I spent last weekend touring around Boston and happened to catch a Red Sox/Yankees game (Go Sox!). With playoff baseball about to begin, I couldn’t help but think about the pressure management is under to push their ball club to the playoffs and ultimately win the World Series.
Most of my professional life has been spent in the ever-challenging and dynamic world of Executive Recruiting ... Most of my personal life has been spent in the topsy-turvy, often crazy, and always rewarding, world being of a professional gigging musician….
“If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want”
– Zig Ziglar
It’s a basic and true law of nature: People feel compelled to give back to those who have helped them. This is especially true in the business of recruiting.
I was recently watching the sci-fi movie, Interstellar, (space travel, wormholes, viable life on other planets, etc.) and thought: 1) way, way too long, at nearly 3 hours 2) time relates to my job helping clients find Life Science talent.
“To escape criticism- do nothing, say nothing, be nothing” — Elbert Hubbard
When a recruiter tells a candidate post-interview “I’d like to share some feedback”,the candidate may translate it in their mind to “I’m going to tear you down”. They automatically imagine the worst case scenario and their defenses go up.
I’ve become a better recruiter because of my Tinder App.
I used to sift through LinkedIn looking for a candidate for my client’s search the way I looked through Tinder, hoping for a model, but then wondering what a model would see in me! There are a lot of fabulous people on LinkedIn with amazing backgrounds.
You get a lot of calls from recruiters. Well, guess what, I make a lot of those calls. Every morning before donning my headset I down a thermos of hot coffee. (Because showering in it would be scalding but kind of awesome.) Caffeinated and retained by an excellent client with a compelling story and value prop, I enthusiastically start talking to candidates, and I am genuinely excited about the possibility of changing lives! Maybe yours!
1) We Know Our Candidates Intimately!
Any good niched Recruiter brings added value in that they know much more about their candidates than what’s on their resume. Being aware of vital information like compensation details, special family arrangements, details behind past career changes.
As a recruiter who doesn’t sugar coat, I can honestly say that we go dark for a lot of the same reasons that candidates and clients go dark on us…
1. Low Interest (less than 50%) – Unfortunately, not every candidate’s background is a perfect fit and most are far from it.
Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish when choosing the best search firm.