Europe and Asia, “competition” for most recruiters has meant one or more of these things…

Speed: Urgency is good. It’s what clients want. But for many recruiters what “speed’ means is how quickly we can respond to requests for help from clients. And that usually leads to competition based on how fast we can work – not on the quality of what we do. So “competition” in that case leads to shortcuts, sloppy process and often results in unseemly resume races and squabbles over who represented candidates first. Ugly, unproductive and damaging to our reputations

Volume: This is the form of “competition “ where recruiters are being exhorted by desperate managers, totally bereft of new ideas, to do more sales calls, send out more spam, make more unwelcome visits. And yes, activity is crucial to recruiting success, but it needs to be quality, targeted activities, not volume of intrusive approaches which means we actually end up competing on who can annoy our clients the most!

Price:  The final competitive weapon of he or she who has nothing else to offer, resulting in the very essence of what we do as an industry being devalued in the eyes of our clients. And of course selling on price alone means our own margins are relentlessly squeezed to the point where we are all working harder and harder for less and less return – and how smart is that when you really think about it? Competitive pricing is key, sure. But value is the issue we should be competing on.  No matter what you charge you will always find someone who will charge less. And that is a slippery slope none of us want to risk.

Aggression: Truthfully, I like the word “aggression” when it comes to business, just as I encourage my sons to be aggressive on the rugby field. But my type of aggression is the healthy type. Passionate, committed, loving to win more than loose.  Always within the rules and never malicious. But too often recruiters think aggression means rubbishing your competition to clients and candidates, and bullying customers into decisions they don’t really want or need to make, all for the sake of closing the deal at all costs. And that is exactly the type of behavior that perpetuates the poor image our industry currently suffers with many of our customers using us begrudgingly  – and in some cases with undisguised resentment.

Dishonesty: And here I am using the softest word I can think of for competition based on lying, manipulation, and withholding of information. And it’s rife in our industry and I have commented on it more than once before (Integrity. It’s a bit like virginity. Either you have it…or you don’t!)

I can write fifty blogs highlighting outrageously deceitful behavior I have encountered from recruiters over the years, and maybe one day I will tell those tales.

But for now I guess the point is that it’s this kind of activity, that plenty of people in our industry believe “competitive” means.

Many of us in recruitment today are like pin-balls in a pin-ball machine. We bounce around without pattern desperately trying to hit the jackpot.

We are not sure we have the tools to compete, so we live in fear of every new development and then we try to copy it or do it faster or do it cheaper. But those old tactics are no longer working. In fact they are sending many of us out of business. Please note, “competing” does not mean copying.

So how do we thrive in a competitive world?

Well, stay tuned to next week’s blog entry where I will try and pin some of that down.

Over the past week I have committed to presenting at two RCSA conferences in Australia, which by the sound of the program and the quality of the other speakers, will be well worth attending.

Below are details of the two presentations I will be giving, in Sydney and in Hobart, as well as links to the Conference programs

RCSA Sydney Consultant Forum 2010

Tuesday 1st June 2010

“Recruiting Skills for the New Era”

Greg Savage MRCSA (Life) AQUENT
“Restocking the Skills Briefcase”

The fact is that the skills and tactics that got you where you are today, will NOT be good enough to take you where you
want to go! The market has shifted,technology has evolved and client and candidate expectations have risen. This session will uncover the key skills many recruiters lost during the boom years, which now need to be relearned,and will also highlight brand new approaches to client and candidate interaction. Full of practical takeaways and immediately useable tips and tactics, this is session for all would-be top performers

For details Click here to download the event brochure for more information.

***********************************************************************************************************************

RCSA Conference  – Hobart, Tasmania

25-27th August 2010

“Bridging Connections”

Featured Key Note Speaker

Greg Savage-CEO Aquent International

“New engagement for a new world – A case study in changing the recruitment conversation”

Apart from his reputation as a business leader, Greg Savage is known throughout our industry as a recruiting trainer and coach. His management and consultant skills session sell out all over the Australia and New Zealand. But this session is different. Designed for recruiting leadership, and presented exclusively at the RCSA leadership conference, Greg will share exactly what he is doing at Aquent to change the way his business engages with clients, relates to talent and builds loyalty from their own staff. It’s happening to Greg right now so you will hear the strategy as well as how some of the plans are working out..or not! Few recruitment leaders would share such strategic imperatives, and fewer still will divulge the results, but Greg will outline the Aquent social media strategy, the new customer service charter and a brave new way Aquent are dealing with client commitment — amongst much else.

for details  visit the website  bridgingconnections

As the market recovers, one of the first impacts on our industry will be a revival of the temp and contract market. Temp-to-perm will be huge. Employers will see increased work volumes as the economy recovers, but will “dip their toes” into the labour market at first, hiring flexible solutions initially. But then, as momentum is gained and confidence returns, they will start to hire permanently. But the first place they will go for their permanent hires will be to transition tried and tested contractors onto their permanent payrolls. The big issue for us in the staffing industry will be talent management. It’s important we strategise and behave as if we are thinking years ahead when it comes to talent – because candidates will become a short resource again very soon.

Invest not only in adding talent to your database, but also ensuring relationships are built with them and that your systems allow you to access them fast. Find a way to shift the consultants’ mindset from running job board ads after they have taken an order – to a fully integrated talent strategy where your company and your staff are interacting with candidates and potential candidates, in their communities, all the time.

It’s going to be a whole new talent world going forward. The other issue is to think hard about the type of talent companies will be hiring in the recovery. Your tactics need to be based around building a relationship with the 10% that will be in demand and able to be placed, so that as the market rises you will be ready with the right stock at the right time.

It’s not about lots of talent, it’s about the right talent.