Closing With Integrity: 3 Tools of Influence for Recruiters

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Your candidate is getting an offer from your best employer. You’ve done a great job conducting this recruiting effort — but you could still lose if your candidate does not accept the offer.

The old closing methods of intellectually weighing pros and cons have limited effectiveness. The decision to accept an offer is emotional and stressful for candidates, financially significant for you, and important to the employer-client who expects you to get a “yes.”

Here are three tools of influence recruiters can use to close with integrity and make more placements in 2018. Each technique is accompanied by a diagram you can draw for your candidates for clearer communication. Each technique/diagram leads to the next. You can use each diagram individually or paired with another, depending on your candidate’s career situation and mindset.

1. Leaning Curves: ‘Is This the Right Time to Make A Change?’

Picture1

The “learning curve” diagram provides a way to evaluate whether now is a good time for the candidate to change positions. People often see job change as risky, but not making a change may be even riskier.

During the first three years in a new job, the learning curve is steep. You are learning new things at a fast rate. You are working with new colleagues, acquiring new skills, learning about a new industry, and adding to your marketable skill set.

After three years in the same job, the rate at which you learn new things begins to slow down. Your career learning curve starts to flatten out. This is when your career security is at increasing risk, as you’re simply relearning the same things. When this happens, it may be time to change jobs.

Changing jobs after three years puts you on a new learning curve, as illustrated in the diagram. This gives you a new chance to add new skills and have new experiences at a fast rate. Getting on a new learning curve can add to a candidate’s marketability and career security by increasing the value they deliver to employers.

2. Skills Versus Dollars: ‘Is This the Best Offer?’

Picture2The “skills versus dollars” diagram makes the connection between learning curves and compensation clear. Stated simply, the stronger your in-demand skills are, the greater your compensation should be.

The scale on the left shows the level of your in-demand skills. The scale on the right shows the salary range for a specific job and your compensation within the range.

There are three possible situations when comparing skills to dollars:

  1. First, your compensation might be too low for your skills. This is actually a good thing, and it’s easy to fix. All you have to do is take a new job with an employer that pays people what they’re worth.
  2. Second, you may be paid too much for your skills. This is a high-risk situation, because the demand for your skills is lower than your compensation. Some employers overpay employees as a retention strategy, as this makes it harder for employees to leave for another company. These “golden handcuffs” limit career choice, growth, and mobility.
  3. Third, you are paid just right given the market demand for your skills. This is where you have the most control over your choices to increase your skills and pay.

The best and quickest way to increase compensation is to focus on learning in-demand skills. This will increase employer demand for you, thereby driving up your compensation. To maximize career security, growth, and compensation, focus your energies on accelerating your learning curves for in-demand skills.

3. Block of Experience: ‘How Does This Job Affect My Career?’

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This technique helps you illustrate the specific skills a candidate gains by accepting a job offer. The above diagram illustrates the different categories of experience the candidate currently has from two jobs. The categories of experience will be different for different job types.

For a software engineer, categories of experience might include different software languages, development tools, operating systems, and industries. For a salesperson, experience categories might include types of services or products sold, industries to which they sell, and territories. For a senior executive, case manager, project manager, or a nurse, the categories of experience will be totally different and specific to each position type.

To get an idea of the appropriate experience categories, look at the position requirements on the job description or the candidate’s resume.

The following diagram illustrates how blocks of experience will be expanded by accepting the new job, hence making the candidate more marketable, more secure, and more fairly compensated.

Picture4

Watch video explanations of these techniques here.

Michael R. Neece is CEO of InterviewMastery.com.

By Michael Neece