Have you been reading the recent NAPS and According to Danny promo emails about Jen Lambert’s upcoming Recruiter Revival webinar?
Both have been using their eMarketing force to invite those in our profession to join Jen for her upcoming webinar, which frankly looks very interesting, but in the process seem to be openly endorsing Ms Lambert’s contemptuous mocking of Barb Bruno.
In Ms Lambert’s personal message to those of us who might consider attending her session, Ms Lambert enthusiastically writes:
“Have you been to a training recently and noticed, well, all the *B.S.* when it comes to selling from the desk and building a sustainable flow of revenue?” (should you want to see the complete text of her message, see the links below)
Clearly her emphasis on *B.S.* can only be an unambiguous jab at Barb Bruno’s No BS Newsletter. Is this the type of contemptuous innuendo we want from a new voice of “leadership” for our profession?
I think not.
And to see NAPS and Cahill’s ATD endorse this negativity and mocking innuendo of Barb’s work by distributing this message to their eMarketing networks, unedited, suggests to me at least tacit approval of this cheap shot at Bruno.
Lambert, Cahill, and most surprisingly, even NAPS may believe that Bruno’s newsletter and training is just *B.S.* and they are welcome to that opinion. But to so openly disrespect an award winning leader and volunteer from our profession who has given freely to the profession to move it forward to continually higher levels of ability and professional success as Barb has done for the whole of her career, seems imprudent and disrespectful.
I was shocked, and those of you who know me well know I haven’t always been the most tactful in my past. In fact, that I am even writing this censure is most amusing and highly ironic.
Barb Bruno needs no defense. She will likely turn the other cheek and continue to do what she has done for years, inspire and motivate those in our profession with what she has done and through what she trains. Do I agree with everything she trains? No. Can I say I have read or benefited from each of her Barb Bruno’s No BS Newsletter’s? No. But do I show my disagreement with what she trains or shares freely with open contempt just to “Ring the bell” to draw attention to myself? No. No need to. I highly respect her contribution to our profession, and think she has given more to it than any single other trainer/leader in our profession today. She has, and should continue to be, honored for that.
But I cannot say I have not made a similar rookie mistake as an overly enthusiastic new trainer for our profession. I have. It was a tough lesson to learn from. And as I recall, it was Danny and some NAPS leadership at that correctly reigned me in, and showed me that taking the high road was always the right way to market yourself. Have they decided to throw that advice out the window by allowing Ms Lambert to market herself so with such a cheap shot at Bruno?
Let’s hope not!
You would like to think in professional circles we don’t need to join the curb dwelling smack down culture that is so pervasive in our society today.
So should you join Ms Lambert for her session? I have met Jennifer, she seems like an intelligent, engaging, capable, successful and insightful practitioner of our craft. She is currently the Cahill ATD new trainer du jour, so clearly she must have some interesting thoughts to share, as Danny doesn’t let just anyone train his recruiters. So, yes, I am compelled by her message of enthusiasm and new thinking that makes up the second half of her personal message to her readers, which is compelling enough.
But I just don’t think her negative and contemptuous marketing are necessary. She can think what she wants. But the circle of those who are privileged enough to train our profession is small. There is not a lot of room to hide if she is going to go around and sell negatively against her training peers at every turn. And she doesn’t have to, as her message seems interesting without the distracting opening slurs with which she begins her marketing message. Not necessary to get our attention Jen. Ring our bells with your good training and useful techniques, don’t ring them with your negative opinions of a training leader and icon.
As for Cahill’s ATD & NAPS sending this announcement out without editing of Jennifer’s announcement, in the end that may be the most shameful mistake of all here. Cahill should know better. I can tell you from personal experience from a slight I made that was far more accidental and more ambiguous, that he does not respond well when this type of message was innocently leveled at him. How he could tacitly approve of this kind of message about another trainer who opened so many doors for him simply by the trails she blazed years ahead of him, I can’t say? Seems uncharacteristic.
And as for NAPS failing to edit Jen’s announcement. Maybe they thought it was funny. Maybe they just didn’t read it. Is this how they want “New” Trainers referring to their past Harold B Nelson award winners? I think we should expect more professionalism from our national professional association. I think they would agree with me, and hope this was just an oversight on their part. One I hope they won’t repeat.
Let’s stick to the high road, and stick together as a profession. We have enough outside forces working against us. No need to work against one another at this time of recovery. Most practitioners are interested in what many training voices have to say, not just one or two. It may not be quite as Bell ringing, or attention getting, to take the high road in our marketing, but is this negative type of marketing what professionals do? I think not.
Don’t you agree?
NAPS Lambert webinar announcement email 100106
ATD Lambert webinar announcement email 100107
In a Conference Board Report released today:
http://www.conference-board.org/utilities/pressPrinterFriendly.cfm?press_ID=3820, (also see: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34691428/ns/business-careers/)
researchers have found that employee satisfaction is at the lowest point since they began measuring this in 1987.
Employee satisfaction in 1987 was 61%. In the most recent survey it was only 45%.
Surprisingly, the authors do NOT believe that this lowest ever employee satisfaction measure is just a function of the current American economic downturn. In fact, they think it is a sign of something far more insidious, especially as it will impact enterprise success and knowledge transfer from one generation to the next.
As a third-party recruiter, this is interesting for two reasons.
First, as in each of the last two recessions I worked through, this employee satisfaction was important for recruiting success once hiring began again in earnest as the economy recovered. Frankly, it made recruiting easier because so many currently employed professionals were fed up with their existing situation and were glad to at least hear about other opportunities they could investigate to find that elusive job satisfaction. Being there to help, made recruiting very easy if you had client searches that were indeed great opportunities.
Second, maybe more importantly for those of us who have long term client relationships, and a long term view toward our profession as third party search professionals, is our need to not just to provide the recruiting solutions that we do, but to begin looking for ways to offer retention services for those we place as well as those our placements will be working with.
Employee satisfaction and retention will be key in enterprise success, and as we hear about the dissatisfaction at least as much as any other group of service providers in the market right now, we are uniquely poised to offer retention services that could significantly impact enterprise success for our clients, making them considerably more competitive. Our clients will pay for that if we offer the professional service.
I will say it again, do you have your CERS credential (learn more at http://www.recruitinglife.com/EduCert/cers.cfm)?
But in the short term, as soon as hiring begins again in earnest, I predict we will have plenty of candidates to recruit, if recruiting is part of what you do (and I am surprise to learn almost weekly how many third party recruiters don’t actually ever recruit). Because, as a final quote in the summary of the Conference Board Report suggests employee turnover will be very high in the next year:
In fact, 22 percent of respondents said they don’t expect to be in their current job in a year. “This data throws up a big, red flag because the increasing dissatisfaction is not just a ‘survivor syndrome’ artifact of having co-workers and neighbors laid off in the recession.”
Cultivate those client relationships, seems to me that headhunting will be very good in 2010 for third party recruiters who are taking the time to cultivate the right relationships with clients and (all the above, apparently dissatisfied and soon to be job changing) candidates alike.
Let’s go Radical Recruit!!!
As always your insightful comments, observations or criticisms welcomed and encouraged.
 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.
Great question!
Simple answer, probably.
More complex answer, it depends. If your candidates are (IT, Sales & Marketing, PR, HR to name 4 types of candidates who are) then you better be.
Best long term answer, YES!
We will all be on it sooner or later. So, do you want to start now or later?
Or are you going to ignore this like you did email? You know who you are, though you won’t admit it now.
.
If only someone would put out a simple, no nonsense guide, to help one decide how to approach/tackle this “Tweeting” stuff.
Done correctly, Twitter takes time, and can take TOO MUCH time very easily. But yes, it is a communication channel that can no longer really be ignored. It has become a communication channel where an investment of time and energy probably should be seriously considered.
Folks this isn’t a fad, it is the future.
I just found a great white paper that offers a candid and realistic road map to answer some of these questions (and doubts) from the good folks at Bullhorn. Think of it as a Twitter for Recruiters Dummies Guide. It is an exceptionally useful tutorial and guide to figuring Twitter out, with great links if you want to learn more and give it a try. For you skeptics, they also share three rather compelling reasons why you should seriously consider what Twitter can do for you as a search, staffing or recruiting professional, if you are still unsure.
You can check it out at (you may have to register as a Bullhorn Community Member first), or click on the document below and it will take you to an archived copy of the report.
http://www.bullhorn.com/research/Twitter_for_Recruiters.pdf
Is the ROI really there to make Twitter something every search and recruiting professional should be doing? I think the best answer to that can be found in a quote from the article itself:
“As one recruiter wrote recently in the Fordyce Report, ‘From a long-term perspective, I can’t think of another single service that can deliver this caliber of value.’“
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.
In my mind one of the most overlooked parts of the search process for most executive recruiters and third party search professionals, along with the candidates they represent, is how to select references that will speak candidly and intelligently about the candidate’s skills and abilities, and do so in the most positive, enthusiastic and realistic manner possible.
Many search professionals just assume that their candidates know how to manage this critical aspect of their career, but truth is most don’t pay nearly enough attention to this make or brake career transition detail. That mistake can often cost them the job they want next.
Thankfully, the folks at the Korn / Ferry Institute have put together a great white paper on the subject that can be downloaded at:
 http://www.kornferryinstitute.com/files/pdf1/Protecting_Your_Reputation_Importance_of_Reference_Selection.pdf
Its a great tutorial on why executive search professionals need to do this type of back ground reference checking, it also examines how they do this part of the search process, it explores how candidates can facilitate this process to get the best possible results, and it discusses candidly what occurs if they find something that is less than flattering as they do these reference checks.
It would be my advice that every every search professional read this white paper. After you read it yourself, I would then share this with every candidate you consider representing. I would do this very early in the search process. If you wait until later in the process, you might find that you have waited too long to keep the candidate competitive in the process with your client or prospect as they scramble to get this information gathered, when in fact they should have prepared this information at the same time that they put their resume together.
Do you have any additional advice you share with your candidates about protecting their career reputation through their references? If you do, please share it here, or email 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.
It wasn’t a client calling to make an offer. I didn’t get any offers last week.
Nor did I close any deals last week. So it wasn’t that.
And it wasn’t a client or prospect calling with a great new search for me to work on; I didn’t get any new searches last week.
I did set up a great sendout for a client, but that wasn’t the best call of my week.
My best call of the week came late Thursday afternoon from a woman on the East Coast who I have been working with in my mentor program.
Now, I have to admit, when I saw Veronica’s name come up on my iPhone, I wondered what problem or concern she was having that we would be addressing. Let’s face it, when you take on the responsibility to be someone’s coach, they usually don’t call and tell you about an average day when everything went great.
But that is exactly why I got this call from Veronica Mollica of Indigo Partners last Wednesday.
 She simply wanted to thank me for pushing her to move away from her contingency only method of working with her clients to one where she added engaged search to her mix. Working that business model exclusively was her long term business goal.
Veronica was thrilled to have finally arranged two sendouts with one of her first engaged client searches, a particularly challenging client in that they were looking for a candidate who possessed two mutually exclusive set of skills (how often do we all get to deal with that?). The feedback after one of the interviews was exactly what she had hoped it would be, great enthusiasm for a candidate who really didn’t have everything they wanted technically, but had the intangibles that she ferreted out from them in her excellent work with them to earn the engaged search. Veronica nailed it, and now had their complete respect.
What is engaged search?
It is my favorite way of doing search, it is a hybrid between the contingency and retained business processes. I get paid a non-refundable search initiation fee of anywhere between a third of the expected fee (in good markets like 2007) to as little as a few thousand dollars (in not so good markets like 2009) to “engage” me on their search. Upon the completion of the search, the balance of the fee is due.
In my career, I have completed 94% of the engaged searches I have written.
I have only failed to complete 4 of the engaged searches I began, and in all 4 of those searches I got paid a partial fee for the partial work I did on my clients behalf, as it should be.
But more important than that, and ask anyone, I think a 94% completion rate is very important, as is getting paid for hard work expended on searches my clients don’t complete with me; the most important part of this whole process is something Dave Knutson tried to teach me years ago when I first stepped into the world of engaged search, respect.
In the end, that was what Veronica was most excited about when she called me Thursday of last week. She was beaming with the confidence that a search professional has when their client has genuine respect for them, the kind of respect that they will pay for upfront because they believe in you and the ability of your service to deliver successful resutls that much.
That was what made my day.
It is not every day that a search process coach like me gets to see a exceptionally talented search professional, one who would be more than capable of staying successful without making a single change to what she was doing, take the risk, do what was uncomfortable and fraught with risk, and succeed in a way that surprised even her.
My reward was hearing the confidence in her voice. I knew that her business and success were forever going to be at a new level because she had the guts to try. I got to hear the transformation take place in her in that one call. She was really going to make the transition to engaged search which would change the way she did business, was seen by her clients, and brought success to her business and herself.
How cool is that?
It was the best call of my week.
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.
.
Watch for my forthcoming white paper and webinar on transitioning your contingency practice to engaged search right after Thanksgiving in the first week of December.
Sometimes great advice is best said by someone else. That is indeed the case when it comes to how to effectively communicate and set communication expectations as Search, Staffing and Recruiting Professionals.
Craig Silverman has produced a great blog post on Fordyce Network titled “Can We Talk“…an excellent reminder / best practice outline for this often over looked, yet oh so critical part of our work. Read what Craig had to say at:
http://www.fordyceletter.com/2009/11/02/can-we-talk/
Reading this will be worth a few minutes of your day today!
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.
|
|
|
