The One Thing You Must Do to Hire Better People and Find Better Jobs

"... too many people shut the door to potential career opportunities using short-term information to make long-term decisions."

Forget just-in-time hiring. While the best people might be open to discuss the possibility of a career move, when you get them on the phone don’t try to force-fit them into some skills-infested job description. After 30 years of recruiting outstanding senior staff, mid-level managers, and company executives, I can now state unequivocally that the single most important step in the passive candidate recruiting process is the first conversation. This same principle holds true for every job-seeker, whether active or passive.

The problem is that too many people shut the door to potential career opportunities using short-term information to make long-term decisions. Whatever side of the door you’re on, here’s how to keep it open:

• Recruiters: when you contact a potential candidate, don’t ask if the person would be interested in your specific open job. Instead, ask if the person would be open to an exploratory conversation if the position represented a potential career move. Asking people who aren’t looking if they’d like to chat for a few minutes about a potential career move is far more productive than selling lateral transfers. We just completed a survey with LinkedIn that indicated that 81% of the fully-employed are open to this type of discussion.
• Recruiters: build a relationship and forget the box-checking exercise. When you start the phone screen, don’t tell the person much about the job other than providing a quick overview. Instead, suggest that the purpose of the call is to determine if the job represents a true career move to the person. For the next 5-10 minutes review the person’s LinkedIn profile and try to find 4-5 learning and opportunity gaps your job offers that the person’s current job is missing. These are things like a broader role with more responsibility, bigger budget, more impact, faster growth, and more visibility. You’ll use these to fashion the potential career opportunity as you move on to the next step.
• Job seekers: when first contacted by a recruiter, don’t filter the opportunity on the negotiable items. From a practical standpoint, if the job isn’t a potential career opportunity, it doesn’t matter what you get on the day you start a new job. Too many candidates, using the silly excuse of “not wanting to waste anyone’s time,” ask about the compensation, the location, the title and the company name. All of this can be negotiated – even the location – for the right person. If the recruiter goes into box-checking mode, take control of the conversation and ask why the job is open and find out about the biggest challenges facing the person. If these sound appealing, describe some of things you’ve accomplished that are comparable. Then suggest a more detailed conversation with the hiring manager. A good recruiter would naturally suggest this, but don’t judge the potential opportunity on the quality of the recruiter.
• Recruiters and job seekers: emphasize career growth not compensation maximization. As long as the job offers a combination of less pain, some short-term stretch, and significant upside potential, compensation will wind up in the middle of the stack of criteria passive candidates use to compare and accept offers. Unfortunately, recruiters and job seekers alike filter their decisions to move forward on compensation before either has full knowledge of the job or what the person brings to the table.
• Hiring managers: conduct exploratory phone screens before meeting any candidate in person. After the recruiter conducts the first exploratory conversation, I suggest that all hiring managers then conduct a similar 30-minute exploratory phone discussion with the prospect. Top people are very open to these types of more serious, but still exploratory, conversations. During these sessions hiring managers should describe the big challenges in the job and ask the candidate to describe his or her most comparable accomplishments. This forces the conversation to focus on factors that best predict success – comparable past performance. (Here’s a link to the full Performance-based Interviewing process I recommend.) When the candidate and hiring manager agree to an in-person interview, the stage is set for both to determine if the job represents a career move. Another advantage: the phone screen minimizes the corrosive impact of first impressions increasing the accuracy of the subsequent assessment.

When it comes to mixing and matching people with job opportunities, too many decisions to proceed are based on short-term factors that are neither predictive nor fixed. Jobs can be modified, compensation is negotiable, and skills don’t predict performance. Recruiters: don't sell the job, sell the discussion. Hiring managers: clarify job expectations before meeting anyone, and then only meet people after an exploratory phone conversation. Passive job seekers: waste some time talking to the right people. You never know where the conversation might lead.

_____________________

Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and search firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He's also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine and BusinessInsider. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013), provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people.