If you’re using a performance profile as the job standard and you’re measuring a candidate’s ability to do the job, rather than just get the job, the foundation for good sourcing is in place. This change alone will eliminate many of the sourcing problems most com- panies encounter. Good hiring is about hiring candidates who can achieve comparable results and are motivated to do it, so define great results and stop filtering out candidates for lack of skills. This eliminates many top performers who have 70 percent to 80 percent of the skills, but 150 percent of the desire and potential. By adver- tising on performance rather than skills, you’ll increase the number of qualified candidates to select from. By selecting on performance rather than personality, you won’t inadvertently exclude a great per- son. If you don’t have these basics in place, better sourcing tech- niques won’t result in better hires on a consistent basis.
Here’s one example. A few years ago, I spent a day with a group of outstanding engineering managers at Intuitive Surgical in Moun- tain View, California. This is the company that is leading the devel- opment of less-invasive surgery with the da Vinci Surgical System.
At the time, they were looking for a number of top senior design engineers. During the session on preparing performance profiles, I
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asked, “What does an engineer need to do in the fist six months for every person here to agree that the engineer hired is truly out- standing?” We converted the required skills into SMARTe perfor- mance objectives. We benchmarked some existing top engineers to better define competencies and to determine how problems were solved. In the end, we came up with about six deliverables around technology, quality, creativity, and team dynamics. I re- ceived a call the next day from their recruiter handling these as- signments. He called to say thanks. He was very excited about one candidate who was initially excluded because he didn’t quite meet the original skills-based profile. As a result of preparing a performance profile, the candidate was being brought back for an- other round of interviews. I later learned that an offer was ex- tended and accepted. Six months later, this previously excluded candidate was performing at peak levels. This is not an unusual story. Unfortunately, too many companies never have a chance to experience it, because they eliminate good candidates based on an arbitrary level of skills, not on whether they can perform at high levels. From what I’ve seen over the years, sourcing problems are cut in half when you advertise and screen on performance rather than on skills and experience.
Sourcing problems are cut in half when you advertise and screen on performance rather than on skills and experience.
➤ How to Write Great Ads
A compelling ad is the next layer of an effective sourcing program;
without an appealing, top-notch pitch, top people could look else- where. Whether posted on a job board, the company web site, or used as a verbal pitch to explain the opportunity, the ad serves as the first impression to prospective candidates, so you want it to in- trigue a top person. Top people will explore career opportunities if the underlying message makes career sense. This has to do with the opportunity and growth—that is, what the person will do, what im- pact the person can make, and what the person can become. Don’t post traditional skills-based job descriptions if you want to see more top people. This is akin to advertising the technical specifications for
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Customer Service Representative
We are looking for a Customer Service Representative on behalf of our client, Acme Systems. This position is based in Dallas, TX.
Summary
Our customer service representatives will apply their strong communication skills to fulfill customer needs to ensure customer satisfaction.
Responsibilities
➤ Respond to a high volume of customer inquiries and requests
➤ Process orders and prepare various correspondences
➤ Two years’ previous customer service experience, preferably in a call center environment
➤ Proven track record of stability and commitment to providing excellent cus- tomer service
➤ Strong computer skills, including proficiency with Windows
➤ Excellent communication skills, detail-oriented, and able to multitask
➤ Able to work in a team environment
Figure 3.1 Traditional boring ad.
a consumer product and expecting people to buy it. Ads based on qualifications exclude top people from applying who might have a slightly different background. Those who do meet the qualifications won’t apply unless they’re desperate, because the job appears bor- ing. The best candidates are not interested in doing the same job over again, even for more money. If the ad is compelling enough, then you’ll attract more high-potential candidates and those great applicants sitting on the fence, waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. Compare the two ads for the same job in Figure 3.1 and Figure 3.2 to understand this concept.
The boring ad in Figure 3.1 was for a customer service person. I found it recently on one of the major job boards. It was posted by a recruiting process outsourcing (RPO) firm for one of their clients. (An RPO firm takes over the sourcing process for their clients. Their goal is to find better people more efficiently than the client can.) I found it by searching on the title and the city in the “Search for Jobs” sec- tion on the job board. To the company’s credit, the ad was in the top five out of more than 1,000 that were available. Unfortunately, it was terrible in terms of the written copy.
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Customer Service Rep, Juggler, and Master Organizer
Our client is growing fast in major part due to its focus on ensuring great customer service. As part of this expansion, the company wants to hire people who are look- ing for long-term careers in customer service, sales, or marketing. If you’re inter- ested in a career, not just a paycheck, then check this out:
1. You’ll be put through a highly interactive three-week training course on using state-of-the-art CRM systems. (By the way, you’ll probably make some lifelong friends as part of this.)
2. You’ll need to juggle lots of tasks, track down orders, and solve tough-scheduling problems in order to keep our discriminating customers happy.
3. Attention to detail is critical. We take great pride in making sure every order is 100 percent correct. Hopefully, you help us get better here.
4. Our customers and your teammates are counting on you to be here, every day.
If you’ve ever worked in this type of environment, you know how important teamwork and commitment are to personal success.
5. We’d like a year-or-so in a call center or customer service position. More impor- tant though is a commitment to yourself to be as good as you possibly can.
We’ll help you achieve this goal.
Figure 3.2 Compelling marketing-type ad.
The ad in Figure 3.2 shows the same ad rewritten to appeal to a top performer. We prepared something similar for a Verizon call center in Dallas, which resulted in a major increase in both candi- date quantity and quality.
Which job would you apply to or recommend to a friend? Ads need to describe what’s in it for the candidate, not what’s in it for the company.
Figure 3.3 shows another example of a great ad. Over the past 10 years, we’ve used this type of ad format with great results, attracting technical and senior management personnel. This is a modified ver- sion of an ad we used to find CEO candidates for a not-for-profit charitable group in the Philadelphia area.
We posted the actual ad on TheLadders.com and used ZoomInfo .com’s JobCast emailing program to broadcast it to anyone who had a not-for-profit background. The Ladders is an “employee pays” site for $100,000 positions and up. The fee is modest (less than $50 per month) and since the ad is free to employers, it’s well worth checking out. We also placed a CFO from this site using a similar type of ad.
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CEO (circa 2010) Fast-Forward One Year
We’d like to thank you for making Philadelphia a great place to live. Here’s what happened under your leadership:
1. You raised $50 million to create a City of Lifecenter as a safe place for inner-city kids to hang out after school.
2. You introduced a new program for single moms to enter the workforce with real jobs that offered real careers.
3. You got the top 50 companies in Philadelphia to make major commitments to being part of the city’s revitalization program. The mentoring program you developed continues to receive national recognition.
4. Your programs helped stem the tide on drug use, reduced gang membership, and increased the graduate rate at all city high schools.
We can’t wait until next year.
Now Back to Today
If you’d like this story to be yours . . .
Figure 3.3 Convert ads to stories.
ZoomInfo is a site that searches the Internet for names of people and categorizes them by title and company. Their JobCast emailing sys- tem allows you to automatically send the ad to anyone with an email address. Two of the final four candidates for the CEO position came from referrals from the JobCast email. The key was that the ad was so compelling that people wanted to send it on to others.
If you want to attract the best people, ads should be written from their unique perspective—they don’t need a job, but they might check out a better opportunity. If you want to gain their in- terest, recognize they’re smart, savvy, insightful, and discriminat- ing, but not desperate. Choose the words for your ad copy with this concept in mind. Strong people who already have good jobs need a few compelling reasons to leave their current position.
Your ads must clearly describe three to four reasons why a top person should bother to spend his valuable time checking out your job opportunity. Design and write your ad to stand out and attract top people who have multiple opportunities. If your posted job descriptions start out with the requisition number as the first thing a candidate sees when clicking on the title, you are losing
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good candidates for bad reasons. However, when your postings get constantly referred to other top people, you know your adver- tising is working.
In summary, great ads must meet three criteria:
1. Have a compelling title that’s quickly seen on the long listings of open opportunities. “HR Wizard Required” is much more effective than “HR Director.” This is a title we recently used with great results. Long titles are also effective since they stand out on the long listing of similar titles.
2. Write copy that’s focused on what the candidate will learn, do, and be- come.“Use your HR magic to rebuild in only six months a de- partment that’s endured six years of neglect,” is how we started our HR ad. You need to appeal to the candidate’s underlying motivating needs.
3. Describe the most critical skills in the context of how they’re used.For example, don’t say “Five to 10 years of training and employ- ment is essential.” Something like this is a much better ap- proach: “One of the biggest challenges you’ll face is to use your training and employment expertise to set up a compa- nywide effort to reduce turnover and improve customer ser- vice at our 350 locations.”
An ad needs to overcome the inertia of not responding, or the pull of dozens of similar-sounding ads. To do this, the job and the ad must be different, interesting, and compelling. You want to at- tract as diverse a group of people as possible. The best-case sce- nario for boring ads that emphasize skills and qualifications, like most do, is attracting candidates who are competent but unmoti- vated. The best candidates are looking for something more than an- other job. Your ads must focus on the motivating needs of top performers. For most, it’s a challenge or an opportunity. For some, it’s better working conditions. For all, it’s an opportunity to excel and to be recognized for doing outstanding work. Make sure your ads capture this concept.
Review a few of your most recent ads. Do they attract candi- dates needing another job or those open to explore new opportuni- ties? I learned this fundamental rule about management from one
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of my candidates. He said, “If something isn’t working right, don’t keep on doing it. Keep on changing it until it works right.” You might want to try this same technique with your ads, especially if they’re not pulling as effectively as they should.
The Primary Rule about Posting Ads: Make Sure They Can Be Found
The whole approach to advertising on Internet job boards is chang- ing. Niche boards catering to narrow job families are expanding, while generalist boards (i.e., Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs) are losing traffic and rethinking their business models. Regardless of what the boards do, one thing will remain certain—if your ad is going to work, then it must be found by semi-active candidates.
This requires three big changes. While the following steps are not common to corporate recruiting groups, most marketing depart- ments would consider them the first steps in developing any adver- tising campaign:
Use Marketing Concepts to Give Your Ads More Visibility
1. Reverse engineer your ads. Less-active candidates don’t spend much time hunting for jobs, so you have to make your ads easy to find. Reverse engineering is the process of optimiz- ing your ad placement based on how these less-active can- didates look. The goal here is to use the right key words and the best boards to make sure your ad is at the top of the listing.
2. Use search-engine optimization techniques. More and more candi- dates are bypassing the boards entirely and using search engines (e.g., Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask) to find new jobs.
Companies will need to redesign their career web sites so that their jobs can be found this way.
3. Push your ad to the right audience. There are many sites now (e.g., ZoomInfo, LinkedIn) and new Internet data-mining techniques that provide long lists of names of people with their titles, company names, and email addresses. Some of these candidates are semi-active, most are semi-passive, but if they receive a compelling email, they might be inter- ested in checking out your offering. They also might refer
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someone if the offer is interesting enough. These informal referral-like programs have great potential if the ad is well written and offers a clear career opportunity.
Create a Candidate Profile to Find Connections to Ideal Candidates After you’ve put together a compelling ad, but before you start using any of these marketing concepts, draft a profile of your ideal candidate. Include all possible skills, keywords, connections, and links, as well as the types of people your candidate might know, po- tential places your candidate might have worked, vendors the can- didate might have used, keywords your candidate would use to find a job, awards or honors your candidate might have received, and comparable past experience. Creating an ideal candidate profile is a great first step to finding an ideal candidate. Here’s a checklist with a few examples and ideas:
Skills that the candidate needs: Be broad enough to attract a wider audience.
Keywords the candidate would use to find your job listing:Think out of the box here. Ask some of your recent hires for keywords they used to find your job.
Companies where the candidate would likely look to find a job:These are probably your competitors. Buy these company names on a few key search sites and put them in your keyword list within the job posting.
Indirect or similar positions the candidate might have held in the past:
For example, for a workforce planning person in HR, we looked for someone in distribution and supply chain man- agement.
Honors and awards the candidate has probably received:When look- ing for salespeople, search resumes using “rookie-of-the- year” and “club.” For an engineer, search resumes that have the terms “patent” and “white papers” in them.
Functional competitors:These companies offer work and chal- lenges comparable to your needs, but compete in a differ- ent market. For example, someone who has been a department manager at a retail store might make a great restaurant manager. We helped the Ruby’s restaurant chain
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in Southern California fill many of their open positions this way.
Direct and indirect connections:These people may have worked with your candidate directly in the past or they know some- one who has. Previous supervisors, vendors, outside consul- tants, or someone on a cross-functional team are good places to get started. This is a great list to use to develop targeted referral messages.
Societies and alumni lists:Determine what groups or schools the person belongs to or attended, and post your ads on niche sites that cater to these groups. The Encyclopedia of Associations is a great place to get the names of appropriate trade groups and professional societies. You can also get these names from the resumes you receive from your ads. Don’t forget to call the association leaders for referrals. In my early search days, I used to get most of my leads for engineers from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) local chapter leaders.
Trade shows:The candidate could either be a speaker or an attendant at the company booth. Regardless, search these names when sorting through a resume database. Once you find the conference title, look up the agenda for the list of presenters. These are great people to network with and re- cruit. Do this for every upcoming conference in your field to get a head start on your competition.
Blogs and web lists:There are 23 million C++blogs and 2 million Sarbanes-Oxley blogs. If I was actively recruiting, I would cer- tainly use these areas to start getting names.
The opportunities to find the names of great people are almost endless. This by itself has changed how companies need to find and attract top performers. A great job is still a prerequisite.
Speed, persistence, and professionalism are equally important.
Great technology is not far behind. All of these activities need to be coordinated through the company’s career web site, but few com- panies have taken this idea fully into account when designing sourcing programs.
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