An Open Letter to Recruiters Everywhere

Original Source: An Open Letter to Recruiters Everywhere – Siofra Pratt (Inbound Marketing Executive)

Dear Recruiter,

I’ve been working with Social Talent for just over 2 and a half years now. And although I started off not knowing anything about the recruitment industry, what recruiters did, or how it all worked/should work, I now know quite a lot about what sets a great recruiter apart from a no-so-great recruiter. Which is why I now feel now is the right time for me to sit down and compose this open letter to all those not-so-great recruiters out there.

But while, I don’t mean to offend any of you with this letter (I ultimately want to help you be the best recruiter you can be), I will warn you that I do have a number of grievances I need to get off my chest!

Here goes…

Do you really care that I’m “well”?

Every InMail/email I’ve ever received from a recruiter has begun with some variation of the phrase “Hi Síofra, I hope you are well”. Now, I know you mean well when you start your pitch to me this way, but really?! Is that the best you can do? It sounds a little lazy. I just tweeted about I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. Why not start off by asking me what I thought of last night’s episode or how I felt about that disgusting bush tucker trail they made Kieron Dyer do? That’d get my attention!

Let’s talk about me for a second…

If only I had a euro for the number of InMails I’ve received from recruiters telling me how much having me on their team would benefit their client or their company. Here’s the thing: I’m valued in Social Talent. I have friends here, I enjoy a good salary here, why would I want to leave all that just to please your client, if it’s not going to directly benefit me in some way? If you really want to entice me out of my current role, you should be telling me all the things you or your client can do for ME. Can you offer me a shorter commute? Can you offer me a higher salary? Can you offer me more vacation days? Tell me what you can do for me. It might sound selfish but…

Stop being so God damn secretive!

“Hi Síofra, I have a role on my books at the moment which matches up brilliantly with your skill set, I’d love to chat to you about this opportunity.” What opportunity?! You haven’t told me about any opportunity or why my skill set matches up so “brilliantly” to one, in your opinion. What’s worse is, when I asked this recruiter for more information about the role, they replied asking me to send them my CV before receiving any information… Why would I want to send my CV to someone I know nothing about, for a role I know nothing about? Just tell me what the God damn job is!

Have you even looked at my profile?!

This is kind of embarrassing for you considering you just told me that your role “matched up brilliantly” with my skill set… but I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been contacted by a recruiter asking me (in all seriousness) if I’d like to take “this great opportunity” to become a Senior Graphic Designer or a Recruitment Consultant. Hang on a second, did you just message the wrong person or confuse me with someone else? Sure, my LinkedIn profile may contain the words “Photoshop” and “InDesign” because I use them a little for work, and one of my listed educational achievements is a diploma in desktop publishing, but I have never formally studied graphic design, nor have I ever worked as a Graphic Designer. So what makes me qualified enough in your eyes, to work for your client as a “Senior Graphic Designer”?! Similarly, just because I work for a recruitment training company, doesn’t mean I’m a Recruitment Consultant. In fact, I quite clearly state that my role here is as an “Inbound Marketing Executive”. Do your research people, because you just wasted a perfectly good InMail.

Give me a specific time and date to “chat”.

Ok, I’m interested in the role you’ve sent me and I’d like to talk about it further, but as I’m sure you can appreciate, I’m a busy person. I’m in charge of all content marketing for Social Talent, which means that if I’m not writing a new blog post, I’m designing a piece of Sales collateral, or if I’m not designing collateral, I’m composing an email marketing campaign or a heap of promotional tweets. You get it, I’m busy. My day is usually pretty full. I presume yours is too. Therefore, I’m always fascinated by recruiters who ask me to let them know when I’m “free for a chat”. See, that’s the thing, I don’t just have free periods in my day I can use to call up recruiters, my time is used up doing all that I need to do for work and for all the other things I’ve got going on in my life. You need to compel me to reply to you right now, otherwise I won’t, because checking my schedule to see when I’m free would take me too long and as I already told you, I’m busy. Try closing your message to me with a time specific call to action like “Can you take a call at 6:30pm this evening to discuss further?” or “I’m going to be near your office on Tuesday. Can you meet me for coffee at 12pm to discuss?”. This makes it easier for me to check my schedule and invariably elicits a must faster response from me because I know I have to answer you by a certain point.

Respect my time.

I can’t stress this point enough. If I’ve agreed to speak with you about the role you’re offering at 6:30pm this evening or at 12pm in Starbucks on Tuesday, please, please, PLEASE respect my time and ensure you actually show up. I had a very aggravating experience with a recruiter in the not too distant past, where, after agreeing a time to call me, the recruiter failed to get in touch as promised. 20 minutes after our agreed time (when they still hadn’t called me), I emailed them to see whether I actually had gotten the time wrong. 10 minutes later I received an email informing me that the recruiter was with a client and they’d ring me in 20 minutes (what were they doing with a client during our agreed time?). 20 minutes later I received another email from the recruiter telling me they had lost my phone number (it’s in my email signature) and could I please forward it on for them to get in touch. I obliged, only to finally receive a call from them 40 minutes later – almost 2 hours after we had agreed to “chat”. ARGH!

What’s worse is, when that recruiter did eventually ring me back they told me they were ringing me while on their commute home, which meant I spent most of my time trying to hear them above all the train noises at the station they were waiting at… not professional.

Let me get a word in edgeways.

The definition of a chat is “a talk between two or more people in an informal way”. Notice how that description mentions that a chat is between 2 or more people? That’s because it takes at least 2 people to have a chat, not just one. I’ve had several instances where the “chat” I was supposed to be having with a recruiter has turned into a one-sided preaching session on the recruiter’s part. I have the job spec, I don’t need to read to me verbatim all over again. Stop talking and let me ask some questions!

If you say you’re going to do something, do it!

I once had a conversation with a recruiter which ended on them telling me they would send on the full job description and they would call me the next day to talk it over. I didn’t receive a job description or a phone call the next day, or the day after that. 3 days later I received an apologetic email with the job spec attached and no call. Meanwhile, I got another job offer; Social Talent. You snooze, you lose!

#RantOver

Yours sincerely,

Síofra (and every other passive/active candidate on the planet)

Originally posted on socialtalent.co/blog.

What I Learned About Life After Interviewing 80 Highly Successful People (James Altucher)

Original Post from Pulse:  What I Learned About Life After Interviewing 80 Highly Successful People

Author: James Altucher (Entrepreneur)

“You interrupt too much,” people email me. “Let your guests finish talking.” But I can’t help it. I get curious. I want to know! Now!

Over the past year I interviewed about 80 guests for my podcast. My only criteria: I was fascinated by some aspect of each person.

I didn’t limit myself by saying “each one had to be an entrepreneur” or “had to be a success.”

I just wanted to talk to anyone who made me curious about their lives. I spoke to entrepreneurs, comedians, artists, producers, astronauts, writers, rappers, and even this country’s largest beer brewer.

Will I do it for the next year? Maybe. It’s hard.

Sometimes I would pursue a guest for six months with no reply and then they would call and say, “Can you do right now?” and I’d change all plans with kids, Claudia, business.

I had no favorites. They were all great. I interviewed Peter Thiel, Coolio, Mark Cuban, Arianna Huffington, Amanda Palmer, Tony Robbins, and many more. I’m really grateful they all wanted to talk to me.

Podcasting, to be honest, was just an excuse for me to call up whoever I wanted to call and ask them all sorts of personal questions about their lives. If I wanted to talk about “Star Wars,” I called the author of a dozen Star Wars novels.

If I wanted to talk about Twisted Sister, I called up the founder of the band. If I wanted to talk sex I called the women who ran the “Ask Women” podcast.

I wanted to know at what point were they at their worst. And how they got better. Each person created a unique life. I wanted to know how they did it. I was insanely curious.

As Coolio told me, “You got me to reveal some deep stuff I didn’t want to reveal. Kudos.” Tony Robbins had to literally shake himself at one point and say, “Wait, how did we end up talking about this?” I can’t help it. I want to know.

Here are the most important things I learned. I can’t specify which person I learned what from. It hurts my head when I think about it because many of the 80 said the exact same thing about how they ended up where they were.

Here is some of what they said:

A) A life is measured in decades.

Too many people want happiness, love, money, connections, everything yesterday. Me too. I call it “the disease.” I feel often I can paint over a certain emptiness inside if only…if only…I have X.

But a good life is like the flame of a bonfire. It builds slowly, and because it’s slow and warm it caresses the heart instead of destroys it.

B) A life is measured by what you did TODAY, even this moment.

This is the opposite of “A” but the same. You get success in decades by having success now.

That doesn’t mean money now. It means, “Are you doing your best today?”

Everyone worked at physical health, improving their friendships and connections with others, being creative, being grateful. Every day.

For those who didn’t, they quickly got sick, depressed, anxious, fearful. They had to change their lives. When they made that change, universally they all said to me, “that’s when it all started.”

C) Focus is not important, but Push is (reinvention).

Very few people have just one career. And for every career, it’s never straight up.

When you have focus, it’s like saying, “I’m just going to learn about only one thing forever.” But “the push” is the ability to get up every day, open up the shades, and push through all the things that make you want to go back to sleep.

Even if it means changing careers 10 times. Or changing your life completely. Just pushing forward to create a little more life inside yourself.

Compound life is much more powerful than compound interest.

D) Give without thinking of what you will receive.

I don’t think I spoke to a single person who believed in setting personal goals. But 100% of the people I spoke to wanted to solve a problem for the many.

It doesn’t matter how you give each day. It doesn’t even matter how much. But everyone wanted to give and eventually they were given back.

E) Solving hard problems is more important than overcoming failure.

The outside world is a mirror of what you have on the inside. If Thomas Edison viewed his 999 attempts at creating a lightbulb a failure then he would’ve given up. His inside was curious. His inside viewed his “attempts” as experiments. Then he did #1000. Now we can see in the dark.

Dan Ariely was burned all over his body and used that experience to research the psychology of pain and ultimately the psychology of behavior and how we can make better decisions.

Tony Robbins lost everything when his marriage ended, but he came back by coaching thousands of people.

It’s how you view the life inside you that creates the life outside of you. Every day.

F) Art and success and love is about connecting all the dots.

Here are some dots: The very personal sadness sitting inside of you. The things you learn. The things you read about. The things you love. Connect the dots. Give it to someone.

Now you just gave birth to a legacy that will continue beyond you.

G) It’s not business, it’s personal.

Nobody succeeded with a great idea.

Everyone succeeded because they built networks within networks of connections, friends, colleagues all striving towards their own personal goals, all trusting each other, and working together to help each other succeed.

This is what happens only over time. This is why giving creates a bigger world because you can never predict what will happen years later.

Biz Markie described to me how he helped a 7-year-old kid named Jay-Z with his lyrics.

Peter Thiel’s ex employees created tens of billions of dollars worth of companies.

Marcus Lemonis saves businesses every week on his show “The Profit.” It doesn’t come by fixing their accounting. It comes from fixing the relationships with the partners and the customers and the investors.

The best way to create a great business over time: Every day send one thank you letter to someone from your past. People (me) often say you can’t look back at the past. But this is the one way you can. You create the future by thanking the past.

H) You can’t predict the outcome, you can only do your best.

Hugh Howey thought he would write novels that only his family would read. So he wrote ten of them. Then he wrote “Wool,” which he self-published and has sold millions of copies and Ridley Scott is making the movie.

Clayton Anderson applied to be an astronaut for 15 years in a row and was rejected each time until the 16th.

Coolio wrote lyrics down every day for 17 years before having a hit. Noah Kaganwas fired from Facebook and Mint without making a dime before starting his own business. Wayne Dyer quit his secure job as a tenured professor, put a bunch of his books in car and drove across the country selling them in every bookstore. Now he’s sold over 100,000,000 books.

Sometimes when I have conversations with these people they want to jump right to the successful parts but I stop them. I want to know the low points. The points where they had to start doing their best. What got them to that point.

I) The same philosophy of life should work for an emperor and a slave.

Ryan Holiday told me that both Marcus Aurelius, an emperor, and Epictetus, a slave, both subscribed to the idea of stoicism. You can’t predict pleasure or pain. You can only strive for knowledge and giving and fairness and health each day.

Many people write me it’s easy for so-and-so to say that now that he’s rich. Every single person I spoke to started off in a gutter or worse. (Well, most of them.)

Luck is certainly a component, but in chess there’s a saying (and this applies to anything) “it’s funny how always the best players seem to be lucky.”

J) The only correct path is the path correct for you.

Scott Adams tried about 20 different careers before he settled on drawing Dilbert. Now, he’s in 2000 papers, has written Dilbert books, Dilbert shows, Dilbert everything. Everyone was shocked when Judy Joo gave up a Wall St. career to go back to cooking school. Now she’s on the Food Channel as an “iron chef.”

Don’t let other people choose your careers. Don’t get locked in other people’s prisons they’ve set up just for you. Personal freedom starts from the inside but ultimately turns you into a giant, freeing you from the chains the little people spent years tying around you.

K) Many moments of small, positive, personal interactions build an extraordinary career.

Often people think that you have to fight your way to the top. But for everyone I spoke to it was small kindnesses over a long period of time that built the ladder to success. I think I’m starting to sound like a cliche on this. But it’s only a cliche because it’s true.

L) Taking care of yourself comes first.

Kamal Ravikant picked himself off a suicidal bottom by constantly repeating “I love you” to himself. Charlie Hoehn cured his anxiety by using every moment he could to play.

I’ve written before: The average kid laughs 300 times a day. The average adult…5.

Something knifed our ability to smile. Do everything you can to laugh, to create laughter for others, and then what can possibly be bad about today? I think that’s why I try to interview so many comedians are comedy writers. They make me laugh. It’s totally selfish.

M) The final answer: People do end up loving what they succeed at, or they succeed at what they love.

Mark Cuban said, “My passion was to get rich!” But I don’t really believe him. He loved computers so he created a software company. Then he wanted to watch Ohio basketball in Pittsburgh so he created Broadcast.com. I worked with Broadcast.com a little bit back in 1997. They were crusaders about bringing video to the Internet.

Sure, he wanted to use that to get rich. Because he knew better than anyone then how to let a good idea lead him to success.

But deep down he was a little kid who wanted to watch his favorite basketball. And now what does he do? He owns a basketball team.

N) Anybody, at any age

The ages of the people I spoke to ranged from 20 to 75. Each is still participating every day in the worldwide conversation. I asked Dick Yuengling from Yuengling beer why he even bothered to talk to me. He’s 75 and runs the biggest American-owned brewery worth about $2 billion. He laughed and said, “Well, you asked me.”

I just realized this list can go on for another 100 items.

The specifics of success. How to overcome hardships. How any one person can move society forward.

Down to even what are the most productive hours of the day, what’s the one word most important for success, and what we can look forward to over the next century and maybe 100 other things.

Then I learned many things about myself.

Most of the people I asked to come on my podcast said, “NO!” I told Claudia the other day I haven’t been rejected this much since freshman year of high school. I had to re-learn how to deal with so much rejection.

I’ve always been a big reader but never as much as this year. I read everything by all the guests.

Some weeks I felt like I was spending 10 hours a day preparing for podcasts. I learned to interview, to listen, to prepare, to pursue, to entertain, to educate.

Podcasting seems like it’s becoming an industry, or a business idea, or something worth looking at by entrepreneurs or investors. I have no clue about that.

For me, podcasting this year was just about calling anyone I wanted to call and talking to them. I felt like a little boy interviewing his heroes.

I highly recommend finding ways to call people for almost no reason. I learned a huge amount.

But it was hard.

It’s one of those things where I can say, “I don’t know if I can ever do that again.” But I also know I’m probably going to say the same thing next year.

(You can subscribe to my podcast here.)

Ten tips to increase direct sourcing – Ruth Miller

1) Firstly think about why you are trying to increase direct sourcing in the first place… Direct sourcing will take more time and work for the team. In other words you will need more people to deliver the benefits, so you need to make sure you’ve talked to those who matter in your business so they are in that terribly overused phrase “on board with it”. If they are keen to cut costs and improve the perception of your employer brand and will commit extra resource in your team to do it then read on!

2) Employer brand: do you have one? If not then it’s time to work with your marketing team or communications agency about what story you have to tell and how you want to tell it. When you do a lot of work through agencies they do the hard work of marketing candidates for you but when you are doing a lot more direct sourcing you will be controlling that marketing message to candidates so it needs to be clear and compelling. The story will also need to be consistent across all the different ways you source people.

3) Careers site: this is the time to have that long planned revamp. Your company page will be the main portal for more of your candidates, so it needs to be a true reflection of your employer brand and you need to refresh content frequently. Many businesses put on application and interview tips as well as giving real life experiences of employees with the business so it is more interactive and accessible. If you have an application system or process which isn’t user friendly then it should be top of your list to fix otherwise you risk candidates dropping out along the way.

4) Social media: this is your friend, but maybe not in the way many companies use it. If you mainly use it to feed jobs from your careers site, then you’re wasting your time as that’s just plain boring for job seekers. Two things to think about: firstly making sure you know the audiences for different social media so you can push content to the right place, and secondly deciding on where the responsibility for uploading content sits as it is time consuming and yet needs someone who is great at communicating. Could this responsibility sit outside recruitment so that there are frequent updates about interesting projects/events from across the business to vary your communications?

5) LinkedIn: think seriously about investing in a company page and keep the content fresh. Build up your network and make sure you keep abreast of what competitors are doing. Participating in group discussions will raise both your and your business’ profile in the industry. Consistency is also important – agree on what the recruitment team profiles will include and how you will market the employer brand on the careers page, recruiter profiles, format and content of inmails and whether you will invest in LinkedIn recruiter (it’s expensive but can give good returns so I’d suggest getting opinions from people you trust in your network).

6) Referral and alumni programmes: the companies who succeed with attracting a high percentage of hires through direct sourcing have very effective referral or alumni programmes. They usually pay out decent amounts of cash or other benefits in return for referrals from their employees, and ensure the scheme is always top of the agenda, with the senior team talking about it as a priority and in frequent communications to the business. These programmes are very cost effective and employees hired through them are proven to stay longer than average.

7) The telephone: yes, I know! Given that within the workforce 10% of people are looking for a job, 70% are passive candidates in that they’re not looking but would consider an approach, and 20% of people are pretty happy, you need to think about why they would consider a role with you. Whether it’s talking to candidates through LinkedIn or who have been referred to you, or following up on a CV from your careers site, it’s important to speak to them. If their only contact is through email or automated systems then it becomes very impersonal and you run the risk of not engaging with talented people in the first place (all good people get large numbers of LinkedIn email approaches which they mostly ignore) or losing them down the line.

8) Candidate experience: by far and away this is the reason why candidates become employees (or not!). It is the reason many businesses have spent millions over the years hiring through agencies; agencies invest time and effort into how they engage candidates and manage the interview and offer process. To be successful in direct sourcing you need to do the same. Some businesses commit to candidates having a named recruitment contact, or to launching a telephone helpline, or have installed candidate portals on their careers sites so they can see the status of their applications. Whether or not any of these ideas are right for you isn’t important, you need to make the candidate experience your number one priority in resourcing.

9) Networking: if you are trying to raise the profile of your employer brand then you need to get yourself and your business name out there in the right places. Whether that’s attending events yourself, making sure hiring managers are thinking about their future hiring plans when they are networking or getting your brand onto the masthead of more industry events, you need to invest in this. While it is important to build up a good network on social media, nothing can replace that face to face contact.

10) Selection process: so, once you’ve approached a candidate and have got their CV the direct sourcing process is complete, right? Wrong! It is only the beginning. For a passive candidate to take the risk of leaving a secure job they will be making judgements about whether your business and job role are right throughout the selection process. Some of the changes you could make are quite simple: I talk to hiring managers about the differences in mindset from a candidate who has approached the business to one who has been headhunted and needs to be marketed that bit more. Making sure interviewers are trained, that they talk about what your business has to offer during the interview process and that you gain commitment from them to make decisions quickly are all things to think about.

Ruth Miller is a freelance consultant partnering with businesses on resourcing, project management and training to support their in house recruitment teams.

Ten tips to increase direct sourcing – Ruth Miller

5 Recruiting Habits Of Successful Leaders- By Meghan M. Biro

At some point in our job-seeking lives, we’ve all interviewed at a company that felt more like a military school than an exciting, flexible, creative, ever-evolving workplace culture. The signs start early in the hiring process: a dry, lifeless job posting or stale employer branding that does not feel inspired. A blizzard of paperwork, including reams of rules and regulations for submitting a resume. A monochromatic HR office filled with identically-dressed drones who are clearly reading from a script. I can remember walking out of a few select interviews earlier in my career and saying to myself, “There is no way I’m working at that mausoleum.” Or better yet – I’ve enjoyed being part of a world class organization recruiting top talent – where every day of interviewing seems to feel like a rush of a adrenaline You see – I’ve been on all sides of this equation in my own career – The best of the best, the good, the ugly.

The simple fact is that recruiting is often a company’s first impression, and a reflection of its culture and workforce brand personality. It’s a spectacular — and too underexploited — opportunity to wow, woo, seduce and excite talent. Top talent doesn’t want to work in Dullsville. They want to work in a company that understands, challenges, excites, surprises and delights them. They want to work hard, play hard, and feel appreciated.  Recruiting should be where the courtship starts. Your organization doesn’t have to be a Zappos or Google GOOG -0.00% to start using savvy — and social media — to attract “the right fit”  and talent skill set you need to soar.

Here Are Five Steps You Can Take To Turn Your TalentManagement Strategy Into A Powerhouse Branding and Marketing Culture.

 1) Take A Workplace Culture Inventory. Take a good hard look at your current HR and recruiting practices. Put yourself in the shoes of a talented person who has never heard of your company. How are you trying to reach that person? Are you using filtering tools to target the right kind of talent you need? How big a part does social media play? Are you engaging brand advocates and influencers? How is the language in your employer branding and follow-up information? Stodgy branding can be a real turn-off (as can self-consciously hip or snarky content that seems shallow). What about your career site design? Is it fresh and appealing to all generations? How are your initial and follow-up contacts conducted? Deconstruct the whole recruiting process form initial posting to final hire. Where along the way do you need to change to catch the eye and imagination of the talent you need? Solicit feedback from recent hires and even those who decided to take another career opportunity – yes, at another brand.

2) Make The Necessary Leadership Changes. Your weaknesses should be pretty obvious when your inventory is finished. The question becomes: do we jettison the whole process from soup to nuts, or are enough parts working that we can make selective changes? Whatever you decide, consider hiring outside talent to help you develop a holistic, integrated recruiting process. Of every choice, ask the following two question: is this going to help us attract stellar talent? Is it a true reflection of our company? Because the last thing you want is to present your company in a misleading way. Remember: HR and recruitment is a major branding opportunity. The goal is to lodge yourself in people’s minds as a great place to work, even if with talent that isn’t looking for to switch jobs at the moment.

3) Engage Your Marketing Talent.  HR and recruiting don’t exist in a vacuum. They may be the initial contact with talent, but the more input that other departments have, the stronger and more integrated the process will become. This is especially true, of course, for the departments and functions that will be directly impacted by the applicant. Solicit input on specific job postings from people in the department where the job is. Ask top talent from across the organization for suggestions on making your marketing pitch intriguing and enticing. The more buy-in you have throughout the entire organization – including marketing, the more likely you are to hire just the right talent.

4) Use Social Media. The HR gods were smiling when social media was invented. It has evolved into a dream tool for finding and communicating withbrand advocates and influencers. Are you exploiting it to the max? Are you using the whole panoply of social media to establish a presence and dialogue that goes way beyond a specific job opening? Social media is nothing less an historic breakthrough in branding and talent engagement. Again, hire outside help if you have to, a specialist in social media who can help you target your resources and efforts for maximum return. Get input from social-media-savvy employees from across the organization and beyond. Use video if possible. And make your online interface and career application process user-friendly.

 5) Keep It Real. As I touched on above, your HR and recruiting process must be honest — a genuine reflection of your company’s leadership and workplace culture. If you misrepresent your brand, you’ll attract the wrong kind of talent, and when someone is hired they’ll feel like the victim of a bait-and-switch. Whether your organization is way zany, slightly playful, or downright dour, you want to attract talent that feels comfortable in your culture.

HR and Recruiting are an untapped gold mine for too many organizations. Work hard to make them a reflection of your mission and methods, appealing and user-friendly, and able to identify and exploit social media to reach and communicate with the right talent. This is an exciting exercise in leadership excellence.