My Storey

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It's a privilege to say that you have found your calling. My calling is in Human Resources. Specifically, my calling is recruiting. Apparently I enjoy selling and recruiting is about selling the candidate to the manager and selling the organization to the candidate. My professional history has included 27 years in healthcare of which 23 are in HR/Recruitment. I currently serve as a Recruitment Consultant for Jobscience, Inc. a Recruitment Solutions provider out of San Francisco, CA.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Is it pain or is it friendship

When selling a job do you try to find out what the jobseekers pain points are or try the relationship strategy to win them over. This is an interesting concept because in the past I usually tried to develop a friendship. Now, because of having a sales role in addition to my recruitment consulting I understood that uncovering the jobseekers pain points might be a better way to sell. According to sales guru Jeffrey Gitomer, it's the relationship that is important.

Pain does NOT drive a sale. If you’re in a prospective customer’s office or on any sales call, here’s what to look for and here’s what to uncover:

  • Find the friendly. All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends. No pain there.
  • Find the common ground. What is there in the rapport building that “clicks.” Something that sparks the conversation and takes it deeper. Smiles, things of common interest. Things that build initial comfort – maybe even trust. No pain there.
  • Find the engagement. How meaningful can you make your questions so that you get to the heart of the prospect’s important issues? No pain there.
  • Find the need. In conversation and two-way dialogue precipitated by your questions, uncover the real needs.
  • Find the symptoms and address the needs. Needs are not painful; they’re challenges that you can convert to sales. No pain there.
  • Find the desire. By exposing desire you at once understand (beyond need) how important your product or service is to the prospect. No pain there.
  • Find the opportunity. Common ground, engagement, need, and desire will expose the one element necessary for you to make sales: OPPORTUNITY. Your job is to discover how to take advantage of it. No pain there.
  • Find the difference. The difference between you and your competition that the customer perceives. There may be some pain here – if the prospect thinks the competition is better than you. OUCH!

Sunday, October 26, 2008

A Product, Experience, Story

Since learning about sales through books has taught me many things about recruiting I came across this phrase today that really made me take a look at how this applies to recruiting.
  1. Define your product. Do you really know what your product is? Are you selling a job, a company, a work environment? You need to work very closely with the hiring manager and potential co-workers when defining the product. You could call it branding on the department level.
  2. Experience. What "feelings" do you want to promote when selling a job to a recruit? The experience is best defined by those who have recently gone through it. Use testimonials from newly hired employees about their experience with your company so far.
  3. Selling the story. Try telling the recruit how your organization has changed your life or the lives of the people that work there. Use promotions, employee drives to help other employees, etc.
Use any "down" time you have to put this information together so you can get to it quickly when trying to sell employment to a recruit.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Selling a Salary or Shift

I hate losing to the competition. Especially when I've invested in a recruit that I believe will be a good fit for our organization. Then the salary discussion starts. It always amazes me how someone will sell out for less than $1.

Since adding sales to my role at the company I've learned that you should start selling value early on in the sales cycle. Especially if you know your product will likely cost more once the demonstrations are all done. If we lose a sale or a good job candidate it is likely that the competition has done a better job at selling the value of the opportunity better than I did.

How do you sell value? What is the candidate looking for? Did you ask them what is their ideal situation? Did you get to know them well enough to understand what type of work/life balance they need? Do you managers know how to sell an opportunity?

I've found that most managers let the candidates have it the moment they get them in the door. All I have is night shift. We will put you on the list and perhaps in a year or less you'll get your day job. Have you thought about having someone from the night shift involved in the interview process? How about someone who recently transferred to days from nights. You need to talk to your managers about the value of the night shift and how to sell it more effectively.

Offer your night shift training on how to transition to night shift. There are materials for that on the internet. Most of your night shift employees are daytime people waiting to get off nights. If you can give them the tools and skills to handle nights physically, mentally and socially you may not have to fill as many night jobs as you think.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Useful Internet Newsletters

Here is a list of some of the newsletters I read every morning:

Seth Godin
BNET
Recruiting Trends
HR
Staffing.org
Talent Management Magazine

I've also set up some automatic Google searches to pull new items from the web about recruting, metrics, staffing, marketing, sales. I tried to look at all the skills necessary to be a good recruiter so I don't limit my reading to just recruiting.

It's also a good idea to start your morning off with reading something positive. There are a number of choices here. There is usually several things that happen over the course of a day that may make you doubt yourself. Starting off on a positive note will get you going in the morning.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Healthcare Recruitment

Yesterday I had the opportunity to listen in on a webinar about setting up a recruiting function in healthcare. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to enjoy the entire presentation. But, what I did hear was important and is worth discussing.

Our speaker was prepared with some interesting data from customer surveys she had conducted. She reported the following applicant to hiring ratios:
  • RN's: three applicants for every one hire (3:1)
  • Support Staff: ten applicants for every one hire (10:1)
  • Allied Health: five applicants for every one hire (5:1)
She was also an advocate for pay-for-performance. The recommendation was to set monthly recruitment goals and then bonus pay the recruiters for exceeding those goals. I had a bonus program at one of my recruiting jobs. However, it was difficult to meet the goal because much of the process was out of my hands.

Another interesting point that was made was the number of applications that go unreviewed due to the volume of electronic applications that recruiters receive. I believe the number was "thousands". She did make a good point. All applications should be reviewed within 24 hours of receiving them. This is a great goal and very achievable if you use good time management.

The speaker also discussed a recruiting tool that is rarely used today. The email address. This is a technology that has great potential in that you can contact the masses with a simple click of the mouse. Recruiters today don't mine their applicants like they should. If you tell your applicants that their information is active for 30 - 60 - 90 days or a year, then you should be sourcing through that information.

Sourcing in applicant tracking systems should be easier than ever. Many have resume search capabilities. The ATS I used has saved searches so I can set my criteria and the system sends me the applicants right to my inbox.

The point I'm trying to make here is that we have tools, resources and abilities to get the job done. As recruiters we need to use all of these things to make our jobs easier. But so many of them fight for the way things used to be. We don't live in Kansas anymore... get used to the way things are.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

You are never too small to think global.


This morning I'm listening to a sales presentation from the site Selling Power. Bill McDermott the CEO from SAP Americas is discussing his success and the success of this company. He said something today that really hit home to me regarding business. He said that business is going global. How does this apply to recruiting?

In today's labor market, can anyone still think that they are too small to think globally. I work for a recruitment technology company (Jobscience). We have technology that allows me to see who is accessing our sites and from where. Today there was someone in Italy looking at laboratory jobs that one of our customers had posted on our site. Someone from Europe is looking for a job in a US hospital. Last week I attended the ASHHRA convention in Austin. I heard so many times from attendees, "We are very small and don't need a recruitment solution."

In order to be an effective recruiter you must think globally. That does not mean that you are going to start an international recruitment campaign. It just means that you never know where your candidates are coming from. You need to have processes and solutions in place that connect with people on a global level.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

I still need to talk about job postings.


I just can't say enough to you that recruit about job postings. Most of you format your job postings the same, job title, company description, position description and qualifications. So job seekers see a long list of jobs to choose from. Much like the way that you screen candidates by scanning headers on resumes, job seekers decide whether to check out your job posting based on what shows up in the company name, job title and location fields.

Think about it. Just because someone clicks on to review your posting does not guarantee they are going to read it all and apply. So start with something great sales gurus use; your best elevator pitch. Write several sentences to state what you do and why it matters, what the position entails and why it matters. Your job postings should never be generic. Your sole goal is to excite the job seeker enough to read on.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Part Two: Job Postings: Jobseekers are Desparate to Read them but Recruiters dread writing them.

Yesterday I shared something I learned from a book I was reading called, "Recruit or Die". It turns out that the five common on-campus advertising mistakes also apply to advertising in general. Today the information regarding job postings is just as applicable. My background in recruitment has been primarily in health care. One thing that I've noticed is that job postings in general have either too much information or not enough. At one point in my recruitment career I thought about having Marketing weigh in on the message that we were communicating to our jobseekers. This of course was branding before branding was popular.

So to the job posting. In all of the HR positions I've been in there never seemed to be a clear understanding of whose responsibility it was to write the job postings. If marketing did it the jobseeker wouldn't understand the job. If the hiring manager did it the jobseeker would be scared to apply to the job and if HR did it, well you get my drift. At the end of the day, no one wanted to do it.

Another challenge may be that when you decide to post a job you may not have all the information you need to communicate to the jobseeker what you are looking for. An example of this would be for jobs that interns or students are looking at for after graduation.

Bottom line is that your job posting has to be compelling. Most jobs are discovered by word of mouth or after meeting with you at a job fair. But when they finally get around to reading the posting they are turned off by the lack-luster effort to reel-them-in.

If you can sell your jobseekers on the job with a well-written posting your organization will get a huge return on the time you invest. It really doesn't take that much more time to write a great description than one that is average.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Job Postings: Recruits Love to Read them but We Hate to Write Them

I'm reading a good book called, "Recruit Or Die". Although the focus is on campus recruiting I find that much of the book is applicable to recruiting in general. This is the first of a two-part series on job postings. Today I want to take a brief look at the pitfalls of job postings and tomorrow I'll take a look at best practices.

According to the authors of "Recruit Or Die" there are five common advertising mistakes. Looking at the ads in the newspaper and internet we all could learn to manage our job postings more efficiently.

  1. Wasting time and money on advertising that doesn't reach the target audience.
  2. Leaving jobseekers confused about who you are and what you are hiring for.
  3. Not targeting a specific group of people.
  4. Not calling your jobseekers to action.
  5. Not mentioning the good stuff.

Friday, October 10, 2008

So, after giving up my blogging after only a few posts I determined that there might be some benefit to this. I have re-ignited my love for reading and have not been able to get enough of it lately. As I prepared for my trip to Austin this weekend I ran to the local book store to see what I could find. Since I have been thrown into a new sales role I have been spending much of my time inhaling any book I can find about sales. The funny thing I realized is the connection between sales and recruitment. I don't believe for a minute that if you recruit well you can sell well. But if you sell well, you can recruit well.

I started reading a book today called, "Recruit or Die". It didn't take the direction I thought it would but I have been learning so much about being more competitive on college campuses to get the top graduates. Since my background has been solely in healthcare I went to many college campuses to recruit nurses. This book taught me to put a recruitment plan together and not just show up on the Job Fair Day with your bowl of candy, business cards, benefits list and give-aways. Competitive recruiting is much more than having the highest salary and heftier benefits package. It's about knowing your campus, the culture of the school, how to get your message across and avoiding the rumor mill. By the year 2014, US employers will have to look much harder for college graduates as there will be millions of vacancies that can't be filled because there won't be enough graduates.

In this book, there were multiple references to employers being turned away from job fairs because there wasn't enough room to house of the the exibitors. Recruiters, in order to be effective you have to be strategic and develop solid plans to ensure your success on the campus front.

I'm only half-way through the book so I'll have to put something together for your comment once I finish the book. Thanks for your kind attention to my ramblings. If you are attending ASHHRA this weekend... stop by and say hello.