71 Questions to Consider Asking When Taking a New Search

In his excellent recent article The Future of Recruiting: The More Things Change…, Glenn Cathey, aka BooleanBlackBlt wrote:

“The Information Era of recruiting enables recruiters with solid e-sourcing skills to no longer be limited solely to candidates with whom they have a pre-existing relationship. These recruiters can find and attract the best candidates, regardless of whether or not they have previously identified them.

I’ll let that sink in a bit. It’s deep.”

That is deep.  This will have a profound impact on the work we do as third party recruiters from this point forward.

Or will it?

Some search professionals I know do this with every search they complete, and have for years.  40%+ of those I placed each of the last two years I recruited having no prior relationship with them before securing them for the job where I placed them.  Isn’t this what many of us have done for the entirety of our search careers, we just did it with the phone?  That’s right, the more things change the more we discover…

Still, ignore Social Media Recruiting, e-sourcing, at your own peril as a search practitioner or as an owner of a search organization.  These tools  mean recruiters can build networks faster and more rapidly than ever before to complete client searches.  It is in a very real way an acknowledgment of what Joe Pelayo shared at the San Antonio NAPS Conference a couple years ago when asked to make a prediction about the future of our profession (I paraphrase as best as my memory can recall):

…within 5 years, we won’t need to have proprietary candidate databases for success as third party recruiters.

The room responded with the appropriate shock, disbelief and disdain.  How could any search professional ever be successful without a proprietary candidate database?  Not sure some of the sponsors of the conference, a number of database software providers, loved this notion either.

I don’t think either Joe or I ARE suggesting you shouldn’t have one.  We are just pointing out that with the development of public “databases” like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Skype, to name just four, means candidates to complete a search CAN be found with more and more ease outside of just proprietary databases.   Those who learn how to do this through Social Media Recruiting, e-sourcing, along with all the traditional methods, will be able to transform information into intelligence.  Search professionals armed with this “intelligence” will be the search professionals that are in greatest demand.

All this leads me to a completely different tangent.

While we are all so busy developing these Social Media Recruiting and e-sourcing skills, which we need to develop, is anyone still working on the development of the skills necessary to sell and take client searches in a competitive manner?

For the first time since October of 2008, I have had so much new business called in that I had to turn some away (which I loath having to do).  It is a great feeling to be so much in demand again.  I hope this continues into the months and years ahead.  As I was setting up appointments to meet these clients and take their searches, it occurred to me that if I was feeling a bit rusty doing this, so might others who don’t have the benefit of my 23 years of experience as a search, placement & staffing professional.

With that in mind I pulled out my Taking the Search Questions list to review it, and revise it, ahead of some of my coming client visits and taking the search calls, so I could do it right.  My FREE Download for January for those who are reading this blog then was to is to share that PDF with you at:

Taking The Search Questions

This list is a template for what you “might” consider asking while you are taking a new search, especially with a new client prospect or dormant client.  Of course it is unlikely that you could get all these questions asked in one call or one client visit, you will need to pick and choose what it is most important for you to know now.  Others can be asked inside the search process as you need the information to complete the search.  And, it is likely many of you would have the answers to at least some of these questions for current or recently past clients, especially for those questions in the last section of questions listed.

So don’t let the size of the list overwhelm.  Rather, let it marinate itself into your process as it makes the most sense.

Think of these 71 Taking the Search Questions as a starting point to get back to the best practices that have built your desk or business.  A reminder of what you need to know to complete a search with excellence.  The answers you need so you can take those great candidates you find using Social Media Recruiting and e-sourcing techniques, and then sell them on your client’s great opportunity so you CAN close the deal.

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Do you use other questions we have missed?  Please share them with a comment below, or an email to me at AskJeff@JeffersonInc.com.

Jeff Skrentny, CERS, had an inauspicious start in the recruiting profession as his first placement quit after 93 days.  Then he was sued.  Despite that start, Jeff  has been an executive recruiter for 23 years, and has also been a trainer, author and motivator for his profession for the last 15 years, as well as being a business consultant and adviser for its producers, managers & owners for the last 10 years; all while still running a busy IT search business in Chicago at his firm Jefferson Group Search.