Why do I offer a 12 month 100% rebate on my placements?

 

I’ve sat on both sides of the ‘recruitment fence’. I have been both poacher and gamekeeper. I understand the pressures that recruitment consultants face and I also understand the issues that the busy HR Manager has to deal with on a daily basis. The friction between both is well debated and obvious to all of us who work in either role. However, what is less examined is what can we do to make life easier for each party?

You see, as recruiters, we share the same goal. That is to ensure that the individual hired is the best person available for that role at that time and that the person hired remains in the role and adds value to their new employer by fulfilling and hopefully exceeding expectations. Which is why I often find it odd that such a great deal of time is spent negotiating rebate periods. In my entire 20 years in the industry I have never had to issue a rebate credit nor have I had to demand a rebate from a supplier. It is a rare thing but it is a valid concern.

We all know that recruitment is often about risk management. For an HR or Procurement professional, it’s very important to have peace of mind around after sales service, often missing from many agencies services.

This is why, for the last few years have offered a 12 month guarantee on my placements. I started doing this, not as a sales gimmick but rather to allow me to become more involved in the recruitment process, if I could demonstrate to my clients that I had a personal vested interest in getting the hiring decision right then they would be far more willing to trust my opinions and utilise my experience beyond that of a CV shuffler. As a buyer of recruitment services, I have never understood why more agencies don’t offer this. As an agent I know it is because it doesn’t often fit into the traditional agency business model. However, I take the approach that I’m not doing my job properly if I am not willing to offer this. Yes, it takes longer and delays sales but it ensures professionalism, and builds trust and that can only be a good thing.

With the advent of systems like Linkedin and the growth of in house recruitment specialists it has become increasingly important for recruiters to offer a level of service that goes beyond merely that of a CV shuffler. Any organisation can subscribe to one of the myriad of CV databases out there. Recruitment fees for what is essentially shuffling these CVs is hardly value for money. No matter how much you wish to automate a recruitment process, the more experience and expertise you can bring to an assignment the better. By offering this I am putting my money where my mouth is and from a professional point of view, ensuring that the client gets the benefit of their cash investment.

 

If you are in the business of hiring staff and you’d be interested in a 12 month 100% rebate on your hires then please drop me a line.

Never make a hiring decision alone!

The hiring cliff, entrepreneurs are so focused on getting where they need to that they often miss the lethal drop of a poor hiring decision.

Here’s one that might seem obvious but is a banana skin especially for smaller and owner managed businesses and especially for the entrepreneur, so driven and focused on success.

Despite the well known catastrophic costs to businesses about making the wrong hiring decision managers and especially owner managers routinely make the mistake of not being thorough in their hiring process. The easiest way to do this is to ensure you involve someone else in the hiring process.

I’ll let you into a secret, one that I am far from proud of – I’ve been involved in recruiting and hiring both as an HR Manager and as a headhunter for nigh on 20 years and about 2 years ago I blithely wandered into this trap – one that I had been highlighting to clients for years. I thought that my years of experience would protect me from making a bad decision, after all, I have interviewed thousands of people over the years, how could I possibly make a mistake? At the time I was running an engineering business. Like many entrepreneurs I was snowed under, literally, with huge demands on my time. When it came time to hire someone I knew the dangers of getting it wrong but arrogantly assumed with my vast experience that this was unlikely to happen. So I hired a guy based on the recommendation of an associate for whom he was working for at the time. The interview process was, in reflection, quite shocking. Like many business people I was so caught up in my todo list and in the plans for the company that I didn’t do the basics, I relied on the recommendation of the third party without questioning their motives. I was too busy to give this the time I needed to.

I ended up eating a huge slice of humble pie as the individual we hired ended up being a disaster that cost the business tens of thousands, and has resulted in a criminal court case being pursued against the individual in question for theft.

So, what did I do wrong, how could I, with so many years experience of this, got it so wrong?

Now, in hindsight the reasons were obvious but it is very easy, especially with your own business to be so focused on the success of that business to end up falling into these very obvious traps. The mindset you need to succeed as an entrepreneur is one of optimism and positive attitude, you want to bring everyone with you and you will use your sheer force of personality to succeed. However, the mindset you need for interviewing is to temper this with a huge dollop of cynicism, yes sell the candidate your idea and your passion but do not expect that person to share your drive, ambition and passion. They are not you and their motives are not yours, you need to be quite hard on yourself and on them. This is a lot more difficult than it seems.

So, how can you easily avoid making the wrong decision?

The easiest way to avoid this is to ensure that you have at least a second opinion. Here’s some ideas of where to get that from:

– Professional HR Consultants are a very cost effective way to do this. Many offer a service that includes, writing a job spec, helping you shortlist, designing an interview schedule and supporting you with the interviews. They usually charge by the hour or day and you’d usually be looking at a few hundred for this support. Given the potential cost of getting it wrong, it’s money well spent and the time it will save you in process more than pays for itself. I provide a service for small local businesses that gives this support, many others do as well.

– Trusted colleagues, these must be appropriate, it would be inappropriate to ask a potential report of the new candidate to interview for their boss. If you are a small business think laterally,

-a non executive director (get them to earn their stipend!),

-a business consultant who might be working with you in another capacity,

-a friend who knows your business and who might run their own business.

– A family member with an interest in the business, your spouse for instance

-Consider using a headhunter/recruiter and putting the onus on them to support you. As a headhunter I offer a 100% rebate for the first 12 months. This allows me to become far more involved in the selection of the RIGHT candidate to the extent that I have supported client interviews. I have a vested interest in getting it right, not just in placing any old candidate. Very few recruiters offer this level of guarantee, if they don’t, ask them why not?

Whatever you do, make sure you get that second opinion on every candidate and do those checks.

Improve your Linkedin profile it is your key to your next assignment

the world of the Interim Manager you hear all the time how vital it is to keep your Linkedin profile up to date, problem is many of us don’t know where to start and lack the time. Those of us who started their careers without a computer can be especially challenged by this. Increasingly the service that most ‘recruitment agents’ use to find interim managers is LinkedIn. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important for everyone, in particular professional interim managers to ensure that their Linkedin profile is not only up to date, but contains information that will allow the recruiter to find their profile quickly and also allow them to ascertain how relevant the profile is for the role they are hiring for. Now, when I was an interim manager I was pretty bad at keeping my Linkedin profile up to date. You know how it is – when you are looking for a contract you are on Linkedin all the time (as well as all the relevant ad sites) when in a contract, work and life seems to take over and we become less than diligent in updating and checking our Linkedin account for updates. Linkedin is a movable feast, in the 10 odd years I have been a member the site has changed hugely and it continues to change and develop. One of the things that is changing is that your position in Linkedin searches no longer relies solely on the number of key words you have in your titles and profile etc. Increasingly your participation in regular and relevant online activity is rewarded with increased profile. Therefore it is vital that you respond to blogs (starting with this one J) and consider contributing your own content as well as logging in regularly and giving your profile as much attention as your tomatoes. For some, this will require a major change in the way they look at Linkedin. Linkedin is your online presence, it is even more important than a CV and therefore it is vital that it contains the information that allows you to be found by recruiters and others in your sector. I’m not saying this to make my life easy, but rather to increase your profile within your area of expertise. I don’t view Linkedin as social media and neither should you, the very word social implies non-professional, leisure-time etc. Rather see it as your primary tool in securing your next assignment.

Here are a few tips

• Ensure your profile and experience reflects not only what you do but what you want to do and contains key words
• Ensure your profile has your name – Initials don’t work, yes, in the old days of Linkedin when the world and their dog could contact you it did help to restrict spam BUT these days you need to be standing out.
• Don’t EVER attempt to elevate your Linkedin position by filling your profile with key word lists. If Linkedin find an account like this they will simply delete it with no warning
• Ensure you log into your Linkedin account at least once a week when ON ASSINGMENT and every day when off assignment, hirers will be using Linked in to contact you about work so ensure your smart phone has the app installed and is activated. If you don’t have a smart phone, get one
• Start to interact with others, keep it professional, no stupid photos or non related humour – pics. of your cat and kids are for Facebook, keep it that way
• Ensure you have a photo, don’t make it too cheesey and formal (like some of our American cousins) but also don’t make it too informal, people don’t want to see your sweaty body on the beach or in some mid-life-crisis-extreme-sport-activity (yes I know my photo makes me look like a beachbum – I will be changing it)
• Consider starting to contribute to topics you read
• Consider starting to post relevant content to your skills set
• Consider paying for a Job Seeker or Premium account, I would recommend this, and no, Linkedin aren’t paying me for saying this. It makes you more visible and extends your reach.
• Be careful with your network, If you are an Interim Food FGM then ensure that your network reflects that and is peopled by those in your industry and sector, don’t accept every invitation just because someone wants to connect, if your profile is right then the right connections will start to come to you

These are a few starting points some of which will take you 5 minutes and will seriously increase your likelihood of being found. There are many other things you can do and should consider doing and this is just a starter. These points are relevant for anyone on Linkedin but are particularly important for the Interim Manager. Invest time in this, it is essential. If you are really stuck then there are always those who offer can offer you professional help.

If you would like more advice on this then please feel free to get in touch.