By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director

A couple of days ago a Twitter acquaintance of mine Ellison Bloomfield posted in her blog the rhetorical question; shouldn’t an internal HR department have the skills and knowledge to be able to recruit their own people?

Good question. Even though it was rhetorical, I’m going to answer it anyway as it’s a pet topic of mine. My view is this; recruitment AND selection are very specialised competencies within the overall scope of human resources management.

Not all HR Managers will have the necessary skills, commercial knowledge or time to be able to effectively do one or both. Often, particularly with senior executive search assignments, it will also be next to impossible to carry out the assignment appropriately via internal resources. Many companies have recognised this. Some bigger blue-chip companies even have specialised external recruiters sitting full time in their offices sourcing candidates (the RPO model). Some companies have specialised Recruitment Managers sitting within their HR teams. These examples are recognition enough of the specialised nature of recruitment and selection.

So what are these specialised skills?

Dictionary.com defines recruiting as; (the activity) to engage in finding and attracting employees, new members, students, athletes, etc. This is a very broad definition, and I draw distinction between “recruitment” and “sourcing”. Sourcing is the most difficult skill to acquire within the scope of recruitment activities. I’ve always held that anyone can recruit. In the traditional sense, recruitment is about drafting an advert and getting it out there on job boards, newspapers etc, wherever it will be seen (hopefully). Using this methodology certainly has a luck component. The success or otherwise of the advert will also largely depend on the language and marketing skills of the person writing it.

This form of recruitment is also largely a passive activity as an ad is posted and then one sits back and wait for the applicants. Sourcing however, is a much more active approach that involves detailed detective work, networking, market and/or industry knowledge, intuition, guile, time and persistence. A good sourcer (or researcher as they are often known) will uncover passive candidates and other potentials who are NOT out actively looking for roles. This is executive search methodology. These are difficult to acquire skills almost always outside of the scope of generalist HR personnel. At Mindset, it is the skill of our researchers in uncovering this so-called hidden talent that has made us so successful. Our researchers are one of the reasons why we are regularly engaged by HR Managers to find talent for their organisations.

The other and most important part of the process is selection. This is the choice of candidate (if any) from the available pool of talent that has been sourced by advertising or research.

In her blog Ellison goes on to ask; how well can a recruiter with an agency really know a position? Or, for that matter the personalities of the people in the team or the style the manager wants. Again this is a good question.

A skilled and competent selection consultant (this is distinct to a recruiter) will have taken the time to meet with and understand the often multiple stakeholders in the role. They will understand the company and its business as well as the internal and external issues that the company faces in order to achieve its goals. The more assignments a consultant carries out with a client the better they will know it and the more value he or she will create for their client. Further, if a consultant is a specialist in a field, say engineering or finance, they will often always be better at determining technical skills and experience than a generalist HR practitioner.

A company is only as good as the talent it is capable of attracting and retaining. As such, a skilled and commercially astute recruitment/search and selection partner will become a vital trusted advisor to a client. Their skills in attracting talent to the organisation can often have a positive strategic impact second only to the product or service that the client actually delivers.

And that is why so many companies turn to recruiters rather than their HR personnel to find them their people; their strategic advantage.

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director

I’m sitting here at 11000m above the ground somewhere between Melbourne and Sydney thinking about career management. Why? You ask. Well late last week one of our consultants received within the space of an hour three emails from three different candidates attaching their CVs and asking politely for meetings with us and for their CVs to be added to our database for consideration for any current and future roles we may be trying to fill.

Nothing unusual in that, you think.

Each CV was accompanied by a 4 paragraph cover letter (email), and each was identically worded. Clearly this was no coincidence so to find out what was going on, we called that candidates and asked them.

Each candidate had engaged the services of a “Career Transition Specialist” to market them. This so-called specialist had mass emailed their CVs to a number of executive search companies including Mindset, hence the common, but lazy, cover letter. When we explained what had happened to the candidates they were dismayed, not least that each of them had parted with a not inconsiderable amount of money for these services (one of them over $10,000!).

We’ve all seen the adverts in The Age (and presumably other newspapers) advertising their services. “Access the hidden job market”, “professionally manage your career”, “looking for your next career challenge” they implore. These companies charge candidates a fee to market them to prospective employers and recruiters. Although not a new phenomenon in Australia, they seem to be gaining some traction of late. I’d be interested in seeing what performance guarantees they offer to their clients, and what ethical stance these organisations take.

Ethical recruiters should only work with one client in an industry so that there is no conflict of interest. At Mindset we have turned business away when we have been approached by a client’s competitor to also recruit for them. If one of these “Career Transition Specialists” has taken money from 3 similarly qualified candidates which one do they put forward and sell more heavily for a position? Presumably they are obligated to sell the one who had paid the highest fee, but then where does that leave the lower paying clients (candidates)?

But ultimately, I ask the question; would you outsource the management of your career to someone else? Personally I wouldn’t. To a large extent, our careers define who we are and our positions in society. From a recruiter’s perspective, we don’t want to deal with the spin these marketing companies place on their candidates. I’d rather deal directly with the candidate. Using one of the marketing companies also raises the question about how much energy  they are personally prepared to exert to manage their career. For something so important, I’d want to see personal input and activity.

The mass emails we received last week, actively went against the interests of the candidates. Not least of which we now know that the well written cover letter was NOT the work of the individuals sending them. We have no personal feel for these candidates. It has also raised questions on the veracity of their CVs.

My recommendation to job seekers therefore is to manage your own careers. By all means get professional help with your CVs, they are your primary marketing document after all. But send out your own letters. Make the phone calls to the employers and recruiters yourself. Record the roles you have applied for and follow up the organisations yourself. Your own efforts and activities will be appreciated and will almost always get you what you want faster.

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director

The other day I took a call from a young HR practitioner enquiring about a position with Mindset as an HR consultant. She is a graduate with a good couple of years experience at officer level in public service and an SME. She was disillusioned with her current role feeling that it was too administrative, lacked intellectual challenge and wasn’t strategic enough. It was clear she had a real passion for HR and true belief in what good “HR” can do for a business and ultimately its bottom line.

Unfortunately we weren’t able to offer her a role, but her predicament is all too common. Many people study HR at University/TAFEs for either the wrong reason or because the profession has been misrepresented to them. After a couple of years in the “real” commercial world it dawns on them that they could well have made the wrong career choice. They then fall into one of three categories;

1. Those that give in to the system and become administrative drones, often becoming increasingly bitter and institutionalised over time.
2. Those that fight on valiantly against the forces of evil to try to effect change in their organisations and realise their dream of what HR should be for the business. Some will succeed, most won’t. Those that do succeed will go on to have stellar Director level careers. It’s a tough gig and I tip my hat to those who have beaten the system and made it.
3. Those that leave the profession completely.

When I talk about “the wrong reason” to go into HR, the most common ones that I hear when I ask HR people why they did it are “I love people” or “I love talking to people” or “I love helping people”. For HR to be relevant and a vital part of the commercial world these practitioners need to understand that their role is to muster their available human resources to deliver the business strategy effectively and efficiently so as to deliver the best possible bottom line for the company. HR people must remember that they are their company’s advocate NOT the staff’s.

By “misrepresentation” I mean that they have been sold a pup by academics. Many HR academics that I have met know the theory intimately, have a passion for the subject, but lack real world experience and thus have a totally deluded understanding of how HR is perceived by most decision-making business executives. They are akin to Catholic priests giving marital advice.

So why couldn’t I help out my young HR practitioner? Through no fault of her own, she simply needs more commercial experience. A successful consultant is a salesperson. It is no use having the theory and the ability to deliver if you cannot win the assignments in the first place. To be a successful salesperson selling HR consulting services requires a broad and thorough understanding of business, finance, commercial issues and strategy. Being able to engage with a Managing Director or CFO at this level so as to be able to quickly and succinctly identify their BUSINESS issues and present AND CLOSE an HR solution is paramount. Then, and only then, will your HR delivery skills come into play.

So for HR people who are looking to move into HR consulting or make yourself more relevant to the/any business, I urge you to develop your business skills and your networks (not with other HR people, but with business people). Learn to sell. Leave HR for a while. Work in other disciplines (particularly sales). Gain experience. Don’t waste your time with administration-oriented HR diplomas, study business, do an MBA.

Whatever you do, don’t take the first option. Life’s too short to be a drone.

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director

My company, Mindset or I personally are members of a number of professional bodies; the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association (RCSA), the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC), Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), and the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) to name a few.

I have also in the past been a member of the Institute of Professional Engineers of New Zealand (IPENZ) and its Australian equivalent the IPEA. I’ve even been a member of union, the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers of Australia (APESMA).

These institutions have a variety of missions, but at their core they strive to;

1.   Advance their respective professions through education and training
2.   Represent their professions as lobbyists to governments and other bodies
3.   Protect their members’ interests, both at personal and professional levels
4.   Provide a ‘badge of credibility’ for members, particularly those who have completed their member body’s certification courses.

Another often unstated but very important function of these bodies is to provide an avenue for professional networking and through this, employment and business opportunities. In fact a major reason why members join these bodies is for this purpose alone. Some of these organisations have attempted to involve themselves more in social media, but most have only scratched the surface. The RCSA for example seems to be non-existent in cyberspace except for its poorly functioning website. AHRI at least has a twitter profile (sort of anyway @AHRIevents).

As a result of this lack of institutionalised Web2.0 involvement informal social media networks have sprung up, particularly in the recruitment and HR sectors that I operate in. These social networks are expanding via a word of mouth (word of media?) and are free to join. The discussions and debates that flow through them are un-moderated or at least peer-moderated and many close professional relationships amongst peers and even competitors are formed. Ideas are exchanged, topics discussed (sometimes hotly). Most participants and observers will grow professionally as a result of their interaction. More formalised groups and activities are evolving from these. The forthcoming TRU events in Australia and New Zealand are prime examples. These are commercialised recruitment industry events being held, by Web 2.0 networks wholly outside the controls and auspices of the traditional controlling institutions such as the RCSA. I think this is a good thing as a wider range of views and ideas will continue to be raised and debated.

As Web2.0 moves inexorably towards so-called Society2.0, these web-based social networks and their more formalised commercial offshoots will pose a continued threat to the established old-guard institutions. I see a time (in the not too distant future) when they will either be reduced to rump formal training accreditation institutions or will be subsumed completely by a variety of ever growing, evolving, melding and splintering cyber-groups.

The current institutions are largely controlled by members of the baby boomer and Gen Y generations. To many of this era, Society 2.0 with its fluid movement, freedom of expression and direct unmodified input into debates will seem like anarchy, but in order to preserve their relevance and be part of the debate and discussions these institutions must embrace social media and engage with the groups that have and will form to satisfy needs that the establishment is not currently meeting. Ignoring it will be their ultimate demise. They will be like King Canute, trying to hold back the sea.

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director of the Mindset Group

As many of you know, I am passionate about improving the standards of the executive search and recruitment industries. Recruiters by and large have a very bad name, often compared to real estate agents and used car salespeople. There is no smoke without fire, and much of the criticism is justified. Not all recruiters are suspect of course. Many are fine hard working individuals who create real value for their clients and are appreciated by their candidates. But many are not. These others are a significant part of the recruitment scene, and their antics muddy the waters and make it much harder for the good guys’ messages to get through. I have been in the industry many years and am proud to be labelled a “recruiter”, even though that label also has many negative connotations. My company’s clients know that we are not like the rest, but the reputation of recruiters as a whole makes it challenging to attract new clients, hence my attempts to lead change in the industry.

Recruiters act as an interface (or broker) between employers and candidates and so have the ability to upset both their clients and their candidates.

The most common way they upset clients is by presenting candidates that don’t reflect what their candidate is looking for. Non-exclusive contingent recruiters are most to blame for this one. It’s a daft business model that pits competing recruiters to get a backside on a seat quickly so that they can get an invoice out. The emphasis is on speed not quality. This business model is also the one most likely to upset candidates as the time pressures involved mean that most contingent recruiters have little time for candidate care.

The market will take care of agencies that upset clients as they won’t get the briefs, so generally it will unfortunately take care of itself. Businesses without clients seldom last long.

Upsetting candidates however is another matter. There is an absolute groundswell of opinion from job seekers that recruiters are lower than pond scum. The tales that I have heard continue to stagger me. In crass terms, candidates are our stock. I have never heard of an industry that treats its inventory so poorly. Farmers do not mistreat their animals as their productivity will drop and they won’t get as much for them at market. Why do so many recruiters maltreat their candidates??

This blog post was triggered by two events today. The first was a call from an unsuccessful candidate thanking me for sending him a prompt “sorry you have been unsuccessful” email. He told me that it was so unusual he had to call me. It meant closure for him and he could move on to other things. I know that one day he’ll be a Mindset client. Candidate care should be king for recruiters.  I urge everyone to;

1. Let candidates know what your process is up front
2. Acknowledge all applications, communications and follow-ups
3. Return ALL phone calls promptly
4. Let candidates know how they are progressing  (or not)
5. Let them know that they have been unsuccessful, and what will be happening with their details.

Recruiters are in an unenviable position. If recruiting for a job via a job board they may have 100 applications. They are going to have to let down 99 of them and the way they do this is key. Make no mistake. Candidates will talk to other candidates. They do it everywhere; in the pub, over the phone and via social media. As I type this, I have been alerted to a Facebook page that has a stream of comments from job seekers commenting about their social media profiles (a whole other topic!). Clients also get to hear from disgruntled candidates and will often select their agency based on this feedback. They rightly don’t want shonks representing them in the market. Candidates will also often not apply to agencies that they have had bad past experiences with and so you will limit your talent pool.

All of that is candidate neglect. The other event that sparked this blog was what could only be described as candidate abuse. I thought I’d seen it all but this was a new low for me to witness. This agency is based in Sydney. Firstly this agency appeared to be doing the right thing and was sending acknowledgement letters to its candidates via email...however after the first cursory sentence thanking them for their application, it went on;

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This recruiter clearly treats their applicants with contempt. An industry associate commented that they must think “Why waste digital letters on these people, instead we’ll just pitch back to them, hopefully we’ll make some comms out of these loser candidates who’ve got nothing else better to do than to apply for jobs with us, so they’re not a total waste of space”. 

In summary, care for your candidates. They aren’t stupid. Many are or will become quite influential. Think long term, farm and cultivate your stock for maximum return!

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director

There have been some feisty twitter debates raging today around the ethics, legality and morality of the use of social media to conduct background checks on candidates. The debate is quite polarised.

The “anti camp” is claiming that using social media in this way is an invasion of privacy. They claim that recruitment selection decisions should only be based on professional criteria and to exclude someone from a position because of something they said on twitter or the football club they follow is fraught with legal issues. Some say that looking at a candidate’s Facebook page (if you somehow have access to it of course) is akin to snooping.

My stance on this debate is that once someone has published something about themselves, their personal views, activities etc then it is a matter of public record. If they don’t wish it to be public then they shouldn’t post it or they should set their sites’ security settings so that only those they wish to see it can see it. Once it’s public it’s public and when it’s on the web, it’s there forever. Of course it’s up to the reader to further test the veracity of the content being looked at. Just because it’s on the web doesn’t make it true!

If it is on the public record therefore, surely it’s information that can and often will be perused to gain further insight into a potential candidate. Often this information can support their application. It can also have an adverse effect. As it is on the public record, I don’t consider it “snooping”. If one was to hack private Facebook pages etc then yes…clearly that would be snooping, and illegal. If I look up someone’s home address in the white pages, is that “snooping”?

I know that many of our clients are regularly Googling potential candidates. To think this is going to “not happen” is naïve at best. Mindset as a company has also been asked by some clients to perform Social Media audits on potential candidates. All these are are lists of publicly available searched information. Sometimes the result of the audit is “nothing exists”. When this has happened, the lack of information has certainly not hindered (or supported) the candidate.

Many commercially available applicant tracking systems now also routinely spider social media sites to give users summary pages of a candidate’s social media profile. Clearly the use of social media as another tool for selection decisions is here to stay.

Marketers have been keeping records of what individuals search for and purchase for years. Often what they know about us commercially and personally pales into insignificance compared to what can be found by Google. This information is often traded and sold. I’ve seen little comments on the ethics or privacy concerns regarding this.

If candidates are concerned that their social media profile could compromise them in their job searches they should set their sites’ security settings appropriately. Another tip is to use a “clean” email address for their applications, i.e. one that isn’t linked to any of the social media sites (except perhaps LinkedIn). That way it’s harder for the ‘bots to find it.

The reality is that the information, accurate or not, is out there on the web now. It’s volume will only increase as more is added over time. To think it won’t be used by potential employers is naïve at best.

By Aaron Dodd
Operations Director of the Mindset Group

Today I was dismayed reading a twitter feed from a recruiter boasting that she had managed to talk her way out of meeting with a client who wanted a face-to-face with her. When I queried her she went on to boast that with technology she no longer had to even visit clients.

I have been in sales for most of my career. I first learned to sell with Pitney Bowes PLC in the UK, a truly excellent and professional sales environment that gave me a grounding and a sales ability that has subsequently seen me be successful in varied industries; office equipment, food ingredients, industrial filtration systems and lastly professional recruitment and HR services. One of the principal tenets that I learned at Pitney Bowes was to get face-to-face with your client/prospect. Doing so allows you to better develop rapport, understand their needs and close orders (it’s harder to say no to someone when they are in front of you in your office!).

I have been in the recruitment industry now for 12 years, and maximising time face-to-face with the decision maker has been a key to my and my company, Mindset’s approach. It is integral to our process;

1.    We spend significant time with key stakeholders gaining their input into the position description, key selection criteria, personality demands etc. This allows us to genuinely understand the role. Many of our clients now seek our expertise in being able to bring alternative aspects to the requirements.

2.    We present our shortlists face-to-face so that we can discuss each candidate in-depth with our clients, answer their questions and discuss their strengths and limitations.

3.    We present our Prevue assessment, reference checks and decision reports on shortlisted candidates face-to-face. We make our selection recommendations face-to-face.

What does all this client contact mean?

We develop an extremely close relationship with our clients. In competitive terms, we are almost unassailably close. Our numerous contacts often lead to discussions about other aspects of their business that Mindset can assist with. For us recruitment projects have thus led to software sales (our Performance Advantage appraisal software), leadership development programs, cultural surveys etc, not the least of which is more recruitment and selection assignments.

These discussions also lead us to better understanding of our clients’ businesses and the issues they face. Through this understanding we also do better selection work as we know their culture and market issues. Our clients also visually see the work we do and therefore appreciate the work we do and know how we earn our fees.

Let’s also not forget that visiting clients on their premises is much more fun than sitting in the office shuffling paper!

My proudly deskbound tweeter is correct in that technology more than ever makes it easier to avoid real client contact, but my experience is that avoiding client contact on the basis of “efficiency” is a very short-term approach. I urge professional consultants to get out there amongst it. New consultants to the industry, especially those establishing their own client bases should particularly heed this.

Many years ago (pre consulting) a sales rep of mine came back from a customer visit and said “Wow…it’s amazing what you can uncover when you visit customers”. That naïve statement still, and will always, hold true.

By Aaron Dodd, Operation Director of the Mindset Group

In 23 November's Recruiter Daily Daryl Keeley, MD of specialist recruiter MACRO commented that “Low-balling” clients damage recruiters’ reputations. He is right of course, but the issue is more directly related to the contingent recruitment model.

If a recruiter is retained they are done so on a project fee basis, incorporating staged payments. The fee is negotiated up-front and is usually based on a percentage of the EXPECTED final salary package. The very act of up-front negotiation ensures that both the recruiter and the client are very aware of the salary on offer. There is no room for surprises down the track at offer time, so the low-balling scenario will not exist and the recruiter’s and client’s reputations will not be compromised. Further it commits both parties to a ‘shared risk’ model. Under the contingent model, all the risk lies with the consultant, hardly an equitable fair contract!

The other point to note is that if a client is offering a very low salary for a role and will not change their mind or their offer, why accept the assignment in the first place? If the role is going to be impossible to fill (or retain an effective candidate in) why do work that you ultimately won’t be paid for? It will make better use of time to use that non-billable time to find better new clients than to spend billable hours doing unbillable work recruiting for roles that can’t be filled due to low salary offers.

In summary therefore the Daryl Keeley’s accurate consequences of low-balling can be effectively negated with the retained model and a more selective approach to the work a recruiter actually takes on.