Bringing Timely Closure To Your Searches
By Martha Frase-Blunt© IT Recruiter. May 2001.
Why is it so darn difficult to close the deal? All of the effort that goes into sourcing, screening and interviewing a promising candidate is squandered when the ball gets dropped at the one-yard line. And it happens all the time.
“In more than 50 percent of the searches we do, we have to constantly facilitate and browbeat and motivate to get things done,” said Gary Kaplan, president of executive search consultants Gary Kaplan & Associates in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s like being sabotaged by your own client.”
And it doesn’t just happen to third-party recruiters. In-house staffing specialists are equally subject to the vagaries of senior and line managers for whom staffing easily slips to the least of their pressing concerns.
“It’s always a shame to lose a candidate in the twilight of the deal after six months of courting and pre-qualifications,” lamented Bill Bench, president and founder of Benchmark HR Solutions in Salem, N.H. “Don’t let fair-weather managers and bureaucracy close the window of opportunity for the candidate and your company.”
Behind the frustrating delays may be unresponsive hiring managers who won’t sign off, or HR people dithering about the final offer, or a mixed bag of stakeholders who are traveling or vacationing too much to schedule a meeting. Failure to convert a candidate into a hire may be a matter of incompetence or overburdened staff, but what it really boils down to is an organizational problem that can be remedied with a little restructuring of the recruiting function.
Paying Lip Service To Speed?
“It always amazes me how unnecessarily excruciating the recruiting and employment process can be sometimes,” said Kaplan. “Even in last year’s overheated labor market, when companies were doing all of these exotic things to recruit people, and calling their recruiting function a ‘strategic priority’, it would sometimes take months for a client to sign off on a hire.” When recruiters get an assignment from a client or hiring manager, there’s instantly a lot of pressure for a speedy conclusion. “But as the process moves forward, the recruiter can’t get a callback from the very people who claim to be in an urgent situation. In our case, these are clients who are paying us a substantial fee for our services,” remarked Kaplan.
To illustrate: Kaplan filled a post of a corporate CIO just weeks ago from a search that was launched back in late January. “This was a very competitive search, but we were able to identify the candidate by early February. Two months were wasted because we couldn’t communicate with the client. He didn’t return calls, and we were dealing mostly with an administrative assistant. Then we spent weeks trying to get a meeting with the CEO.”
The tale ended happily with a hire, but Kaplan admits he was lucky the CIO candidate remained on the hook after all of the delays. Another recent search for a technical CFO limped along for nine months with a candidate Kaplan had identified within the first six weeks of the search. “It was the same story: difficulty in communicating, scheduling and indecisiveness” on the client’s part.
Wiggling Off The Hook
Of course, the greatest danger of corporate foot-dragging is having the candidate snatched by a competitor right under your nose. “The best and the brightest will not hang around long waiting for an answer; their egos won’t take it,” noted Kaplan. “Years ago, jobseekers were more humble and willing to dance to the tune of the hiring manager or HR. Today they are more opportunistic; they know their worth and have learned how to be effective marketers of themselves.”
When a promising hire is lost through delays, the search almost always has to begin again from scratch. “There is no such thing as having a ‘farm team’ in IT recruiting today. Your second string candidates will be long gone after just a few weeks,” predicted Kaplan.
No one is suggesting that people on the hiring end need to operate in a manic state. “Hiring entities can do their jobs effectively – determine a skills, salary and culture match – but it can usually be done in a far less bureaucratic and more efficient manner,” he claimed.
Open Channels
Kaplan’s recent successful searches for a tech-based entertainment client in LA filled the posts of vice president of engineering and vice president of production within the space of two months. The single most important factor was the attitude of the HR vice president: “He was a great enabler and facilitator,” he explained. “He played an active role from the first screenings, making himself available even for 7:00 a.m. breakfast meetings.” Once the vice president determined that particular candidates merited consideration, he dealt with them in a very direct manner, even getting personal commitments to meetings from line managers. “This vice president didn’t accept a lot of excuses about availability, so the line interviews flowed very well.”
Tom Burnham, vice president of HR for Allergan, Inc., a specialty pharmaceuticals company in Irvine, Calif., finds that typically, “When you start outsourcing, the intimacy between employer and candidate breaks down.” It happens when the corporate side doesn’t view hiring as a priority, he noted. “Employment is a seduction, especially at the higher levels. You have to be very interactive, very attentive. When you aren’t, the relationship falls apart.”
Unifying Technology
“We deal with HR people sometimes for whom we almost have to schedule an appointment to get phone time with them,” said Kaplan. “Do you know what a two-week delay does to you on a search? But I know people who are just as busy, but understand how to communicate effectively.” The difference is knowing how to leverage today’s communications technology to manage time. Kaplan’s “enabler” vice president, for example, was a great believer in conducting conference calls when one or more parties weren’t available for a face-to-face. Internet instant messaging or private online chatrooms are another good way to bring people together for a virtual “meet”.
Training And Conditioning
There’s no reason to assume a line manager will consider the recruiting function as urgently as the staffing specialist or recruitment consultant does, unless they’ve been trained effectively. Companies that provide training to line executives and hiring managers in recruiting and hiring are more responsive, in Kaplan’s experience. “Training can introduce staffing protocols and processes that move things along at a much faster rate, and that doesn’t permit bogging down. For example, if someone is unavailable for a meeting, an alternative person can be designated to attend.”
At Allergan, all supervisory and management training programs have an employment component, according to Burnham. “We go over such skills as behavioral interviewing, and introduce every step of the hiring process, from creating requirements all the way to the finish line. We use the same well-defined procedures and have the same expectations every time we open a position.”
Consensus Management A “Death Knell”
“One of the great death knells to closing the deal is insisting on achieving consensus and buy-in from a number of people,” said Kaplan. “People are terrified of the process of bringing someone new on board, so they’re too inclusive.” Minimizing the number of stakeholders who have a say in the process will expedite the hire. “By all means, the candidate should meet a significant number of people in the organization, but don’t set them all up as dealbreakers.” Limit the final decision to the smallest group you can, he advised.
Measure, And Measure Again
“We are very, very disciplined in our recruitment processes,” said Burnham. The company uses sophisticated performance metrics to assess cost-per-hire and time-to-hire, “and line managers are held accountable to our standards.” At his fingertips are data showing that Allergan hired 450 people last year at an average cost of $3,200 per hire, and with an average closure rate of 58 days. When it comes to encouraging hiring managers to act promptly, keeping score can be a boon.
Commitment From The Top
Of course, it’s a tremendous help when the people in the highest ranks understand the critical nature of timely staffing. “Successful companies have the processes in place to convert a passive candidate into an active employee.” Burnham said. “They have an executive-approved contingency plan in place for corralling candidates through the process before your five other competitors can.”
This attentiveness to staffing as a strategic mission is a hallmark of top-performing companies. “HR directors must emphasize that recruiting – not training, not benefits – is the top priority,” he added. “If it’s not, you’re not going to be successful.” HR professionals who outsource all of their staffing may wonder why they’re not considered to be strategic partners at the senior management table, he further pointed out.
Kaplan is concerned that, for all of the strides made in recent years to transform recruiting and staffing into a strategic business objective within companies, laissez-faire attitudes will creep back in. “The press is consumed by writing about layoffs, even though there’s still a critical shortage of technical talent. Employers who underestimate the need for timely closure will pay the price.”
