To all the candidates I’ve sold a job to before, I’m sorry.
Confession time.
- Hamina is not a beautiful place in the winter. You won’t see the sun for 6 months a year.
- The commute from Manchester to North Wales is not 25 minutes on a bad day. It’s 55 minutes on a really, really good day.
- Working at Barclays Bank is not “just like working at a start-up”.
Whether Talent professionals want to admit it or not, we’ve all spent far too much of our careers selling candidates on opportunities.
As the market becomes increasingly candidate-driven, the competition becomes fiercer and our hiring targets remain the same. Talent is in a tough spot to get roles filled and never mind the excuses.
I’ll be transparent; earlier in my career, I sold people on companies that I didn’t believe in, made assertions that I knew to be patently untrue, and used manipulative techniques to get the job done.
I remember my Director, during my days in a recruitment agency, making me drive to pick up a candidate who didn’t want to go to their interview and then drive him 45 minutes to the interview in rural North Wales. I dropped him off and left him there (with no way home) because I needed to be back on the phones calling candidates ASAP.
Unsurprisingly, the candidate didn’t get the job.
Telling that story makes me feel awful. I was that agency recruiter. That one that sent crappy emails with generic details. The one who would do anything to close a candidate.
I was proto-recruiter.
Gladly I can say with full confidence, that I’ve evolved into something resembling a normal human being that is appalled by the idea of leaving a poor software engineer stranded 50 miles from home with no way back.
What was the catalyst for my change in approach?
Firstly, shifting out of the recruitment agency world. The horrifying thing about that anecdote is that this whole incident passed without comment at the time.
It was normal.
A.B.C — always be closing.
Do whatever it takes to get money out of the client.
I don’t even think it was worthy of comment or jokes at the time. It was just everyday life in an agency.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly thankful for that experience straight out of university. It taught me discipline and grit, to hustle hard, the basics of how a sales funnel works and gave me solid basic recruiting skills.
But as I reflect on this experience now, having hired hundreds of candidates in 3 different in-house roles I have a very different perspective and different priorities.
Collaborate with your candidates
When someone takes on a new job it’s incredibly disruptive to all parts of their life. It impacts their family, personal relationships, increases their stress, changes their routines, and it’s doesn’t always work out for them.
Understanding the human impact of what we, in Talent, take so lightly was a big moment for me. I don’t want my conscience filled with people that I lied to just to make a quick dollar.
Both you and the candidate are trying to achieve the same thing, a strong mutual fit.
When you find that perfect fit, life is so much easier for both candidate and employer. Your new sales manager isn’t scared that the sales team hasn’t hit quota in 4 months — they’re excited and already thinking of solutions to implement. If, when you tell a candidate, that the sales team is struggling they want to back away that’s a good thing! It saves your time to invest further in those candidates that are excited about your challenges.
You need to hire people who are excited by your challenges
To do this you need to understand where a candidate is at in their career and what aspects of their current role create energy for them, and which aspects are draining them.
I’ll share candidly for a moment. At this point in my career, I find sending reach out emails to be incredibly energy-sapping. I love sourcing the candidates, interviewing them, navigating offers, and getting them to a place where they are comfortable joining Opencare.
But I do not enjoy writing reach out emails.
So I’m hiring a Sourcer who can work with me to take some of that work off my plate so I can focus on activities that motivate me.
Take this as general advice, knowing what activities create positive energy and which drain you is key to helping shape career conversations, and making sure you find the right next step.
For candidates, it is Talent’s job is to navigate interviews to get to the core of what each candidate wants to be doing, and then be transparent about what you can offer them. There is no point hiring a recruiter who doesn’t want to send reach out emails, neither party will be happy with how it works out.
So, you’re saying there should be no selling in recruitment?
Yes.
Kind of.
To be clear, this is not an article about how bad recruitment agencies are. There were still parts of these behaviours that I leant on at both Google and Flipp which allowed me to be successful.
Fundamentally I’m thankful that I had my agency experience as it was the best training I could have hoped for and it allowed me to get to a place where I don’t need to rely on it.
There are definitely sales skills that I learned in the agency that everyone needs to be an effective recruiter:
- Understanding each candidate’s needs and current frustrations.
- What creates energy for candidates, and what is draining them.
- Clear communication about the value proposition for your company.
- Deep understanding of your funnel and conversion rates.
- Tenacity and grit.
All of these can and should be used to strengthen your ability to collaborate with candidates to find a perfect fit. If I’m chatting to a candidate who is engrossed by the finance world and believes in cryptocurrency, I’ll be the first to refer them to one of my connections in Toronto who can offer those things. It’s not a good fit for Opencare or the candidate in this case.
What I’m advocating is a mindset shift.
Move away from the adversarial sales mindset where you are trying to outwit and outmanoeuvre your opponent. Instead, you should inform your candidates and the rest will fall into place.
Hear me out.
My first article talked a lot about really understanding your business and the challenges it is facing to correctly identify who you need to hire. Once you have done that, you then need to communicate it to candidates, and the right person will be exhilarated by what you’re facing.
Countless studies show that people’s passion is the overall deciding factor in how successful they are in a role (I’ll probably write some more about this topic soon).
Simon Sinek summarised it beautifully:
“Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion.”
So the real challenge facing Talent teams in 2019 is how do we find the people that are passionate about the specific challenges the business is facing.
If you have deeply understood the business problem, know the context of how this person will operate and have clear outcomes that need to be achieved then you can move away from having a long (bullet-pointed!) list of skills and responsibilities.
Instead, focus on the impact they will have, and look for people who are motivated and excited about it.
The right candidate may not have all the skills you initially thought you would need but I can guarantee they will pick them up quickly because they are fundamentally passionate about solving your problems. Nothing frustrates a high performing individual more than their lack of skills blocking them from getting to the solution.
A career isn’t made overnight
If we are aiming to find someone who is passionate and excited about your business then don’t sell them on the cans of La Croix, or the number of vacation days.
You want to be talking about what they will be owning and the obstacles they are expected to overcome. Find out what the candidate’s career ambitions are and link the opportunity you have to where they want to be long term.
Example:
Your software engineering team is under-resourced and isn’t able to meet deadlines, leading to tension with the Product team and dwindling morale. Your candidate has aspirations of being a people manager in the next 2 years but they’ve had no leadership experience so far.
I suspect most organisations would sell this candidate on promises of promotion within 6 months. This is something that may or may not come true depending on a myriad of factors.
Instead, I’d argue that you need to get aligned with your candidate that creating harmony with Product, increasing efficiency of the team, rallying morale, and solving hard technical problems are all skills that are crucial in a people manager role. Then you present them with the challenges you’re currently facing and show them that this is an opportunity to build experience in all of these areas.
Now the candidate has a clear expectation of what to expect when they join, and if they join they are ready to take on those challenges and not to shy away. If they choose not to join then you’ve dodged a bullet as it’s unlikely it would have worked out.
Inform, don’t sell
By shifting this mindset, you are setting your candidates up for success by aligning early on the realities of your company.
If they will have limited autonomy and you’ll be more hands-on as their manger then say so, that will be ideal for some folks, especially those earlier in their career.
Candidates are so used to being lied to and having things misrepresented that your candid reflections will build credibility. If the candidate doesn’t want to deal with ambiguity and your challenges then rule them out early and move on.
How many times have you spotted red flags about a candidate and their fit for their role but pushed on anyway and tried to sell them into the job?
How often has that turned out well?
Are they your top performers?
When you’re deep into a hiring process and you just haven’t found any good candidates, then you should start looking back at your original assumptions and seeing if they are still valid.
For that Sales Manager hire, do they need 5 years of management experience or is this a better fit for someone who is looking to hone their people management? If the latter then you’re probably interviewing the wrong people and that’s why they’re not excited by what you’re sharing with them.
I still get it wrong. All the time.
At Opencare, we were hiring for a General Manager for our marketplace. We wanted an experienced leader who could run multiple cities and really help to level us up. So I went after GM’s from marketplace companies with a few years experience in the role. I mapped the market and messaged everyone that fit the bill. The few conversations I did have didn’t lead anywhere. I was frustrated.
But taking a step back I realised we were chasing the wrong people. We were offering a lateral move for these folks which wasn’t appealing. So I redesigned the role with our COO to become a Regional General Manager who would own multiple cities (but not the whole marketplace) and it opened our candidate pool up to those GM’s who had owned 1 city, and now that the opportunity to own 4 or 5 concurrently. This was way more exciting and better aligned.
The giveaway should have been the questions the candidates were asking. They were probing to try and find an interesting challenge for themselves. They were looking for the “so what”. Asking about compensation and future growth for the company and how the role will evolve.
These weren’t questions asked with excitement and enthusiasm, they were telltale signs that they were looking for something different to what we are offering.
By listening to your candidates and thinking critically you can get to a mutual fit that works for both the candidate and company.
Takeaways
- Inform your candidates, don’t sell them
- Collaborate with your candidates as you do with your colleagues. You’re both seeking the same thing.
- Take time to really know your business and how each of your roles is creating value to your organisation. If they aren’t creating value, don’t hire the role.
- If you’re struggling to recruit someone, re-evaluate what you’re searching for
- Be honest with candidates about what problems you’re trying to solve immediately
- Don’t leave your candidates stranded in North Wales
I’m not advocating that this is an easier way of doing things (it’s undoubtedly not) but the calibre of your hires will increase as you get more comfortable sharing the truth about your company.
