By Aaron Dodd
Operations Director

It’s my experience that in business many companies talk of being in “partnership” with their suppliers. However the reality is that almost all so-called partnerships are simply marketing spin. The relationships are usually very uneven, often with one overly dependent on the other; this will inevitably mean that one side is either being overcharged for their service or product or vice versa.

In the recruitment industry the best results for both parties without question comes from genuine business partnerships characterised by open communication, shared risk, mutual trust, fair payment for services and shared goals.

However anyone who has been in the industry for longer than six months knows that this is seldom the case. Recruitment is a competitive industry and it’s this competition that has led to rampant fee cutting that inevitably compromises service quality....especially in long term RPOs (the horror stories I’ve heard!). The contingency fee model also means that service purchasers have little to lose, supplier loyalty is minimal and supplier switching is commonplace.

Mindset endeavours to be a thought leader in the talent space and as such we attempt to form genuine partnerships with our clients. Indeed, we have even walked away from clients that don’t treat us as partners. A genuine partnership requires give and take from both sides and as such we make the following commitments to our clients;

• We will work with you to define your genuine personnel needs and deliver short-listed candidates that meet those definitions in terms of skills, qualifications, experience and personality. We will not commit to a defined number of candidates as there may only be one or two that meet the specifications.
• If you are not offering a package that will attract  quality candidates we will tell you up front so that you can revise your person spec or your package offer. If these can’t be altered then we reserve the right to not continue with the assignment. Mindset will not take on impossible assignments!
• We will keep you informed of our sourcing activities. In some cases you will have direct access to our applicant tracking system.
• If the sourcing process proves to take longer than expected we will let you know a revised shortlist date.
• We will meet you in person to present and discuss shortlist candidates.
• If required, we will interview shortlisted candidates with you.
• We will assess all shortlisted candidates after your first meetings against personality benchmarks that we will work with you to define, using our Prevue methodology.
• All assessed candidates will be met with in person and the validity of the Prevue psychometric test results will be investigated in detail.
• We will make verbal contact with all referees and will give you feedback on the referees’ responses.
• We will make final recommendations to you on which (if any) of the shortlisted candidates should be appointed based on their assessment results, assessment interviews and reference checks. If there are reasons why a candidate should not be appointed we will tell you.
• We will invoice you a pre-determined and agreed set fee for the recruitment process. Normally this will be in three parts; the first on commencement, the second on shortlist and the third on appointment.
• We will work with you to put together an appropriate induction plan that will assist in the new employee to generate results faster.
• We will follow up with both the employee and the client throughout their first 12 months to ensure that the needs of both parties are being met.

Partnerships are give and take. For Mindset to be able to deliver the above we also need our clients to commit to the following;

• Clients will make their key personnel and the role’s stakeholders available to us so that we can develop an understanding of the people the new employee will be working with and the culture of the client’s organisation.
• Clients must be prepared to pay a fair market salary (or above) for the role in question....OR be prepared to accept a lower quality candidate.
• Clients must make themselves available at fairly short notice for interviews. Going on annual leave mid-process (yes, it’s happened) or being “too busy” is not acceptable in a competitive talent-short market.
• If Mindset submits shortlisted candidates, we expect you to meet with them. We are recommending them for a reason and, just so we’re clear,not interviewing a candidate because you “don’t like their CV” is not a reason.
• Clients will promptly return phone calls, emails etc and complete Prevue job surveys in a timely manner.
• If a client does not like a proffered candidate they will give the Mindset consultant detailed reasons so that the same error is not made again. This saves both Mindset and the client’s time. Saying “I just didn’t like him (or her)” is unhelpful to say the least.
• If Mindset withdraws a candidate from the pool due to a poor reference check or Prevue profile, we may recommend restarting the sourcing process. Although it’s upsetting for all parties, please recognise that Mindset will not recommend a candidate that we feel will not deliver the results. We ask that our clients respect our recommendations; that is after all what you are paying us for.
• Clients will pay their invoices on or before their due dates.

If both sides of the partnership adhere to their commitments, they will find themselves effective long term employees with the least angst in the fastest possible time! Just remember, in recruitment especially, you’ll get back what you put in, and what you pay for!

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

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, 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!

By Aaron Dodd, Operation Director of the Mindset Group

This week has seen us witness the hilarious and ongoing Kraft iSnack2.0 marketing debacle. Although no longer Australian owned, the Vegemite brand is an icon in Australia and New Zealand. Like any icon brand, it takes a brave marketer to try and change it. The only comparative episode I can think of was the global “new’ Coca Cola of few years back. This was met with such significant public uproar that Coke eventually dropped the “new” Coke and reverted back to Coke “Classic”. Arguably iSnack2.0 is a new product, it hasn’t replaced Vegemite, but the icon brand has been seriously compromised. It’s not a lethal blow, but the brand will carry some scars for some time yet. After only 4 days Kraft have now announced that the brand will change as Australians don’t like it! How many millions has this cost Kraft? A 30sec advert in the middle of the AFL Grand Final was selling for over $120,000 alone.

What has made this worse for Kraft, is the publicity leading up to the new name launch during the AFL Grand Final (one of the biggest TV viewing events in Australia each year). For months we have seen the product on our Supermarket shelves with label marked “name me”. A competition has been running to source name ideas. According to Kraft they have had over 48,000 suggestions from 35,000 different people, with 16,000 unique suggestions. So from this, the best they could come up with was iSnack2.0.

So how does something like this happen? Kraft has a large consumer marketing team, probably well paid, well qualified and experienced. In my experience when situations such as this arise, it’s usually due to one or both of the following;

1. Groupthink (according to Wikipedia) is a type of thought exhibited by group members who try to minimise conflict and reach consensus without critically testing, analysing, and evaluating ideas. This can occur most commonly if the dominant team member likes an idea and is surrounded by position-security team members (“yes men or women”). Anecdotally there has been a rise in groupthink occurrence during the GFC as team members can be more reluctant to challenge the status quo or their Manager.

2. A lack of external perspective. Creative marketers need to be constantly stimulated by the world and people around them. They need to have their finger on the pulse of their target demographics and come up with product and campaigns that will grab their demographics’ attention. If a marketer is so out of touch that they make a decision based on their gut feel and personal preference, then it is likely to be out of touch with reality and fail

No doubt Kraft had some sort of external Marketing advice. Did that external advice have the acuity, confidence and independence to challenge the selection of the iSnack2.0 brand? If so was the advice heeded, or was it ignored? We will probably never know.

Mindset’s consulting business prides itself on its ability and willingness to challenge the established ways of doing something in a client organisation. After all when a consultant is engaged, you are seeking their external perspective and ability to bring something new to the table. A good consultant will break down Groupthink and throw new ideas into the mix.

Whether it’s recruiting a new team member, establishing new leadership paradigms or aligning individual performance with corporate goals, each of these can often be better achieved by bringing in an external consultant.

Recruitment and selection is especially prone to Groupthink when handled internally. How often have I heard the common refrain “we want another Roger” (or Bill or Diane etc)? A critical analysis of the position may in fact reveal a very different type of person is now required in the role. In fact the reason good old Roger left was that the role’s critical demands had changed quite markedly over time and the role no longer suited him. Mindset’s consultative transformational recruitment approach can and will uncover these anomalies and allow you to make better selection decisions.

Contact Mindset next time you need to make a critical strategic HR decision. How costly would an iSnack2.0 selection decision be to your business? Probably many times more than the investment you would make with the Mindset Group. 

By Aaron Dodd, Operations Director at the Mindset Group

On the weekend I watched the AFL Grand Final and witnessed probably two of the greatest AFL teams in history battle out an exciting tight contested game. Neither team deserved to lose, Geelong prevailed in the end. St Kilda’s leaders will use the loss as a motivator for next and subsequent years.

Many parallels can be drawn between successful sports teams and businesses (teams of people as well). A quick review of the two teams leads to some interesting (though not unexpected) conclusions.

Both clubs have recruited and selected well. Without the raw talent, no amount of excellent coaching will transform it. This is a fundamental precondition for any successful organisation. In the business world, there has been much criticism of recruiters of late. In my opinion, much of it is justified. However, specialist, consultative recruiters have continued to do well and be in demand throughout the financial crisis. This is because they create genuine value for their clients. In the AFL football world, most clubs recognise that sourcing talent is a critical skill that they may not have in-house. These clubs routinely use external talent scouts (the code’s equivalent of recruiters) to spot talent in the junior leagues, remote leagues (e.g. the NTFL and even Gaelic Football in Ireland). Not only do these scouts (recruiters) identify the talent, they then facilitate bringing the individual to the respective club. All AFL clubs will acknowledge that good talent scouts can make the difference to their clubs’ successes. It is no different in the business world, and let’s face it, AFL clubs are big business.

Once the talent is sourced, success is then determined by club leadership and coaching. St Kilda is arguably one of the least successful clubs in the competition’s history having famously only ever won one premiership (by a single point) in 1966. Although I’m a Kangaroos supporter, most of my local family are passionate St Kilda tragics so I have some insight into the club. It is a club renowned for management instability and dubious Machiavellian internal politics. For decades, club members have watched their beloved club tear itself apart from the inside. Lack of success on-field has inevitably followed. Only in the last few years has management/leadership stability finally come to the club and with that success has followed. A key lesson to be learned therefore is strong, stable, consistent focused leadership. The club has devised a strategic plan and the management team, functioning as a team, has delivered it. Success has followed. Geelong similarly has had a stable successful leadership team that has now delivered them two premierships in three years. For success therefore, businesses must have stable, consistent and proactive leadership with a defined plan for success.

And finally, one of the keys for delivering on-field success for all AFL clubs is performance management. Every player is meticulously measured and tracked. Many wear miniature GPS units on the field to track how far they run, where they run etc. Each player is constantly measured on dozens of KPIs; fitness, skin-fold tests, handling-errors, teamwork, skills, time-keeping, tackle-counts, goals, to name but a few. Each player knows their individual KPIs and also recognises that if they don’t meet them they could be dropped. Equally, if they do meet them, they will be rewarded with more game time, better contracts etc.

In summary therefore, like football, your business will be successful if you recruit and select well (don’t hesitate to use outside advice from competent consultative recruiters if it helps to get even a marginally better result). Ensure your business has a stable cohesive and focused leadership team and make sure you scrupulously measure what you actually do (both company and individuals).

The Mindset Group, can assist with all three areas; recruitment and selection, leadership development and performance management. Contact us for a confidential discussion on how we can help your organisation win a premiership.

Atlassian are a Sydney-based, enterprise software company. They provide products to over 15,000 customers in 113 countries. They are currently recruiting 32 engineers for their Sydney office.

Atlassian have set specific rules for recruiters who want to work with them. Calling them Bounty Hunters and they've set the following recruiting rules:

Rule 1: You can't empty your candidate database into our inbox.
The first time you send us candidates, you can only submit a maximum of 4 candidates (across a 5 month period).

Rule 2: Great candidate, means a great relationship
Make sure that these candidates are awesome. If one (or more) of these 4 candidates is hired, you are eligible to submit more candidates and become our recruitment partner.

Rule 3: Unsuitable candidates, sorry mate!
If none of these candidates you put forward is good enough, then we must unfortunately part ways.

More information can be found on the atlassian website.  

Our response to this is:

Mindset's talent division operates with a different process and methodology to most. Mindset takes a long term consultative partnership approach with its clients to ensure that the role is scoped in its entirety using our High Performance Role Clarity (HPRC) Definition process.

This takes in not just skills, qualifications and experiences but also maps out the ideal personality profile for that particular role at that point in time. The HPRC takes into account the multiple and often conflicting requirements of the role’s various stakeholders.

Once the role is scoped Mindset then goes through a comprehensive talent sourcing exercise so that we then have a pool of candidates to select from. Mindset then works with its clients through a structured screening interview, assessment, debrief and reference checking process to be able to make a final recommendation to our clients.

The HPRC, our process, the assessment etc all create significant value for our clients, not least of which is that they end up with a candidate who will deliver the required results in a shorter ramp-up time and with an excellent fit for the company culture, and a much longer “guarantee” period. However to deliver this result, a Mindset consultant must also do significantly more than a conventional “flick & stick” recruiter and as a result we have to charge more for our services, and only a retained basis.

Throughout the GFC our recruitment volumes have increased as a result of this focus on creating client value. Mindset has been recruiting new consultants to keep up with the volume of work while others have been shedding staff.

Our take on Atlassian is that it is an approach that will work to screen out the vast bulk of contingency recruiters who add little value to their clients’ businesses. However, the Atlassian approach also takes little account of innovative more-value added recruitment and selection approaches. It tars the whole industry with the same brush.

Mindset won’t participate as 1) the fees aren’t worth our efforts and 2) Atlassian probably wouldn’t appreciate the value of our approach and therefore be prepared to pay what our service is worth....and hey, we’re cool with that! Some companies just aren’t ready for us.