Category Archives: The Recruiting Rules

Is LinkedIn’s Recruiter Certification A Scam?

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At LinkedIn’s (LI) annual Talent Connect Conference last week they announced the addition of a certification program for recruiters.  I love the idea!  Much like SHRM has their PHR, SPHR and GPHR certifications, no real recruiting certification has taken hold.  A number of organizations have tried, the most successful probably being American Staffing Association’s Certified Staffing Professional and AIRS Internet Recruiter certification (CPC through NAPS for my Agency friends), but all seem woefully incomplete and none have really ever gained traction as ‘the’ certification to have if you’re a true recruiting professional.  That’s why LinkedIn’s announcement intrigued me.  LI has the brand recognition and money to really own this space if they decided to.

Unfortunately, I think the new LinkedIn Recruiter Certification is going to cause confusion in the corporate and agency recruiting ranks.

Here’s why it’s probably is worthless:

1. LI’s Recruiter Certification has very little to do with actual recruiting and everything to do with how well you know how to use LI’s Recruiter product.

2. If you get ‘certified’ from LI you get to add a ‘badge’ saying you’re a ‘Certified LI Recruiter‘, which is cool enough, but I think that title is easily used to give a false impression of what it really means.  “Oh, you’re a ‘certified recruiter’ that is really impressive!” Instead of the reality ‘Oh, you’re a ‘certified LI recruiter’ which means you know how to use one recruiting tool really well.

3. LI is charging people to get ‘certified’ on a product they are paying for.  Does this seem odd to anyone? Anyone?  Let me see if I get this right.  I pay around $8K per seat annually, and you make me pay another $199 every two years to show you I know how to use the system I’m paying for. Yes. Okay, I thought so.  Can you now punch me in the face?

4. Most of the content you get tested on to gain certification, from LI’s on certification program book, seems to be process oriented.  Do you know how to post a job? Do you know how to search? Do you know how to effectively use InMail? Is this the kind of ‘certified’ knowledge we need for the recruiting profession?  Can you do the process of recruiting?

Here’s why it’s going to be wildly successful:

1. LI gives you a certification badge.  Recruiters are extremely hungry for validation.  We see our HR brothers and sisters with PHR and SPHR, dammit, we want something at the end our name too!

2. LI knows that Talent Acquisition leaders will easily pay a ‘little’ extra to ensure their people are using and understand their big spend (LI Recruiter).

3. People like being a part of a tribe. LI has a special invite only group for LI Certified Recruiters.  Want to make something popular? Make it exclusive!

4. Many HR Leaders don’t get ‘recruiting’ so they will believe this is hugely important and teaching their recruiting team how to really recruit.  It’s not, but no one really looks into the details for $199.

It does really open up a broader conversation about why no one has really been able to create a recruiter certification program that is widely respected and used.  It might be that recruiting, like sales, is hard to train and even harder to come up with concrete components around what makes a recruiter really good at recruiting.  There are so many opinions on that subject and ways to do the job effectively.

Does being a Certified LinkedIn Recruiter make you a better recruiter? No. Will it make people think you are? Yes.

Is it a scam?  Well, it definitely seems a little ‘scam-ish’.  I won’t say it’s a complete scam because they are very up front at what they are delivering for your money. Does LI really need the extra $199 per recruiter? Sure! Every company needs incremental revenue, LI is not different, they’re aren’t a non-profit. God bless them for coming up with a great idea on getting another $199 per recruiter out of your organization.

Here’s my question: Would you pay $199 to become ADP certified? What about Oracle? Halogen?  SuccessFactors?  That’s what this is.  Your HR vendor partner charging you to become a certified expert on their system.  This isn’t transferable.  You can’t leave your company who uses LI and go to a new company who uses Monster and say “Well, I’m a ‘Certified Recruiter’.  You’re not.  You’re just certified on one system. By the way, your two years is up, please send another check.

 

 

 

 

It’s Hard To Judge People

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I was out walking with my wife recently (that’s what middle aged suburban people do, we walk, it makes us feel like we are less lazy and it gets us away from the kids so we can talk grown up) and she made this statement in a perfect innocent way:

“It’s really hard to judge people.”

She said this to ‘me’!  I start laughing.  She realized what she said and started laughing.

It’s actually really, really easy to judge people!  I’m in HR and Recruiting, I’ve made a career out of judging people.

Candidate comes in with a tattoo on their face and immediately we think – prison, drugs, poor decision making, etc. We instantly judge.  It’s not that face-tattoo candidate can’t surprise us and be engaging and brilliant, etc. But before we even get to that point, we judge.  I know, I know, you don’t judge, it’s just me — sorry for lumping you in with ‘me’!

What my wife was saying was correct.  It’s really hard to judge someone based on how little we actually know them.  People judge me all the time on my poor grammar skills.  I actually met a woman recently at the HR Tech Conference who said she knew me, use to read my stuff, but stopped because of my poor grammar in my writing.  We got to spend some time talking and she said she would begin reading again, that she had judged me too harshly and because I made errors in my writing assumed I wasn’t that intelligent.  I told her she was actually correct, I’m not intelligent, but that I have consciously not fixed my errors in writing (clearly at this point I could have hired an editor – I probably have at least one offer per month!) — the errors are my face tattoo.

If you can’t see beyond my errors, we probably won’t be friends.  I’m not ‘writing errors, poor grammar guy”.  If you judge me as that, you’re missing out on some cool stuff and ideas I write about.

As a hiring manager and HR Pro, if you can’t see beyond someone’s errors, you’re woefully inept at your job.  We all have ‘opportunities’ but apparently if you’re a candidate you don’t, you have to be perfect.  I run into hiring managers and HR Pros who will constantly tell me, “we’re selective”, “we’re picky”, etc.  No you’re not.  What you are is unclear about what and who it is that is successful in your environment.  No one working for you now is perfect.  So, why do you look for perfect in a candidate?  Because it’s natural to judge against your internal norm.

The problem with selection isn’t that is too hard to judge, the problem is that it’s way too easy to judge.  The next time you sit down in front of a candidate try and determine what you’ve already judge them on.  It’s a fun exercise. Before they even say a word.  Have the hiring managers interviewing them send you their judgements before the interview.  We all do it.  Then, flip the script, and have your hiring managers show up to an interview ‘blind’. No resume beforehand, just them and a candidate face-to-face.  It’s fun to see how they react and what they ask them without a resume, and how they judge them after.  It’s so easy to judge, and those judgements shape our decision making, even before we know it!

 

Recruiting Is Worthless

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Paul DeBettignies a while ago had an article over at ERE – Where Have All the Recruiters Gone – which gave me the idea for this post.  In Paul’s post he wonders why recruiters are networking face-to-face anymore. I think many of us in the recruiting field who have been in the field pre-internet, probably wonder this and many more things as we look at how the industry has totally transformed over the past 20 years.  A person today can get into recruiting, sit at a desk, have great internet skills, marginal phone skills and make a decent living.  They probably won’t be a great recruiter – they probably won’t make great money – but they’ll survive – they’ll be average or slightly above.  It’s why the recruiting function in most organizations gets a bad rap!  In corporate circles I’ve heard it called “worthless” many times – and for some this is their reality.

Recruiting is Worthless, if…

…you’re a hiring manager and you never have face-to-face conversations with your recruiter when you have an opening, and when you don’t have an opening.

…you’re recruiters believe it isn’t there job to find talent, talent will find them.

…your organization believes it’s the recruiting departments job to find talent.  It’s not, it’s the hiring managers job to ensure they have the talent they need for their department, recruiting is the tool that will help them.  This “ownership responsibility” is very important for organizational success in ensuring you have the talent you need.

…your recruiting department acts like they are HR – they aren’t – they are sales and marketing.  Too many Recruiters, in corporate settings, don’t want to recruit, they want to be HR – which makes them worthless as recruiters.

…if your recruiters have more incoming calls then outgoing calls.

…if your recruiters believe their job begins Monday thru Friday at 8am and ends at 5pm. The best talent is working during those times and most likely won’t talk to you while they are at work.  That’s not a slam on you or your company – they are great employees, it’s what we expect from a great employee.

…your senior leadership team feels they have to use an “executive search” company to fill their higher level openings, because our recruiting department “can’t handle it”.

…if they are victims – “it’s not my job”, “we can’t do that because…”, “marketing won’t allow us to do…”, “our policy won’t allow us…” etc.

…if they just send hiring managers resumes of candidates that have come to them, without first determining if the person is a fit for the organization and a fit for the hiring managers position – before sending them on.

…they haven’t developed the organizational influence enough to change a hiring managers, hiring decision.

Recruiting is worthless if in the end they have failed to show the value of their service back to the organization.

Recruiting is the one department in the organization, besides sales, that truly has the ability to show ROI back to the organization, yet so few of us take advantage of the opportunity we have!  There is nothing more important, and have a bigger competitive advantage, than our organizations talent – and oh by the way – THAT IS US! We control that.  Recruiting isn’t worthless, unless you make it worthless.

Dice Open Web Review

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(I just returned from the 2013 HR Technology Conference where I got to see all the latest and greatest HR technology, and speak to some wickedly smart people.  So, for the next week or so, my plan is to share some of the products and insights I gained from this experience. So we are clear, no companies I write about have paid me to write about them. Enjoy…)

Let me start with a little background.  My company does IT and Engineering contract placement (that’s really high-end temporaries for those who don’t know what I’m talking about) and contingent technical staffing.  We were a paying Dice.com costumer for many, many years until 2010.  In 2010 I stopped paying Dice because they were not delivering the talent we needed.

Fast forward to SHRM National 2013 in Chicago.  Dice sponsors the Bloggers Lounge at some big conferences, as they did for SHRM and HR Tech this year.  As part of that sponsorship Dice gets to pimp it’s new products to a captive audience — that’s business, you want a free soda and wifi, you get to hear about our new stuff.  This was when I was first introduced to Dice’s new Open Web product.  Being in recruitment for 20 years, I was a bit skeptical.  You know, job board trying to hang onto last little bit of hope by launching something new which is probably just a new way to searching their database, type of thing.

I was wrong!

The product demo seemed similar to products like TalentBin, but also was seemed much more far reaching.  I don’t recruit in Silicon Valley, I recruit in Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Dallas, I need a product that can find talent everywhere.  This is what I found with Open Web.  In fact, what we found was it finds way more than just IT talent!   Dice’s Open Web product builds profiles of potential candidates from over 50 different sites. The expected sites like: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. To the unexpected sites like: Github, Quora, StackOverFlow, About.Me, Google Profiles, Gravatar, Instagram, etc.  It takes all this data from all these sites and makes unique resume style profiles of candidates that didn’t apply to Dice. With each profile is a number of ways to contact the candidate based on where the candidate was found (might be email, might be twitter, etc.)  If Open Web finds a Dice candidate resume it will also link that resume within Open Web as well.

Basically, Open Web is a finder of passive candidates. Thousands of passive candidates! Candidates we could not have previously found in our Monster, CareerBuilder, LinkedIn subscriptions.   All in one place, with a ton of information you don’t normally get on a resume.

While we found a completely new pool of talent, we also found some hiccups!  Contacting someone from a major job board site like LinkedIn, people expect to get contacted about jobs.  Open Web, for the most part, is uncovering socially active, passive job searching candidates.  You have to be ready to sell them fast and different than folks you find at CareerBuilder and LinkedIn.  With a passive candidate you have a small window to make an impression, before you get thrown to the side.  It’s real recruiting!  Not many recruiters, today, are use to ‘real’ recruiting.  The cool part of Open Web is that with all the data you get in the profile, you can easily come up with something to help you make that impression.

Being a former Dice customer, I asked Dice to let me try out Open Web in a live environment on real searches in my own shop.  It has worked just like the demo. Also, we found it works on much more than just IT, in fact, finding both engineering and some skilled trades types for orders we had with an automotive client.  It’s building from searches on the whole web, not just a certain geographic area.  Of course because of the sites it searches, you’ll find more IT profiles than some others.  If you have done so check out Dice’s Open Web product, it’s going to be a big hit!

 

LeBron James Isn’t Good Enough For My Team

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Just putting together the roster for my annual Men’s City Rec Basketball team.  I’ve been pretty lucky in the past and have gotten some great players to come out and let me jump on their back to the championships.  As of right now here’s my roster for 2013-2014 season:

Current Starters (based on last years roster):

Point Guard: Craig Miller – Mid 30’s, 5’10”- still in ‘decent shape’ (this means he’s younger and faster than most of us).  He’s good for one wide open layup per quarter and one turnover.

Shooting Guard:  Don McCormick – 39, 6’0″ – He’s flat out money, I don’t think he’s missed a shot since 1998. Played DIII ball back in the early 90’s.  His job sometimes makes it so he can’t make games – we struggle in those games.

Small Forward: Marcus Jones – 47, 6’2″ – He’s our one black guy (we’d like more black guys, but it’s hard to find middle aged black guys in the suburbs who want to play with a bunch of white guys), he’s also the oldest guy we have.  Really never makes a mistake unless it’s a no look pass to one of us which we weren’t expecting.

Big Forward: James Brookes – 32, 5’11” – He’s not a basketball player, he’s a weight lifter.  Can’t shoot or dribble, but he’s good to hurt at least one opposing player each game, sometimes two.

Center: Mikey ‘Stretch’ McGee – 42, 6′ 5″ – He’s our tallest guy.  He likes to shoot the three.  Could have played D1, ended up going the CC route.  Currently he’s a UPS driver.

The Backups:

Point Guard: Me – 43, 5’7″- player/coach/manager – I get in if we are really up big or down big.  I’ve never seen a shot I didn’t like.  My philosophy: ‘Shoot till you get hot, then shoot to stay hot”

The 6 footers:  Ben, Jerry and Ken: All of these guys are 6 foot and basically play any position.  I lumped them together because they really are the same player. Solid, can do it all, just don’t make them run too many minutes at one time.

We are looking to add one more player to our roster this year.  We lost Billy.  He had to have his knee replaced and his real estate business was taking off again after the recession, so he’s out.  Here are the three candidates we have to replace:

1. Matt Smith – New guy in town.  He’s really in shape.  His wife is way hot.  He has a great basement man cave.  Seems like he would fit in with the guys really well.

2. Josh Moore – Another six footer.  He’s subbed for us in the past.  Likes to shoot (meaning he takes my shots).  The guys know him, but he rubs some guys the wrong way (mostly me, he takes my shots)

3. LeBron James – Yep! You read that correctly.  Let’s just say I have a connection.  Nothing in his contract to stop him from playing with us on Tuesday nights.  His schedule actually allows him to make 90% of our 12 game schedule.  We would own the league!

Seems like a really easy choice right!?  Wrong!  You see, I went to the guys to vote.  Knowing they would all laugh and Lebron would get his ‘Legion 124’ jersey shipped in the mail.  But to my surprise Matt Smith won the vote.  I couldn’t believe it, I had to find out why.  Across the board the guys came back with the following reasons why LeBron wouldn’t be a good fit for our team:  Wouldn’t find it a challenge, he would be bored, he was over qualified, he would end up quitting half way into the season, he wouldn’t take it seriously.

We had a shot a Lebron James for our team, and we didn’t take him.  Hard to believe, right?

It’s your reality.  Everyday you turn down great talent in your organization.  You turn down LeBron James because you’re scared.  We don’t say we’re scared.  We give ‘legitimate’ reasons like: “You’re over qualified” and “You wouldn’t find this position challenging”.  But we are just telling ourselves this, to make us feel better about making a terrible decision to turn away great talent.  ‘Being over qualified’ for a position is the single lamest reason to turn down talent that HR and Talent Acquisition has ever come up with.

The question is, would you turn down LeBron James if he wanted to join your team?

Introduce Yourself in 90 Seconds

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First let me tell you this is not a paid post or endorsement.  Second, I’ve found something really cool for Free! HR and Talent Acquisition folks love FREE!

I found a company called ZipIntro.com and basically what they do is give anyone a really simple platform to make introductory videos for free.  Check out the one I did on the link below:

http://zipintro.com/v/timsackett/intro

As you can see it’s pretty bare bones, and that’s what is great about it.  As a recruiter I don’t need bells and whistles, I need simple and easy, and this is as easy as product as I’ve found for candidates to begin using video as part of their resume submission.  If I can use this, it’s almost completely idiot proof!

Here’s what I know after working in HR and Talent Acquisition for 20 years:

1. It’s tough to get hiring managers to move on the candidates you’ve presented to them.

2. Many times by the time they do get around to looking at them, the best ones are gone.

3. A quick video intro of a candidate gets hiring managers to react.

Why?

Here’s something about hiring managers they don’t want you to know.  They actually trust that you can find talent for them that will be close to what they need!  So, going through each resume and giving you feedback seems like a waste of time.  Watching 3 videos that are all 90 seconds in length and telling you which ones they want to interview — well, that’s really easy!

I have a classic real-life example of when I working with an executive on trying to fill one of his direct report positions.  I presented resumes of pre-screened candidates of over 20 individuals over a period of months.  Each time I would force myself into his office and get feedback.  Always the final answer was “No”.  I almost gave up when I decided to do one more thing.  I had my best three candidates come into the HR office and I set up a video camera (yeah, this was way before all the cool apps and sites now – VHS baby!).   We went live, I asked each the same three questions, and we let it roll.  Each video was less than five minutes.  I asked the executive for 15 minutes to present three ‘new’ candidates.  I didn’t take any resumes.  He watched the videos and decided to interview all three live.  One of those three eventually got the job.  All three had previously been turned down when looking only at their resume and my feedback.  Video is very persuasive!

What else is useful about ZipIntro?  Well, you can use it to intro yourself!  Think about what happens when you send out those 50 emails per day to potential candidates.  Usually, none of those 50 people have any idea who you are.  All they have is an email telling them you’re interested in them.  But who are you!?  Having a ZipIntro url in your email signature gives them the ability to ‘check’ you out very quickly, and allows you to send a compelling message to potential candidates.  You can be professional, you can be creative, you can be funny.  It’s up to you.

Like I said — ZipIntro isn’t paying me for this, I just wanted to share a free and very easy tool that might help you get a job, and/or land some candidates. Enjoy.

 

3 Things That Gurantee Career Sucess!

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I’ve been given the honor to speak to some upcoming graduates at a prestigious university about what it takes to have a successful and sustained career.  Now comes the hard part!  What do I tell these kids!?  My first question to the person who asked me to come speak was, “Have you ever read anything I’ve written?”  She said yes, but I have a feeling she was lying as she frantically Googled “Tim Sackett” and tried to actually read something I’ve written.  Next she dropped the, “we don’t have much money, we can pay you”, which in speaking circles means, this is a one-time gig, so let’s have some fun with it!

I really took some time to think about all those great traits you need to have in having a long term successful career.  Great work ethic, ability to learn new concepts quickly, being adaptable, being disciplined, high attention to detail, getting along with others, having high Emotional Intelligence, finding purpose in your daily work, Perseverance, being trustworthy, taking initiative, managing up, being open minded, a change agent, a savvy networker, of course intellectual fire power, passion for what you do, someone of high morals and values, empathetic, willingness to fail, willingness to succeed, high internal motivation, ability to gain alignment, focused, positive accountability, follow-up skills, creative, pragmatic, ability to gain buy-in, ability to prioritize, works well in a team, works well alone, political organizational savvy, telling it like it is, effective problem solver, being self aware, effective decision maker, your ability to influence, learning agility, technical savvy, being proactive, being a great listener, being a great presenter, being optimistic, being committed, goal setting, expert communicator, managing conflict and making a great cup of coffee are all fantastic traits!  But how could I choose only 3.  That was my mission.  Give the kids 3 things that would guarantee their success in their chosen career paths.

I knew right away there were a few traits I wouldn’t choose, primarily because I don’t have them and, well, look at me, I have a blog, which means I must be successful.  You don’t need these traits to be successful:

1. Good Grammar. Only old HR ladies and copy editors care about grammar.  Once you get past having no mistakes on your resume, you’re home free the rest of your career — unless you want to be a paid writer.

2. Trigonometry.  No one needs Trig really, it’s just a public school torture device to keep kids in check.  Unless you want to be a rocket scientist, Trig is not a trait you need for a successful career.

That’s is really the only traits I could think of that weren’t important to your long term success of your career.

Then it hit me, after 20 years in the HR and Talent Acquisition fields, I knew!  There are 3 things that can guarantee you long term career success.  Here they are in order of importance:

1. Beauty.

2. Family Wealth.

3. DNA.

The first one was really a no-brainer!  Beautiful people always have jobs or job prospects. Let’s face it, we all love hiring beautiful people!  In fact the only reason you have ugly people working for you is there wasn’t a beautiful candidate.  The positive piece of this for the kids is that with enough money you can change your outward appearance and increase your chances for success!

Family wealth was fairly easy as well.  If you come from a wealthy family you can be a complete tool and still have lifetime employment and career upward mobility.  The rich get richer, and so do their kids.  Nothing says great hirer like your CEO telling you to hire so-and-so because he plays golf with me. Opportunities are rare, unless you’re wealthy.

The prospect of coming from the ‘right’ genes having an impact on long term career success intrigues me.  The reality of it is, the only way to have a sustained successful career if you have sustained long term health — that’s your DNA baby!  Some people never pick up a cigarette and die of lung cancer at 53.  Some people smoke 2 packs a day for 60 years and die of old age at 90.  You can’t teach DNA!

I can’t wait to share these with the kids!

 

 

5 Ways for Recruiters to Engage Talent minus the Stalking!

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Let’s face it, it’s easy to say you’re going to build talent pools filled with passive candidates—but it’s hard to actually do. And it’s even harder once you’ve built a talent pool in your area of need to figure out what to do next.  You know how to recruit, but what do you say to a talent pool filled with passive candidates who aren’t ready or willing to buy in to the positions you’re selling?

 Never fear, Fistful of Talent (with an assist from our friends at Jobvite) is here. We thought about the pain described above and created our October webinar entitled “5 Easy Ways For Recruiters to Engage Talent Pools – Without Looking Like Complete Stalkers” to help solve the problem.  Join us on October 3, 2013 at 1pm EST and we’ll hit you with the following:

 ·         A simple definition of what a talent pool is, how you organize it in your ATS, and how to manage the concept of “opt-in” to the people you include in that talent pool.  The definition of who gets included and “opt-in” is important, because you’re gong to broadcast a bit over time– which will feel different (in a good way) to candidates included in the talent pool.

·         A checklist of information you already have access to in your company that those passive talent pool candidates would love to hear about.  It’s a checklist!  All you have to do is go find the info we list and you’re golden.

·         Data on best practices in thinking like a marketer (do you use email, LinkedIn, snail mail, text, etc.) to engage your talent pool – without looking like a stalker.

·         Grand Finale, we’ll deliver the top 5 ways to engage talent pools – and for each engagement method, we’ll list what the communication looks like, where to find the information and why doing it the way we recommend is the best practice.

Special Bonus: we’re even going to give you a monthly calendar of what to do and when to do it related to our list of 5 ways for you to engage your talent pool. It couldn’t be simpler than that.

 It’s time to make the talent pools you’ve built in your ATS actually like you and your company.  Join us on for October 3, 2013 at 1pm EST, “5 Easy Ways For Recruiters to Engage Talent Pools – Without Looking Like Complete Stalkers” and we’ll show you how.

Even Kanye Uses Staffing Firms!

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Kanye West is starting up a clothing line and apparently needs some additional staff to get the line off the ground.  How do I know? The staffing firm he is using posted the openings on LinkedIn!  Yep, the kind of personal branding is using a firm to find his next CFO and VP of Production.  From Bloomberg:

“Two ads appeared on the site over a week ago by Decision Toolbox, a staffing firm in Irvine, Calif., that are looking for people to be chief financial officer and vice president for production at what is vaguely called the “Kanye West clothing project.” “[U]nlike those in which celebrities merely lend their name to a label, this venture will have the star power of Mr. West’s artistic vision at the heart and soul of it,” the ads say, although they neglect to mention that sometimes that vision is just a white T-shirt.

When asked if the posts were real, Decision Toolbox said that they were and that the person behind the new Kanye line was Richard Dent III, the former chief operating officer of Victoria Secret’s (LTD) PINK line who since 2012 has been the chief executive of custom menswear company Astor & Black. Dent did not reply to e-mails asking him to explain the new venture, so it’s unclear if Astor & Black is producing the line for Kanye or if the rapper is creating it himself and has just put Dent in charge.”

Here’s the thing – Decision Toolbox is your average, everyday staffing provider.  I’m sure they would say they’re special, but the reality is they do a little RPO, a little contingent and probably some contract work.  Besides Kanye’s VP and CFO positions, they are also looking for a Machinists and Automotive Service Manager.  Sound specialized to you!?

My first reaction — I’m a little surprised on how such a huge celebrity didn’t get roped into an expensive retained boutique firm!  My next reaction — I want to meet the person at DT who pulled in Kanye as a client!  There’s a story there, and I’m 100% sure it isn’t because they have the best customer service!

This does uncover a couple of issues, though, within the staffing industry:

1. If you can recruit, you can recruit.  Staffing providers sell the fact they specialize, but the reality is, you can either find talent or you can’t.  Given, you might get talent faster with someone who spends more time in a certain industry or classification of jobs, but good recruiters will get you people regardless.

2. Retained searching is the biggest waste of time and money ever created by the staffing industry, but it’s good work if you can get it!

3. If your ‘special’ staffing firm you just hired puts your CFO and VP positions on LinkedIn as their strategy to get you the top talent in any industry, you made the wrong choice of staffing companies!

3 Ways To Make Contract Hiring Work For You

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I was in a meeting with an HR executive recently talking about some pain points they are having.  You see, in my business of staffing, you don’t get in the door unless someone in HR is unhappy with some kind of results in their hiring.  It’s the game.  You’re unhappy, I come in and tell you how I’ll make you happy.  This HR Pro was having a hard time finding engineering talent.  They did what a the majority of corporate recruiting departments do – they used a number of sourcing options, posting options, looked at hiring incentives, made sure they paid competitively, etc.  Not bad, hit all the basics.  After this failed, they went the direct-hire agency route.  Made some hires.  Some worked out.  Some didn’t.  Paid fees on all of them, since all made it past the guarantee.

So, how are you going to help me?

Fair question.  Really the only question she needed an answer to.

I dig in and find out that while the direct-hire agency route worked.  It left them feeling ‘unsatisfied’ because although they didn’t blame the staffing firm they were working with for the turnover, they couldn’t get over paying all those fees, and now have nothing to show for it.  The reality was, they have a tough environment, a challenging workplace culture, and some managers who aren’t the best managers.  This caused the turnover.  Still, they are left in the same place they started — ‘we still need engineers’.

Okay, now it’s my turn.

Me: “How about you try contract?’

Her: “We don’t use contract, we want to hire direct.”

Me: “Why?”

Her: somewhat stunned I asked this question and expected an answer — “Well, we need these people long term, not temporarily, and we want top talent and I don’t think hiring contractors would give us top talent.”

Here is HR executive’s dilemma: first, they need engineering talent; second, they turn over talent because of their environment; and third, they don’t want to pay fees.  Whether she wanted to hear it or not, Contracting was the answer to her problem.

Here was my conversation with her:

“You need to bring in Contract Engineers to fill these jobs.  We will find talented people, you will be amazed.  After 12 months, I’ll let you have them for no buy-out.  Thus, you’ll have no fees.  You have a bad environment with high turnover, you need us to find you engineers who can survive this environment and help you move forward all at once.  Contracting is great for this.  For many reasons people decide to contract.  Folks like you judge them for that, and consider them low talent.  I can give you a list of clients we are working with right now that will share stories with you about how wrong this is.  You will find great loyal talent when using contractors.”

“But it costs so much!”

“That is another misnomer! Let’s say your total hourly cost for an engineer is $60/hr, which includes pay, benefits, PTO, bonus, 401K match, taxes, etc.  I can get you that same level talent for $60/hr.  I can do that because I don’t pay all the fringes you pay, I pay the same taxes, and lower amounts of PTO.   Your cost on a 12 month contract hire is virtually the same as if you would have hired the person direct, plus if you fall in love with them, you pay nothing after 12 months.”

It’s not a sales pitch.  It’s just the facts when you work out the numbers.  She signed up.  I’ll let you know how it works out, but to be honest I already do.  We’ve been doing this for 33 years.  It will work out great, and she’ll solve her problem.

There are 3 concrete ways which Contract Hiring is a no-brainier:

1. High Turnover positions.

2. Short Term Projects – 3 months to 3 years – but basically we don’t nee the person on after that

3. Beginning or Ending of a location.  Need to grow quickly, or shutting down a location

There really isn’t any reason to be paying 20-35% fees (yes, I spoke to a company paying 35% the other day!) for direct hires.  The industry found a better way, HR Pros just struggle to change.  One other major factor that makes contract hiring work, is it seems to make companies more comfortable in taking some risks in hiring people they normally wouldn’t.  ‘What the heck, they’re on contract, if we don’t like them, we can replace them.” Every time I hear this, it makes me smile, because I know they’ll like the person!  But if contracting gives them that ‘freedom’ then I’m all for it!  I hate telling them they have the same freedom hiring direct!