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 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 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.

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director at The Mindset Group.

Much has been written of late about the many flaws in the contingent recruitment business model.  Last week I experienced first-hand just how seriously poor the model is. Those that promulgate it and try to run their recruitment businesses with it will ultimately fail their businesses, clients and candidates. They also act as the best advertising money can’t buy for those recruiters who operate with better proven exclusive and ideally, retained models. The case story follows;

Preamble; Mindset only operates on retained exclusive recruitment and selection assignments. We will walk away from non-exclusive jobs and only work on a retained basis as we like to be paid for the work we do. The client in question has an exclusive retained services agreement with Mindset that commits them to use Mindset exclusively for all their recruitment activities for 12 months, in return for a set competitive fee structure. This is not a preferred supplier agreement but an exclusive supplier agreement. Mindset has many such agreements with its clients.

We are currently recruiting a State Manager for just such a client. Mindset has advertised the position and has also carried out a parallel search process to uncover suitable passive candidates. On Wednesday I commenced a first interview with a candidate who had responded to an advertisement. The first thing he said to me was “you should be aware that I was already interviewed for this position by another agency on Monday”. Further investigation revealed that a contingent recruiter without permission of the client had advertised the position and was interviewing candidates, telling them that he represented the client.

The client was duly forwarded a copy of the web advertisement and was rightly furious. He issued an immediate request to the contingent recruiter to immediately cease and desist all actions “on their behalf”. The MD and owner of our client is a former practicing solicitor and prior to running the business was partner in a major Melbourne law firm specialising in commercial law. He believes that the actions of this recruiter may well indeed be fraudulent as he is misrepresenting to candidates (and others) that he represents Mindset’s client.

Further it then transpired that Mindset had interviewed a candidate that we had uncovered through our search processes. This candidate had been “floated” to the local manager of our clients business a week or two earlier by the said recruiter. This local manager had met with the candidate but no offer had been made. No contract had been entered into either as the local manager does not have the authority to commit to such contracts.

The contingent recruiter then started to send threatening and unpleasant emails to our client about “his” candidates and that even if they were employed via Mindset (by no means a foregone conclusion for either) that he would be invoicing our client. The more these emails came in, the more the MD hardened his attitudes towards him and better yet, the more professional and ethical Mindset was perceived to be! Naturally the legally-trained MD wasn’t the least bit perturbed about the contingent recruiter’s threats. He was more annoyed that his time was being wasted by him.

Reading these emails it became clear to me that this contingent recruiter had assumed that ALL recruiters work with the same non-exclusive competitive model that he operates under. His thinking was so set that he was unable to conceive of an alternative way to run a recruitment business. He refused to accept the definition of “exclusive”, let alone “retained”. This recruiter also had 22 separate positions listed on a major job board. It needs to be asked; how could a client possibly get a quality service from someone with allegedly so much work on their desk already? How many of these jobs were even legitimate? Our client’s listing certainly wasn’t!

To summarise the effect that the non-exclusive contingent business model has;

• Candidates are pissed off as their time is being wasted and their hopes dashed by recruiters interviewing them for jobs that they either don’t have or don’t exist.
• Clients are pissed off as most MDs would prefer to select the company that represents them in the marketplace.
• Clients get poor service as the clear focus is speed of getting a backside on a seat, not necessarily the right backside!
• Antics such as the above give the recruitment industry a bad name, but conversely make the ethical professional ones that create real value look fantastic.

I recognise that there will be shonky operators in any industry and trust that market-forces will ultimately weed them out. However in the meantime I thank them profusely and encourage them wholeheartedly. They entrench our clients with us and drive new ones to us in their scores. Once they are with us they don’t leave!