Welcome once again to ‘Ripper Talks…with Leaders in Recruitment‘ my interview series which aims to uncover some of  our leaders in the recruitment industry.  A concept I often talk about when training or speaking at an event is that leadership doesn’t have to mean that you are the CEO or MD of a company, but rather that everyone is capable of being a leader, whatever their title.  This means that they take personal responsibility for achieving results whether they run the postroom or the boardroom.  They shape culture, stay positive and lead by example.  So I plan to interview a number of people whom I consider leaders in recruitment, whether they have an MD title or whether they are just a top performer in their role – it is their attitude, their state of mind and the way they operate that makes them what I consider to be a leader in recruitment.

This interview, the second in the series,  is with ‘Recruitment Dad’, the anonymous writer of one of the industry’s leading recruiting blogs www.recruitmentdad.com that provides expert recruitment training, advice and tips for recruitment and sales professionals. In truth, the person behind ‘Recruitment Dad’ is an experienced recruitment professional with in excess of 15 years service in the industry. Having been very successful as a recruiter, managing consultant, billing manager and senior regional manager for some of the most successful recruitment companies in the world; he has experienced first hand exactly what it is like, and more importantly, what it takes to be successful – consistently. Most recently, he has specialised purely in training, learning and development .  

So Dad, what have you done to improve your business knowledge and/or personal development in the last year?

I have engaged a business coach to work with me on my vision and business strategy. Sitting with someone who is skilled at asking good probing questions really makes me sit back and think about what I am doing. The facilitated meetings we have give me so much more clarity on what I want and how I am going to achieve it.

Who / what inspires you?

I find my children very inspiring. They are still young and it amazes me how they have such a natural ability to learn, ask questions and persevere with things. Everyone is born with such a thirst for knowledge and it seems that many start to lose it as they get older.

What do you believe to be your most significant accomplishment?

I believe it is still to come!!!

What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you Dad?

Remember the dolphins. I learnt some time ago how they train dolphins to leap through hoops that are 20 ft above the water. As a manager developing teams of recruiters I was always told to remember the dolphins….

What tips / advice could you give to a recruitment consultant today wanting to get to the top of their game?

Learn to listen properly. There is a world of difference between hearing what someone has said and genuinely understanding what they mean. Recruitment becomes a whole lot easier when you understand your clients and candidates properly. Of course, you also need to make sure you speak to plenty of them!

Is there a book that you believe is a ‘must read’ book? If so, what is it?

Fiction? Moby Dick – the level of detail and the evocative language is fantastic. The unrelenting desire of Captain Ahab to chase the whale is inspiring. Never give up.

Dad, if you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and what would you say to them?

Bill Hicks – You were way ahead of your time man!

What’s the last song you downloaded on your iPod?

Something by Faith no More I think.

What has been your most satisfying moment in your business career so far?

I get a lot of satisfaction from writing my blog. It may not be financially rewarding as it is really a labour of love but it is great get so many emails and comments from those who have found it beneficial.

Have you made any business mistakes that you would advise others to avoid?

Yes! Plenty. Avoid telling your client during a meeting that you don’t think his wife is very attractive – it generally isn’t very well received. In fact it was very badly received when I did it and I missed out on a nice piece of work because of it.

What’s next for you and your business in the next 12 months?

At some point I think I will tell the world who I really am. I enjoy blogging anonymously although I realise that some of the other bloggers out there seem to disagree. My secret’s safe with you isn’t it Roy??

Of course it is Dad! And so finally, what is your favourite leadership quote?

“Leadership and learning are indispensible to each other” JFK

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Headhunting – four steps to writing your recruitment plan

Ripper talks…with Dawn Milman-Hurst

7 Steps to becoming a Leader in Recruitment

Don’t miss out – subscribe to the Ripper on Recruitment blog today!

A recruiting plan is your roadmap to identifying the best candidates in the market you plan to search. It’s vitally important that you prepare one for EVERY assignment you recruit for rather than just ‘tearing down the road’ being a busy fool and making lots of  untargeted phone calls.

Every recruiting plan should have four major component parts:
*Selecting the most likely industries a candidate could come from
*Identifying ideal ‘target companies’
*Identifying specific ‘target candidates’
*The Time Allocated to complete assignment

1. Selecting the most likely industries a candidate could come from

The first step in your recruiting plan should be to select likely industries where your candidate could be working. Of course you should look at competitors of the company you are recruiting for but also keep in mind that other related industries (and often unrelated industries) can also be sources for the talent you are searching for. Ideally this should be discussed with your client or hiring manager. A wide selection of potential target industries will broaden your search universe and the pool of potential candidates available to you. However focusing on more than one industry can be very time consuming. Most professional headhunters use an idea called ‘The logic of concentric circles’ to execute their searches. Think of an archery target with a bull’s eye in the middle and 2-3 circles surrounding it. They tend to focus their activities in the bulls eye (A) where candidates working at direct competitors are located and then move their search gradually out to (B) where candidates working in parallel or similar industries may be located. Finally, if this doesn’t surface the candidates they ideally require they expand out to (C) and look at candidates working in companies that utilise the product or service provided by the client manager. I often encourage recruiters new to headhunting to adopt the ‘logic of concentric circles’ in a slightly different way by making their initial approaches in (B) and (C) until the recruiter perfects and refines their pitch and then go for (A) targets.

2. Identifying ideal ‘target companies’

The second step in your plan looks at ideal target companies. Recruiters should always look to their clients/hiring managers to help compile this list. Often clients will respond with ‘Well that’s your job and that’s what we pay you to do’! It is important to remember that ‘your job’ is to ask questions of everyone involved in the recruitment process in order to find the ‘best candidate IN the market as opposed to the best candidate ON the market’. Ask your client different questions that may encourage them to contribute to your list, i.e. what companies have your most successful employees been recruited from? When you lose people to your competitors, what companies do they go to? What companies do you ‘share’ client business with? When you lose on competitive pitches to your clients, what companies may they choose to go with? What companies in your industry do you most admire and why? Which companies would you gain competitive advantage over / an insight into by interviewing their top talent?

It is as important to ask clients and hiring managers where they don’t want someone to come from and why. Their answers can help define your search. Knock out any companies where the reasons are irrelevant (‘we recruited someone from XYZ ltd and they didn’t work out’). The best potential candidate may be working at one of the ‘NO’ companies and desperate to get into your clients environment if the opportunity is good enough. Do check if there are any ‘hands off’ agreements with any competitive companies and beware of targeting any subsidiaries of your client’s parent company.  

3. Identifying specific ‘target candidates’

The third major component of any recruiting plan is to track down specific candidates who may be appropriate for your search. The first place that you should look is your existing database of candidates or your own network from previous searches. Hopefully you have spent time building a suitable network of qualified experienced individuals that could be motivated to move if the opportunity is right for them, or as importantly they may know someone that could do the job. You also need to name gather at the target companies you identified earlier. Social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook make this job far easier than it ever was in the past. Do not ignore professional associations or trade bodies attached to your chosen marketplace. These sources will know of relevant directories (if you don’t already) and often publish membership lists/books that you will find invaluable. An often overlooked source for most recruiters is journalists from relevant trade journals, newspapers and magazines in your chosen marketplace /specialisation. Journalists will often know the ‘movers and shakers’ within their specialist areas and know that as a professional headhunter/recruiter you have access to large networks of people and inside working knowledge of the companies they write about. It makes good business sense to cultivate relationships with key journalists within your industry.

4. The Time Allocated to complete assignment

The fourth component in your recruiting plan is your time schedule. Sure ‘Time kills all deals’ and it is important to complete each step of your sourcing process as soon as possible. But it is vitally important that you set goals as to when you should complete each step. Getting started quickly is a good goal but concentrate on building your recruiting plan and compiling your target list before ‘tearing down the road’. Allow yourself sufficient time in your recruiting plan to define your search by ‘interviewing’ key people at the client company to get a 360 degree picture of the ideal candidate. Build in time to compile your target list (online searching and name gathering) and to start sourcing (contacting everyone on your target list). Candidates will have to be qualified and invited in for interviews by you or your senior recruiters before a shortlist is prepared. Plan for any adverts you place, waiting time for response and qualification and any direct mail you may choose to send to candidates previously qualified for past assignments. Always work backwards from the proposed start date of the candidate and plot project milestones. Get client buy-in and commitment at the outset of your search to communication agreements, pre-booked interview slots and decisions being made in order to achieve their target start date.

I will be examining writing a recruiting plan in more detail as well as how to execute the perfect recruitment search on my forthcoming ‘Live’ seminar ‘The Art of Headhunting’.

Click here for details on how to attend http://www.royripper.com/seminars/

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Is headhunting sexy or wrong?

 How can I manage my time as a recruiter more effectively?

 How to set goals for new recruiters

Don’t miss out – subscribe to the Ripper on Recruitment blog today!

The ultimate competitive advantage of your recruitment business comes down to a single fact – your ability to grow and develop leaders faster than your competition. The more quickly you can get every single person in your recruitment organisation demonstrating consistent leadership behaviour – regardless of their position – the more quickly you will lead the field and leave other recruitment companies trailing behind you!

Read my 7 point plan to help each and every one of you achieve exactly that. Follow each one of these steps and ‘step up’ to take your rightful place in the ‘Golden Hall of Leader’s in Recruitment’!

1. Are you a manager, team leader or director in your recruitment business?

2. Are a consultant? Or resourcer?

3. Do you provide back office support to recruiters or work in any other recruitment head office function!

4. Final question: do you regard yourself as a leader in recruitment?

Ok, now here’s my challenge for you all today. By the time you finish reading this post I want each and every one of you to know that you are a leader in recruitment regardless of the job title printed on your business card or written in your job description. 

7 Steps to becoming a Leader in Recruitment

Step One is: Think like a Managing Director/CEO of a recruitment business.

You are not consultants, managers, directors, administrators, etc –from today you are all managing directors of your own recruitment desk which are in effect your own small businesses. Your recruitment company is simply an ‘investor’ that you each need to keep happy. It provides you with resources, structures, recruitment processes and opportunities. You have to return results and keep your ‘investor’ happy!

Take personal responsibility for the success of your recruitment business. Show up to work EVERY day like a recruitment entrepreneur. Grow new business sales. Make placements and reduce costs wherever you can. By taking responsibility your recruitment career will rocket and your Directors will love you!

Showing leadership in recruitment does not mean everyone will run the organisation. That would surely lead to mayhem – can you imagine? All recruitment companies need someone to set the vision and then direct the team to it. But people within the team need to know their role and be fully present in that role – like a recruitment leader would.

Step Two: Focus on getting to solutions rather than ‘navel gazing’ at problems

A leadership culture is one where everyone thinks like a business owner, like a ceo or managing director. Its one where everyone is entrepreneurial, proactive and solution driven. They do whatever it takes to keep clients, candidates and recruitment colleagues happy. They worry about revenue generation and margins and take personal responsibility for achieving results and moving the business forward (whether they run the accounts department or sit in a boardroom). By staying positive and leading by example you can help shape your company culture into a leadership driven one.

Step Three: Be a Leader in recruitment without a job title

Leadership has nothing to do with the title on your business card, the size of your office, or how much money you make. Leadership is an attitude and a state of mind. It’s a way of operating and we can all do it. it’s available to each one of us, no matter what you do within your recruitment business. Take responsibility for your recruitment company’s well-being and growth and begin shaping/changing it for the better.

Leadership is action, not position
~Donald H. McGannon

Step Four: Give yourself a gift!

Being great at work isn’t something you just do for your recruitment company and because you get paid, it’s a gift you give to yourself. Being spectacularly great at your work promotes personal respect, excitement and fulfilment. Every day is a new adventure. A new set of people you will meet and a new set of challenges you will face. You feel so much better after an ultra-productive day at work, when you have given your best and gone the extra mile. Think back to the last REALLY productive day you had at work and how great you felt at the end of it for having achieved something – it’s a gift you give yourself!

Step Five: Make time to go to work ‘on your business’ rather than ‘working in your business’!

Too many recruiters get so busy doing, doing doing that they fail to take a helicopter view of what they are doing. Schedule to go to work ‘on your business daily or weekly. Look at any of your processes and ask ‘What could I do to improve this’? Look at any specific client you’re recruiting for and ask ‘how can I improve this relationship/communication?’. Look at your candidates and ask ‘what can I do to place this candidate/get more out of my relationship with them?’

Making time to think is a superb strategy for success at leadership and in life. Too many people spend the best hours of their days solely engaged in the doing. In fact, they get so busy doing that they don’t even know what they are being busy for. Why waste all your time, energy and potential swimming an ocean only to find you have got to the wrong island? Taking the time to think and reflect ensures you get to the right island.

Step Six: Learn to say no to negativity

Don’t waste your time gossiping by the coffee machine or listening to the negative crap of your recruiting colleagues. Learn to say NO and keep focussed on positively achieving all that needs to be done in that day or month and achieve those results.

And finally, Step Seven: Become a student of your recruitment business

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other
~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

To earn more you must learn more (and keep learning). The compensation you receive from your recruitment company will be determined by the value you add. The more you know, the more valuable you become. Read, study and continually improve yourself. Self development is the best investment you can ever make and if you don’t invest in you why the heck should anybody else?

Leadership begins within and organisational leadership begins with personal leadership but you can’t be great at work until you feel great. By ensuring that you are performing at your best, your leadership effectiveness will be guaranteed.

These seven steps will be your personal blueprint to becoming a leader in recruitment. Type them up, save them on your screensaver, stick post-its around your bathroom mirror. Whatever way you choose take massive action today to become a true leader in recruitment.

The Recruitment Industry needs Leaders! It needs YOU!

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Ripper Talks…with Dawn Milman-Hurst

How to fail as a billing recruitment manager!

How NOT to fire recruitment consultants

Don’t miss out – subscribe to the Ripper on Recruitment blog today!

Welcome to ‘Ripper Talks…with Leaders in Recruitment’. My first series of interviews will concentrate on leaders in the recruitment industry. A concept I often talk about when training or speaking at an event is that leadership doesn’t have to mean that you are the CEO or MD of a company, but rather that everyone is capable of being a leader, whatever their title. This means that they take personal responsibility for achieving results whether they run the postroom or the boardroom. They shape culture, stay positive and lead by example. So I plan to interview a number of people whom I consider leaders in recruitment, whether they have an MD title or whether they are just a top performer in their role – it is their attitude, their state of mind and the way they operate that makes them what I consider to be a leader in recruitment.

My first interview is with Dawn Milman-Hurst, the MD of ‘Equal Approach’ based in Burton-upon-Trent which is a recruitment consultancy that prides itself in removing barriers to allow access to the most senior positions within the UK to the widest range of people. Dawn began her career in Marketing, progressing into HR and Customer Service Management, and then after being contacted in in the mid-90′s regarding a new business idea, she started her career in the recruitment industry. Dawn soon realised that her heart lay in recruitment, as she loved the positivity of successful candidates and clients and after fifteen years working with an inspiring mentor, she knew that setting up her own recruitment company was what she really wanted to do.  Dawn has already appeared in 2010’s Who’s Who of Britain’s Business Leaders. 

Dawn, what have you done to improve your business knowledge / or personal development in the last year?

I commit two weeks per year to personal development, this year so far I have completed the London Business School’s “Growing your Business” course, the IOD‘s “Managing Strategic Change” and a public speaking course.  I am a big fan of Cranfield University, and am also constantly learning within the diversity sphere by contributing at forums and seminars, eg. Employers’ Forum of Disability.

Who / what inspires you?

Pushing the boundaries, and seeing what can be achieved with belief.  I have a great network of business and personal contacts who give me confidence and encouragement and as soon as one goal is achieved I am looking at the next.

What do you believe to be your most significant accomplishment?

Having steered Equal Approach to be in the Top 1% of UK businesses on financial performance in 2009, and personally appearing in 2009 and 2010 Who’s Who as being an “inspiring business leader”.

What is the best piece of advice anyone has ever given you Dawn?

Never accept no!

What tips / advice could you give to a recruitment consultant today wanting to get to the top of their game?

Learn your trade from the bottom up, nothing equips a credible recruiter better than understanding every role in their business, and the importance of each.  All of the top performing consultants I know and have worked with, can do all roles, and are accomplished sales people in the process.

Is there a book that you believe is a ‘must read’ book? If so, what is it?

‘The Secret’ – being positive, and putting it out there!

Dawn, if you could meet anyone in the world dead or alive who would it be and what would you say to them?

Princess Diana – do what makes you happy girl!

What’s the last song you downloaded on your iPod?

Name every cheesy 80s tune and there is your answer – something by Kids from Fame I think.!

What has been your most satisfying moment in your business career so far?

Celebrating the fifth birthday of my business, as these were the formative years, and I was very proud to have got to this milestone, as I had been through so many challenges to get there.

Have you made any business mistakes that you would advise others to avoid?

Absolutely, a) follow you instincts – they are usually right, and b) do it alone – you don’t need that business partner c) never, ever employ friends and family and d) beware “specialist” business consultants.

What’s next for you and your business in the next 12 months?

Over 100% growth predicted this year again, with a return to some of our original sectors, which are showing signs of regrowth including Banking, Legal and Consultancy.  Continued focus within the highly successful Healthcare, Clinical and Welfare to Work markets.

And finally Dawn, what is your favourite leadership quote?

James Caan – “When everyone is running in one direction with a business opportunity – look and run the other”….

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Don’t miss out – subscribe to the Ripper on Recruitment blog today!

Effective time management for recruitment consultants means working smart rather than just being busy. Being busy is the easiest thing a recruiter can be. Working smart means that the recruiter is spending the majority of his time on those opportunities and candidates that are MOST LIKELY to lead to placements. This sounds easy in principle but a recruiters average day (is there such a thing?) is full of necessary activities and constant interruptions. These interruptions cause recruiters to lose focus and spend time and energy on activities that seem worthy but in reality are not. Here are my suggestions on some of the things you can do to keep your focus directed on the ‘closest to money’ activities.

Use a Written Daily Plan

The number one piece of advice I give every recruitment consultant I work with is, you MUST have a written daily plan. The second piece of advice I give them is you MUST follow your plan. A good daily plan does not have to be some great big formal thing. Whether you use a daily planner form, recruitment software, Microsoft Outlook, an app on your iphone/blackberry or just a task list written on a pad. The most important thing is that your plan be specific and that you list each task you SHOULD be performing that day.

Allocate time to each task on ‘Urgency/Now’ basis

How much time you spend on each client requirement and candidate should be based on urgency/now factors. That is you have to specifically determine WHICH requirements and candidates deserve the most time and effort and how much time you allocate to each.

New Business development EVERY day

No matter how busy you are you must remember to schedule time EVERY day (doesn’t matter how little) for new business development. New business development is the number one thing that recruiters ‘forget’ to do when they are ‘busy’. It’s human nature that we want to speak with people who are warm and friendly and receptive to us. Therefore a lot of recruiters spend time repeatedly calling people they already know. Picking up the phone and calling a brand new potential decision maker means a greater risk of hearing the word ‘NO’ so too often these calls are not made. However decision makers are part of every recruiters ‘inventory’ or ‘stock’ and the only way to build and replenish your inventory is to MAKE time to develop new client contacts. Many of you will already know that over eighty percent of sales are closed on the fifth call or later so take time to make the first call.

 Creating extra time

Successful recruiters manage their time more effectively by knowing when and how to make use of ‘extra time’. If you are working on a number of urgent requirements and candidates your normal working day may not give you enough time to source candidates, arrange interviews for them and manage the recruitment process. On these occasions only you can determine how much extra time you are willing to put into your job to achieve the activity levels (KPI’s) that will bring you closer to your production and revenue goals. Extra time may mean coming in early, working through your lunch or staying after work – or sometimes all three! It may mean making calls from your home in the evening or over the weekend when you would rather be relaxing. It may even mean coming into your office on a Saturday or Sunday if you feel you need to – though with remote desktop tools that needn’t be necessary. For many recruiters, creating ‘extra time’ is a commitment too far. The urgent job order you have will not be urgent forever; however it is urgent NOW. Only you can determine how much of a price (in terms of your time) you want to pay to cover your urgent assignments and ultimately your success as a recruitment consultant.

Review your plan

The last tip I have for recruiters to master their time management is to review your daily plan before you leave your desk and to plan the next days activities. Pat yourself on the back for any successes that day and tasks completed but also give yourself a little kick for any activities you’ve failed to complete and commit to completion the following day. Ask yourself “what have I accomplished today?” How many tasks have you drawn a line through or ticked off your plan? Should you stay later tonight to complete, take work home or come in earlier tomorrow?  Were you busy today or did you work smart? And finally ask yourself how could you be more productive tomorrow?

As a recruiter, managing your time can feel like you’re a circus performer spinning plates. You could never spin every plate and invariably some will crash to the ground. One key to success in our business is identifying which plates to spin (planning) and then working hard on those (execution). If you have any further advice for recruiters to manage their time more effectively please feel free to comment below.

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Technology is king in the world of recruitment and has been for many years. We have seen every tool developed for the busy recruiter, to recruit as quickly and as successfully as possible. Companies from all over have strived to create software applications, web applications, cloud solutions, CRM’s, job boards, online cv databases, multiple job posting tools, applicant tracking systems, cv parsing and maybe the kitchen sink thrown in for good measure!

The Recruiter’s box of tricks and gadgetry is endless these days and talking parsing, tracking and posting is the language of recruiters globally.   These wizardry inventions covers just one area of the recruitment process, be it recording data relating to candidates, posting candidate information, posting job adverts and tracking responses…if you see where I’m coming from the whole spectrum of recruitment technology seems to have always looked after the candidate side of the fence.

Business development can be described as cold calling, warm calling, speculative cv sending and even scatter-gun approach and if you’re good, or even not bad, you will achieve a certain degree of success. Is this part of the recruiter’s role an easy part?….errr the computer definitely says NO!

Out of all the recruiters who are asked if they enjoy business development or cold calling or any of the other fancy names that we give it, I would imagine that 90% would say it’s the toughest part of their job.  Opening new doors when you are blind to what’s happening is a tricky thing to do with the consequence of wasted time on the phone with negative results, similar to the saying you have to kiss so many frogs before you meet the prince or princess!  Business development can also turn into a frog kissing ordeal.

Now, technology for recruiters won’t make the placements for you, but it will post jobs, search cv’s and even tell you if a cv is good for a job. This great technology does not assist that lonely recruiter with sweat beads forming on his or her brow who has been slogging on the phone for two hours carrying out their business development session, call after call can be “sorry we are not recruiting”, “sorry no vacancies”, “sorry my cat’s died and I’m about to go sky diving” -  yes we hear them every day, but we have no other choice but to continue our process without the aid of any technological assistance to help us….. Until Now!

About 18 months ago, I was approached by a guy named Mark Lennard who said, “Roy, I have a very exciting new venture that I want to get your take on”.  My curiosity got the better of me and I met with this chap in a bar in London.  Mark explained that he had an application that could change the way recruiters work and add a tool to the process that would give the recruiter the greatest piece of technology that they had had in a long time. I was intrigued. Mark apologised for coming across as trying to pitch the idea to me but asked me to listen to the following.  He said “Roy, if I could show you a way of monitoring every single one of your client websites and notifying you as and when a new vacancy had been added to the site, would you be interested?”  Now before I could even say a resounding YES, he went on to say “if I could also show you a way of creating watchdogs of job titles relative to your sector, and then notifying you when new vacancies were uploaded on to client websites, would you be interested?”   The grin on my face was getting wider as I grasped the potential of how well this idea could impact the industry.

A month ago, I received a call from Mark Lennard.   I remembered him straight away from the meeting about this amazing proposal of a new tool for recruiters, which, at the time, was just an idea.  Mark was upbeat in his voice and was excited to say that after a pain staking 18 months of development ‘MyResourcer’ was born and was living in kennels at www.myresourcer.com (I won’t explain the kennels bit, leave you to work that out). Mark invited me to his London office for a sneak and confidential preview of this new piece of recruiters’ kit.

I was truly amazed and utterly impressed by what I had been shown. An application for the global recruitment industry that finds vacancies based on the recruiter’s market sector, an application that looks at company websites and tracks down the career pages and monitors them, an application that is so sleek and simple to use and would fit into the recruiter’s working day without any fuss.

This application is going places.  It’s innovative, clever and also very simple too. Congratulations to Mark Lennard, Co-Founder and the team at MyResourcer in creating the recruiter’s new must-have application.

For more information, take a look at www.myresourcer.com or call +44 (0)207 078 7990

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Don’t miss out – subscribe to the Ripper on Recruitment blog today!

The position of billing manager or team leader in any recruitment company can often feel like the toughest job in the world.

A recruiter joins a company and because she bills well and shows an aptitude to help and train other recruiters she is promoted to manage a team. Soon she has three to four recruitment consultants within her group. The team are always asking her questions and she is always answering them. Her personal billing / revenue generation starts to suffer. The Director/owner of the recruitment company asks the manager “Why?” and her reply is “because the people in my team are taking up all my time.”

Sounding familiar? Believe me I hear this story in almost every recruitment office I go in to train and every office I ever worked in as a recruiter. I hear owners and directors of recruitment companies bitching and moaning because the superstar recruiter who used to make such a massive contribution in revenue has fallen from grace and nobody else in the team seems capable of replacing the lost billing. I hear managers and team leaders harping on about how little time they now have and how they feel unfilled.

What’s the solution? The recruitment manager’s priority needs to change. I know it sounds like a contradiction but personal revenue generation (or billings) is the number one priority for a team leader. I can hear recruitment managers across the globe screaming at me “If I’m a manager of a team, why is my personal billing so important?”

The answer is simply that you set an example for the other recruiters in your team. And your job first and foremost is to lead by example.

Supporting team members and the counselling aspect of the job is exaggerated in importance usually by recruiters who are always asking questions and by managers who always answer them. You do not help your team members or support them properly by answering every question they throw at you. They either know the answers or should be finding the answers themselves.

As a recruiting manager if your team revenue falls you need to refocus on your own personal billing. When your billing recovers, miraculously the whole team will improve. Even team morale will get a boost because “our manager bills too!” It is detrimental for morale when you tell them “make 75-100 new business calls today and you only made 10. Or when you say “get five client candidate interviews this week” but you only got one last week. Or when you demand|£15k this month and the last time you billed it was £5k and it was over four months ago!

But how do you find the time to bill and make money? You can’t find it you have to make the time. You HAVE to set aside at least four hours EVERY day when you are there present amongst the team but not available to deal with their personal issues. You are there to recruit and make money! It might sound a bit harsh or mean but it isn’t. You see when the recruitment manager is billing, the recruiters are billing and when everybody is billing everybody is happy. And when everybody is happy then that’s probably the best environment you could ever wish for in any recruitment company.

A popular Chinese proverb tells us ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime!’

By answering a recruiters question you feed him for a day or at least until the next question. Teach him the benefit of discovering his own answers and you empower him to feed himself for the rest of his lifetime.

The next time a junior team member comes to you saying they have a problem or question, instead of giving them a solution ask them “How do you think you can overcome this?” or “What solutions have you considered”? If they don’t come with solutions send them away to think about some. If they answer with solutions that you know won’t work ask them “What other solutions COULD or MIGHT work?” Keep practising this, it’s hard at first because it will always be quicker to give them the solution but persevere because it will pay off in the end. Recruiters will stop coming to you as often and when they do they will have thought about some possible solutions before interrupting you.

Remind your teams that you have a personal billing target to achieve this week/month/year and unless they are willing to supplement your income or pay your mortgage they must permit you the space and time to operate your own desk. Get into the daily habit of asking each team member for their personal objectives for each day in a morning team meeting. Ask them what help they need from you in order to achieve those objectives. Remember to check how well they did against those objectives the following day. Check in with the team at lunchtime and at the end of each day but otherwise this one discipline will enable you to work your own desk between 10am and 5pm without unnecessary interruption. Remind recruiters in your team that of course you are always available to them “for emergencies only”. You can still keep your eyes and ears open during the day, spotting opportunities to coach on the run, praise good performance and add value wherever you can but ALWAYS on your time schedule and when you CHOOSE to rather than being drawn in by others.

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Goals are the most powerful management and training tools that we have as recruiters. Unfortunately most recruitment business owners misuse them so much they become totally ineffective. We often wait until the second or third month to set goals for our new (rookie) recruiter. We call him or her into our office, ask them how much they want to earn this year. The new recruiter says “£50k” and we then tell them they need to invoice £150k this year and in order to do that they need to generate 20 send outs (1^st interviews) a month. The rookie recruiter says “I can do that”. We send them back to their desk and then check in one week later. She only got one Send Out. We tell her that she’s way off and she needs to make at least 5 interviews a week to reach her monthly goal. She says “I know, I’ll try harder next week and make up the deficit”. We check in again one week later and this time she has no send outs. Your rookie convinces you she will work harder the following week and keeps missing the goal. We keep sending her back to her desk and she keeps missing the target – INSANE!

Recruitment managers and Directors should set goals as follows;

A new recruiter should attempt 75 calls per day (any combination of recruiting and marketing calls is ok). They should complete (or connect with) 25 calls and spend at least 4 hours per day on the phone. For the first three months of their time with you the new recruiter should also have specific goals for gaining complete job orders (requirements), sourcing and registering new candidates, presenting candidates to client companies and Send Outs (1^st Interviews) with clients. By month 3 the rookie recruiter should be given a production goal (Monthly revenue target). If your new recruit is achieving early activity goals, achieving the production goal will be relatively automatic and easy.

Getting new recruiters into daily habits of having to achieve high activity figures sets the tone and pace of their entire future career. Better to start with the bar set high and then lower later on if you have to.

If your new recruiter fails to achieve his or her goals there are only four possible reasons;

1. the goal is too high

2. the recruitment training is not good enough

3. the recruiter is incapable of meeting the goal

4. the recruiter is unwilling to meet the goal

If the goal is too high, lower it. If the training is not good enough, improve it. If the recruiter is incapable or unwilling, TIN THEM! (or send them to work for your biggest competitor)

Never permit new recruiters to negotiate goals – YOU SET THEM!

The key to meeting goals on a yearly basis is to meet them on a monthly, weekly and daily basis first.

When goals are first set for a rookie recruiter they should be relatively easy to achieve – number of phone calls attempted per day. By the second week the recruiter has to have a more difficult goal to hit – one Send Out. The recruitment manager or mentor has to ensure that the rookie achieves this goal (even if they have to ‘help’ to make it happen).

By the end of the first month, the rookie recruiter will be so conditioned to meeting goals that he sets and meets his own goals on a daily basis. In order to make this happen a manager must help set and monitor the new recruiter’s goals EVERY day for the first two months of their career.

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Recruitment companies are recruiting again. The ‘war for talent’ has started once more (did it ever stop?) and thousands of recruitment consultant jobs are being advertised on the job boards and recruitment-to-recruitment specialist agencies are getting steadily busier.

It’s a sad and ironic indictment of our recruiting industry that the one universal role that we struggle to recruit for is the one of recruitment consultants for ourselves. Even recruitment-to-recruitment companies find it easier to locate and place recruiters at their client companies than to fill their own internal gaps – you work it out??!!

For a start, let’s tell people realistically how hard they need to work in their first year including what hours they need to work to be considered doing the job. If the culture in your business is that no-one leaves before 8pm at night it seems only fair to point that out during the interview and not reveal it to them in week 3 of their probation period. Likewise if there is an office bitch (most often a bloke) that makes rookies life hell for the first three months Warn them! If you as the boss only come in after 10am and frequently leave before 5pm (why??) tell them that’s the way it is. If you’re embarrassed to, then maybe you need shut up and change your hours to reflect how hard your team work. If their first three weeks are going to be spent cold calling to build up your client vacancy list then tell them to expect the worst, i.e., lots of rejection, low morale, wanting to give up, etc.

The way I see it is if you paint the job as the worst they could ever imagine but talk about the rewards once you get past the initial boot camp feel then you are getting someone whose job expectation is based in reality which ultimately will lead to job satisfaction. If you bullshit the job up, their expectation is artificially high and unreal and will definitely lead to job dissatisfaction and the churn and burn we have come to expect in our recruitment industry just keeps on rolling on. Tell it how it is and remember to keep it real!

It is imperative that we don’t make the same mistakes we made previously when re-staffing our teams. Forget about ‘double dip’ if you want to send your recruitment company or team down the swanee, then follow the ten most common mistakes we make when recruiting recruiters:

1. Hiring ‘experienced’ recruiters

They are on the market for a GOOD reason. Proceed with caution – you may just end up with someone else’s problem recruitment consultant.

2. Recruiting low energy people because we like them

If they’re low energy in the interview process how do you think they’ll be after 6-12 months with you? Do you really want to have to light a fire under people?

3. Not checking references

You may as well give them the keys to your house and car whilst you’re at it.

4. Making compromises when we take someone on (settling)

If you settle for second best, they will always be second best. Don’t you deserve ‘FIRST BEST’?

5. Hiring to ‘fill a desk’

Far better to keep it empty until the ‘best’ presents themselves

6. Hiring friends

A recipe for disaster

7. Paying no attention to what the team says

8. Paying too much attention to what the team says

9. Selling too much to the candidate

10. Taking too long (time kills all deals)

I think one of the biggest reasons we get it so wrong is reason no.9 in our list – ‘selling too much to the candidate’. I see it time and time again in recruitment companies I go out to train. Often I am asked to be involved in the selection process of new consultants coming in to some of my clients. They figure if they can get me to endorse them and they don’t work out maybe I’ll give them some money back – yeah right!

The mistake I see the client make is telling the prospective recruiter what a fabulous company they are to work for, how they’re about to float on AIM in 2 years, how they will be financially independent within 3 years, how they don’t believe in ‘office politics, how they have an ‘open door’ policy to management and ‘we have never had a staff member leave the company EVER’! Now some of this may undoubtedly be true and of course you have to play up the positive aspects of any job. However I reckon we could dramatically increase our chances of recruiting the right people and retaining them if we were just a bit more truthful during the interview and selection process.

P.S. I would like to add in an 11^th biggest mistake when recruiting recruiters and that is ‘failing to train them properly’. Stop spending a fortune identifying and recruiting superstars and then sitting them at a desk with an induction manual and the promise you’ll spend some time with them next week. Do it properly and get me in there!

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Is Headhunting sexy or wrong?

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I was recently invited to design and deliver a training session on ‘Headhunting’ by the Directors of a very well known and extremely large recruitment company. The training session was for a group of their senior recruitment managers and was to be delivered in the boardroom of their head office. I started the training as I normally do by inviting recruiters to explore and share words that describe how they feel about headhunting. The most common words I hear whenever I do this part of the training session are; poaching, stealing, sexy, effective, unethical, immoral; necessary evil, pro-active, underhand, etc.

During the morning break one of the Directors approached me and asked if they could have a private word away from the training. They explained that they had received a complaint from the Chairman’s office (adjoining the boardroom) and that he was deeply offended by the use of the word ‘Headhunt’ which he could hear emanating from the training room. A little confused and surprised I did ask why the Chairman of a successful multi-disciplined recruitment company with offices and recruiters throughout the UK/Europe was offended by something as innocuous as the word ‘headhunt’. It turns out that the recruitment company had recently ‘lost’ 3-4 senior recruitment managers from the business to headhunters specialising in recruitment-to-recruitment. The way I saw it was the Chairman was paying my invoice and I didn’t want to upset him. I immediately and for the rest of the training day substituted the word ‘headhunting’ with ‘pro-active candidate sourcing’. I’m not stupid!

This event confirmed something that I had been aware of for a long time. And that is that the word ‘headhunting’ can lead to a very real emotive response from most people. As an ex-headhunter myself I was amazed at the number of people I meet who claim that they have been headhunted for their last career move and then on investigation it transpires that they haven’t received the traditional approach call from a headhunter at all but had seen an advert/job posting and approached a recruitment company to effect an introduction. Lots of people just love the word headhunt, and being able to claim “I was headhunted” and they find it sexy.

I discovered very early on in my recruitment career that the job title you used elicited very diverse reactions from different people. In my first years when asked “So Roy, what do you do for a living?” I used to reply proudly “I’m a recruitment consultant”. The silence that resulted from this would hang in the air like a bad smell. Sometimes people would just walk away from me muttering “bloody recruiters” to themselves and I was left feeling like I had done something very bad indeed. At one stage I felt that it would have been better to lie and say I was an estate agent or funeral director in the hope of getting a more positive response.

After being trained by the late great Tony Byrne (the greatest recruitment trainer that ever lived) on how to approach candidates proactively I stopped using the job title ‘recruitment consultant’ and started introducing myself as an ‘executive recruiter’ or ‘headhunter’. Dependent on the listener’s initial response dictated which phrase/terminology I adopted for the rest of my conversation with them. If they said “oh I was headhunted once” in a positive tone or most commonly “that’s interesting, how do you headhunt someone?” I would pepper the resulting conversation with lots of reference to headhunting and make it sound so magical and mythical and secretive that they would eating out of my hand and urging me to use the sexy H word just one more time. If they responded with “oh, I had a terrible experience with a headhunter” or “I just don’t trust headhunters” then I would immediately distance myself from the tawdry, dirty H word and use words like executive search or proactive recruitment.

You see as a headhunter you never want to alienate anyone. You want to be able to keep your search universe as wide as you possibly can. This means trying to be everything to as many people as you can possibly reach. You don’t want anyone to be offended by what you say as this may lead to them qualifying themselves out of the opportunity you have in mind for them. A good headhunter understands that it’s their job to do the qualifying and not the prospective candidates.

For me headhunting is sexy. No waiting around for the best candidate in the market to pick up a phone and call you. It’s not ‘poaching’ or ‘stealing’. In over 20 years as a headhunter and recruitment trainer I have NEVER seen a headhunter walk into a company, put a target candidate into their bag and then walk out. I have never seen a headhunter use Jedi mind tricks or Jack Bauer CTU interrogation techniques to brainwash a candidate away from their current employer and into a new job. The best headhunters grab the world by its ears, taking the best opportunities and proactively put them in front of the people they really want to have listen. The best candidates ‘on the market’ respond to job adverts. The very best candidates ‘in the market’ get called by headhunters and are presented with good opportunities to consider. Very sexy, don’t you think?

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