How Recruiters Can Go from Good to Great
Dani Monroe, author of Untapped Talent: Unleashing the Power of the Hidden Workforce, asks in an article for Monster.com, “Are you willing to hit the refresh button on how you think about and attract potential candidates? There is another way of approaching your recruiting strategy. It begins by accepting that recruiting is as much of an art as it is a science.”
She says ingrained habits can “thwart fresh leads.” Recruiters too often, she advises, “miss or devalue people’s experiences, their life situations or even people that are different, because the unconscious brain is responding to what’s familiar. Naturally our conscious brain can be overridden by our unconscious brain. Over time, we are on automatic pilot and our ability to let in new information becomes limited.”
Monroe cites the hypothetical example of a recruiter for a Massachusetts company that favors hiring applicants from Ivy League schools and other leading institutions in the Northeast. An applicant with European and California higher education would be given short shrift in spite of being equal or better to the firm’s preferred candidate pool.
“Our work as recruiters to tap hidden talent begins with expanding our worldview and embracing a new success mindset to approach the candidate selection process,” she says. “It’s time to hit the refresh button and engage that outlier candidate who might be your client’s next game changer.”
How does Monroe suggest accomplishing that goal? Through these five steps.
1. Begin by assessing the biases you’ve created over time for finding the right candidate. To Monroe this means reconsidering “people who come from non-traditional backgrounds have had to demonstrate new skills, resourcefulness, resilience and resolve to be successful.”
2. Look for talent that has reinvented itself. She advises, “These candidates demonstrate the skills, fluidity, versatility and the ability to deal with the complexity of change — the top skills needed for solving complex issues that are presented for resolution daily.”
3. Learn to read an application differently.This one needs to be done in conjunction with steps 1 and 2. You can’t jump to number 3 because Monroe wants recruiters to “think about how you have pre-judged the applicant only to discover in conversation new information that clarifies.” This is where the art of recruiting comes in because data driven resume searches may not mine the useful material needed.
4. Discover a candidate’s transferable skills. The best example of this, and not one mentioned by Monroe, would be Allan Mulally, the president and CEO of Ford. He was running Boeing when he was recruited to take over the troubled auto manufacturer and has enjoyed great success with the company, in spite of not being a car guy. “Many people have the ability to translate their learning into different environments — at very high levels,” Monroe says.
5. Search for talent in new areas.“Recruiters today need to build relationships that take the LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook interactions to a deeper level — by moving past name-gathering and profiles to actually creating new relationships that convey the depth of a person’s knowledge and experiences, says Monroe. That means the recruiter needs to be able to convey to their clients why the candidate has a “wow” factor that goes beyond just what’s written on their resume.
Monroe concludes her piece by defining the difference between a good recruiter and a great one. She says, “Overall, as you refresh your abilities to look beyond the familiar, remember that good recruiters employ the tactical strategies that they already know. Great recruiters are curious and develop the ability to challenge their own biases about people.”