It’s ALL in the Details – From a Recruiter’s perspective

What do we recruiters need to know to help find that perfect candidate for our clients?  Is more information or less information better? Is just a job description enough?  Well for me, a recruiter at a contract research recruiting firm, partnering with our clients is almost as if we work at their site.  We are actually an extension of their recruitment team and sharing the right information is key to our success. 

Sure, job descriptions are important and yes, all the technical requirements are a must have to find the right candidates, but honestly it’s not enough. Clients need to provide details such as:

-why the positions are open
-team or department structure
-details on hiring manager (his/her management style)
-expectations
-what the team lacks
-how long positions are open
- challenges as to why they have not been able to fill the position on their own to date

I can go on and on; you get my drift, right?  Details!!!  Speaking to a hiring manager is also a bonus; his/her version of the position and ideal candidate provides incredible insight.  Sharing their knowledge, what he/she really is looking for, what the must haves are for this candidate, what he/she is willing to bend on or be flexible on is very valuable.  This type of information can’t be picked up from a job description alone. So yes, hiring managers on intake calls should be a RULE.

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It was well over a years worth of hype that I resisted before joining the popular social networking site, Facebook.  One of Facebook’s top competitors, LinkedIn, has been my primary selection of social networking for a few years now.  Through my experiences with these two sites it’s been made certain to me that both have slightly different purposes that can make a huge difference to their users which should be considered when building a network.

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This is my inaugural blog post.  I’m late to this game but look forward to lending some useful perspective to the online dialogue around senior level recruiting/search.  Hopefully most of what I end up writing will be worth reading and at least some of it worth contemplating after you leave this blog.

While my plan is to offer substantive insight, I’m going to allow my first post to be a ‘venting session’ about one of my pet peeves.  First, if I may let me quickly establish that I have some basis on which to offer my opinions.  I’ve invested over 20 years in this crazy business and have been blessed to have worked at levels that should qualify me as at least enough of a ‘player’ to have experiences and perspective worthy of commentary (sector leader for a top 4 global firm; completed over 75 board and/or CEO searches; 10+ searches for those ‘horrible’ examples of capitalistic excess…compensation over $10 million, dozens in the mere-7-figures and hundreds of equally critical players that make up the six-figure masses).

Now that ‘pet peeve #1’ (not necessarily the #1 pet peeve cuz I’m not sure I could choose that ‘one’).

How has the practice of ‘plugging in’ new talent continued for as long as it has without greater codification of processes that assess the ‘alignment’ of existing and new leaders sufficient to ensure that we will actually achieve improved results sufficient to warrant the change?  A mouthful, I know.  Stated another way, the effective definition and assessment of prospective candidate’s critical success factors in recruiting has remained the purview of a few ‘artists’ vs. the science on which an industry can be expected to deliver persistent value.

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