Should that really be your answer?

This Saturday I met with my Board of Directors in Chicago for the first of three meetings we will have this year.  I was exhausted after our day of hard work together, which of course was followed by margaritas and Mexican cuisine.  I have already [...]]]> Most of you answered “No one.”

Should that really be your answer?

This Saturday I met with my Board of Directors in Chicago for the first of three meetings we will have this year.  I was exhausted after our day of hard work together, which of course was followed by margaritas and Mexican cuisine.  I have already begun thinking about and working to get ready for my next meeting with them which will take place May 7^th, in Baltimore.  This group makes me think, and think hard.  They don’t let me off the hook for much.

Now some of you are asking yourselves, “Jeff, I thought you were a search entrepreneur?  How and why do you have a Board of Directors?”

Fair question, let me explain.

Even back when I worked a placement desk before I struck out on my own with Jefferson Group Search, I always met a few times a year with a group of trusted advisors to help me manage my desk.  See, I never really found the management at the company where I learned my craft to be particularly helpful in pushing me to new levels of success.  I was their top producer, and that was good enough for them, despite the mediocrity I would later learn was my “top performing” success.  Apparently, enough mediocrity in one place makes for a good living if you own the place.

If I was going to get the important critical feedback to help me grow and build the skills that would make me into the recruiting professional I wanted to become, I was going to have to get that advice from someplace other than my management team.  But from who?

I don’t recall which trainer it was, but somewhere along the way it was suggested to me that I create my own board of directors from my clients, candidates, professional peers and training mentors.  That is exactly what I did.  Boy did it ever make a difference to get their input.

When I began working with my first board of directors I was in my mid/late 20’s, and though I understood recruiting and clerical placement well, I really knew nothing about being a successful business professional.  Though it took awhile for a candid relationship to develop with those I initially picked for this personal board of directors, once the trusting relationship was cultivated, and they realized I really DID want the critical feedback to become a better sales and business professional, they poured it on.

And then they poured it on even more, as I had a lot to learn.

I was a sponge.  It served me well.

Before I was promoted into management, this arrangement educated me, resulted in my first ever letters of testimonial, introduced me to new prospects that would become incredible clients, referred to me some amazing candidates I would place, offered incredible suggestions for process improvement (one of my BOD members worked for one of the most exclusive retained executive search firms in the nation where I placed executive assistants for their executive search practitioners), helped me get accepted to an MBA program, and they helped me grow up quite a bit.

What did they get out of it?  A recruiting partner that worked hard for them year after year to continuously improve so I could do better recruiting and placement for them and their companies.  And I did just that for them, which made them very happy clients!

Then, because they began to take a rather vested interest in my success, I cultured some exclusive and very loyal clients that worked for me to succeed, and let me know if they felt or heard I wasn’t.

Sure, there was a bit of pressure with this arrangement, but the kind that makes you better.  The kind that top performers thrive on.

Doing this was one of the best bits of training advice I ever took back to my desk.  Yet, as I was promoted into management, stopped working a desk, opened a new business segment, and then began my own search practice in 1996, I let this group disband:  One of the most unwise moves of my career.

As well as that worked for me, I was never wise enough to put a group like this back in place as I struggled to get my business started, worked hard to close each and every search.  I was simply so busy working in my business that I failed to see how working on my business would continue to be important for my business.  Things were going well enough.  Add to that my training business for other search and recruiting professionals which got wings of it’s own, and suddenly balancing my two businesses, a new wife and young family, and my multiple other interests (marathon running, MLB ballparks, Cubs baseball, Shakespeare Theater, birding), meant I was always too busy to get back to this great feedback formula.

Years passed.

Business had its many ups, and, yes, a down or two (can you say DotCom bust).  Still, I remained busy, happy and prosperous.

Then in 2006, almost as if the past was reaching out to remind me how I once found the input of others to be one of the most important means for me to push myself to new levels of achievement and success, I got a call from a peer and trusted advisor.  He was part of a group of search entrepreneurs that met a couple of times a year to serve as a board of directors for one another.  Would I be interested in learning more about the group?

Let me think?  How soon?

I passed my “audition/induction vote” and my first meeting was in the fall of 2006 in Chicago.  I have now met with this group of peers 2-3 times a year ever since.  They challenge me, prod me, hold me accountable, and open my eyes to new ways of thinking about both my businesses; and me theirs.  I have come to think of them as one of the most influential groups of peers I can count on for candor, creativity and brass knuckle ass kicking’s when necessary.

How did I manage to go for more than a decade without a personal board of directors?

And so, Search Entrepreneurs; “How do you go without a board of directors?”

It doesn’t matter if you work a desk in a large recruiting organization with multiple offices worldwide, or if you work for a search entrepreneur like me, you can build your own personal BOD with clients, candidates and/or peers.  If you are a search entrepreneur who owns your own business and you are ready to hold yourself accountable to what you never quiet seem able to achieve, when you KNOW you have the potential, such an arrangement might just what the doctor ordered for you, and building a peer BOD might be something you may seriously want to consider for yourself.

It won’t be easy, as finding others who are like minded non-competitive peers isn’t a snap.  Getting a peer BOD set up might not be the easiest thing to do, but it is so worth the effort.

I was lucky; I didn’t have anything to do with beginning the group I am in now.  They had been meeting for three years before I joined them.  They came together as an offshoot of a Top Echelon Big Biller advisory panel; it was a natural progression for them to move into peer review with one another to grow their own businesses as peer advisors for each other.  I had the good fortune that they invited me to join their group in their year three.

But despite the initial challenges that one might face organizing a group such as ours; which we call the RoundTable Leadership Forum, those difficulties are worth every bit of payback that one gets as a result of the candid input from a trusted peer BOD.  It has just been over three years since I first joined their group, and over the years we have had some owners leave us, and some new ones revitalize the group as replacements.  Now, I can’t imagine running my business now without their input three times a year.

It is an arrangement every serious and growing search entrepreneur should be part of with 6-8 trusted peers.

It is not always easy, and I may not always like everything they have to say as I present my business plan, or as they hold me accountable for progress I have failed to make on an initiative I shared with them.  Still, they are always the first to congratulate me when I push myself to new levels of success, and often have a great bottle of single malt scotch there to celebrate those achievements with me and the rest of my peer BOD team because more often than not, we deserve it.

You do too.

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Interested in learning more about how to build your own peer BOD?  Feel free to shoot me an email at AskJeff@JeffersonInc.com.  I would be glad to share what perspective I have.  Or if you would like to take the interim step of hiring me as your mentor, I can do that too…I currently have two openings for my Search Entrepreneur Mentor Program.

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

Alright, it doesn’t ALWAYS happen.  As recruiters we tend to exaggerate just a bit, but it happened again this week to not one, but to two recruiters I know and have [...]]]> Why is it that candidates ALWAYS seem to get a review, raise, additional responsibilities right before your client is about to make them an offer?

Alright, it doesn’t ALWAYS happen.  As recruiters we tend to exaggerate just a bit, but it happened again this week to not one, but to two recruiters I know and have great respect for, and it drives me mad when I hear this.

This should never happen.

We, as third party search professionals, shouldn’t let it happen.

I have a rather simple strategy for keeping the incidence of this occurring with my candidates to a minimum, and it is something every recruiter knows they should do, but sometimes just forget or get lazy about doing.

Right after I cover a candidate’s work history, just before I am about to get to the meat of my interview with them, where I want to know how they have made a bottom line difference for their organization by how they  made money, saved money or changed a process that did one or both of these things, I go through a quick salary history review.

And it is quick.  By doing it fast, they don’t have time to “create,” and I am more likely to get the just the facts.

Usually I start three jobs back, and I ask what they started at, what they ended at while in that job.

Next job back, their starting salary, when they got their last raise, how much it was, and what it took them too.  Plus whatever bonus opportunities, or anything else they had that would show up on their W-2.

With the job they are in now, I ask them what they what hired at, have them break it down to each W-2 component.  Then  I ask them to very methodically tell me about every raise or salary and/or bonus adjustment that brings them to what their current comp package is as we speak.  I also ask if there is any bonus money that has been earned but not yet paid out, IF, IF, that seems to be the case, as it sometimes is with delayed bonus payouts commonly used today by employers.

I am not done yet.

To end this thread, I then ask them when their next scheduled review would be.  They always know when it is.

I push even further by saying, “So, you know the quality of work you have done and the place your employer is at, what raise do you think you will be getting?”  I follow that question up with what will your W-2 be this current year (unless it is late November or December, when I would ask about next year).

Very few candidates have failed to have at least some awareness of the likely range their next raise/bonus increase will fall into, or what this next year’s W-2 will be.  Often they know it very, very, exactly, and in great detail.  Occasionally, it is one of of the several reasons they were motivated to work with me in the first place (though I seldom have success working with candidates that are just money motivated).

Doing this has given me several items of use::

• a useful salary history
• the % increase in salary and W-2 earnings that occurred with each of their last two career/job changes
• because they were talking from their actual salary/W-2 history, these are probably not inflated numbers
• a sense of what their historical raise pattern has been
• an accurate idea of when their next raise will be and how much it will likely range
• and a clear notion of any money really being left on the table with as of yet unpaid bonuses

Simple enough, but I can’t tell you how many times I have done a split with another recruiter where they don’t know this information.  Didn’t even think to ask it because they were in such a rush to get the sendout.

How can one negotiate intelligently for your candidate or client if you don’t know this information?

It takes all of 2-4 minutes to accomplish.  When you remind the candidate that you remember this information as you begin down the path to close a deal and negotiate a salary for them with your client, my experience is it is unlikely that a sudden and unexpected salary review is likely to suddenly occur, unless the candidate really is playing you, and well, that is nice to know too.

Note also, this has NOTHING to do with the conversation that needs to take place about what their NEXT salary expectations are.   This is just the necessary background information that YOU, the search professional, the middle person of this search dance between the candidate and the client, must know for when and if that conversation is required.   Getting the information NOW, ensures that you have accurate information that isn’t “clouded” or “manipulated” because the offer dance has commenced.

In my process, those conversations do not happen in the first interview I have with the candidate.  Then it is a conversation in abstract.  How could they really know an answer to this without knowing the myriad of additional details, unique to each job or career opportunity, that accompany the money?  They can’t.  It is different with each job.  It should be, as each job has intangibles and non W-2 values that must be weighed into the final yes or no calculus.

More on that final negotiation dance in a future post.

Today, let’s learn, or for most of my readers, re-learn, this simple interview best practice for taking a salary history, and projecting if forward just a bit, so we can best represent our candidates to our clients, and through this information create the intelligence necessary to negotiate a fair and competitive offer that will make everyone thrilled with the work we have done to bring the search to a successful conclusion.

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Got a technique or two on taking a salary history that I missed, please share with a comment here or with an email to me at AskJeff@JeffersonInc.com.  I look forward to hearing, and learning from you and your suggestions.

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.

“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, [...]]]> 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.

My first reaction to the title of the post was, well, I have heard this before, and despite trying to use resumes that were not “traditional” with my candidates and clients, the resistance to that change has and continues to be most surprising [...]]]> Yesterday Bill Vick posted an article titled “Traditional RESUMES Are Worthless” on EmploymentDigest.net.

My first reaction to the title of the post was, well, I have heard this before, and despite trying to use resumes that were not “traditional” with my candidates and clients, the resistance to that change has and continues to be most surprising to me year after year.  Hiring managers just won’t make the switch to resumes that are not traditional, at least not so much here in Midwest.

So, as a third party recruiter/search professional I began Bill’s article with a healthy bit of skepticism, open to see what he was going to share.

It only took a paragraph or two to understand the central point of Bill’s article, which was clearly written for candidates more than for those in our profession.

That said, truth is third party recruiters & search professionals use resumes for essentially the exact same reason candidates do, to arrange interviews between our candidates and our buyer prospects or clients.  With that in mind, I think every recruiter or search professional should review Bill’s article to remember how they should be using resumes as they practice their craft, such gems as:

“…the only reason for a resume is to get an interview.”

“Most people only spend between 10 and 20 seconds on the first screen [page]“

“The fact is every resume is simply a marketing document…”

“Candidates resumes…often assume a one-size-fits-all.”

“For all those wondering, yes this means you may have more than one marketing document (resume).”

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After reading these reminders, most search and placement professionals are probably thinking to themselves, “Yep, know all this.”  But why then do you make resume presentations that fail as marketing documents?

What do I mean specifically?  I see very few recruiters and search professionals who make resume submissions to their buyers that:

• Have a cover page reminding the client why the candidate should be interviewed with a few succinct bullet points…it isn’t good enough to just write your thoughts in an email presentation as that often gets separated from the resume very quickly
• Make sure that candidates don’t have a “Objective” to open their resume, but instead have a “Career Summary” that sells specifically to the job at hand
• Make comments within the resume to highlight resume items that simply cannot be overlooked (we try to do this twice on screen/page one, and at least once on page two…we see few reasons why a resume should ever be longer)
• Include a checked reference or two, also with highlights of the critical points that someone making a decision needs to see

So truth is, despite my thinking that I still use “traditional” resumes in my process, I don’t.

I challenge my buyers with my perspective clearly highlighted as to why they should interview my candidates through the above techniques.  They don’t always take to these practices immediately, but they eventually come to love them.  Why wouldn’t they?  I make it easy for them to see the what and why as to the relevance to my candidate’s relationship to the search they are trying to fill.  It saves them time and actually preps them for interviews effectively with what I point out and highlight through the above.

If a resume’s goal is to get your candidate an interview, do you employ every tactic you have available to aggressively market your candidates to the buyers who are reviewing their resume to decide if they are going to interview your candidate or not?

If not, why not?

Your most important value to your candidates initially, is your skill to bring them to interviews with buyers who are interested and offer appropriate opportunity.  I think too often we fail in that task because we fail to create compelling resume marketing documents for our clients to review, resumes that are intelligent and purposeful marketing documents that compel our clients and prospects to be highly motivated to interview, and THEN hire our candidates.

There is no rule that says you can’t add your thoughts and highlights right into a candidates resume.  In fact the rule for great recruiters is that you can’t afford to send a resume out that doesn’t have these additions to ensure your candidate gets noticed, and gets that interview.  Interviews are the only way we get hires.

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Bill’s article was a nice reminder that can be shared with your candidates so you can work with them to created a resume marketing document, or often set of documents, that will show your candidate just how valuable you are to their search, and make it clear to your buyers that when you present, you are not just passing on resumes with keywords that seem to match, but are carefully selecting candidates that will deliver value with the candidates you feel they should interview and then hire.

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.

“Let me be as clear as I possibly can: