As I’ve said in many previous columns, there are two types of contingency recruiters (I’m not going to discuss the retained world in this article): the ''true'' recruiters and the paper shufflers. The true recruiters represent approximately 15-20% of the profession. These are the people who have a lot of skills and talent in the area and who have worked and continue to work on developing these abilities.
Unfortunately, as recruiters, we generally do a poor job in recruiting and hiring new recruiters. If we did the same job for our clients, they would fire us. So here are some things I look for in a potential recruiter or when talking with someone who is interested in the profession:
1) Strong business leadership acumen. Most of the time, recruiting firms will say you need to be an entrepreneur. But this is a bit of a misnomer. I have a good friend who used to work for one of the franchise ''brokerages.'' He said true entrepreneurs typically didn’t work out in the franchise world because they like to tinker and create, and franchises are typically boilerplate. But you do need to be able to lead and build a business. Recruiting fits this model. The best recruiters follow the same sorts of boilerplate.
2) Focus, attention to details, organizational skills, planning. The key to being a recruiter is having a well-structured plan and sticking to it, and this may be even more important in recruiting than in many other professions. The top recruiters have their day totally laid out and rarely vary from that plan. They teach attorneys never to ask a question they don’t know the answer to. The same general principle applies in recruiting: A focus on details is critical so that you are not caught unawares.
3) Numbers/ratio orientation. One can only make so many calls in a day. The only way to improve one’s results, then, is to improve the quality of those calls and improve the ratios that measure ''success.'' By the way, a friend of mine who was one of the top recruiters at Christian-Timbers (one of the top retained firms in the dot-com era) once told me he still made his 40 telephone calls a day.
4) Risk taking. If you are conservative and very averse to risk, recruiting is not the job for you. The risks are not life threatening, of course, but you have to be willing to take some to be successful in this business. A good test for yourself is to pretend that you and your spouse have set aside $200 of mad money to have a night of fun and enjoyment. You decide to go to the track. By the last race, you are up $200. Now, how much do you bet? If you say you’re going to walk away with your winnings thus far (remember, this was not an investment trip, but an entertainment one), you are not a risk taker.
5) Multitasking. In any given day you can be working on closing a deal or two, doing reference checks, lining up interviews, developing job orders, recruiting candidates, etc. While good recruiters divide this into blocks of time and allot a certain amount of time to each activity, there are times when you have to interrupt whatever you’re doing to take a call. Some of the most successful recruiters come out of the hospitality management (my background) and retail sales management industries. Those jobs always involve a lot of multitasking.
6) Love to make a deal. While the financial rewards are very nice, for others and myself putting together a tough deal is an even bigger ''high.'' You have done something that few other people can do. Look at some deals, personal or professional, that you have made in your life. Did you get such a ''high'' from those?
7) Be a good storyteller. This point is a bit misleading, but the basic idea is that if you are monotone and very unexcited in your speech, it makes recruiting much harder. If you are, on the other hand, engaging, excited, and animated in your approach, people will love to listen to you.
8) Take rejection well. As in any sales job, there is a lot of rejection in recruiting. You have to be able to overcome and minimize it so that you can move on. Any good sales person knows that you lose more sales than you make.
9) Be thick-skinned and a bit obnoxious. Some people dislike recruiters, and you can get some mean comments from them, but they are in the minority. That said, you do have to be ready for them and be able to move on. Also, you are a consultant, in a manner of speaking, and you have to be able to tell someone, in a nice way, when their thinking, ideas, etc. are a bit distorted. (But, then again, you may occasionally need to use a bullhorn.)
Here’s Wishing You Terrific Hunting,
Bill
About the Author
Bill Gaffney has 17 years of experience as an executive recruiter and career coach. He also likes to teach men how to act right. Bill can be reached at 937-567-5267 or wmgaffney@prodigy.net. For questions to be considered for this column or topic suggestions, please email askamaxa@yahoo.com.
