How Many Licks Does It Take To Get To The Centre of The...

In 2000 rapper Lil' Kim released a song entitled How Many Licks, in which she pondered how many licks it would take to get to the centre of the...

I think she was talking about Recruitment.

Imagine for a second that you're a sucker.

Not that kind of sucker.

On the outside, you're the same as every other candy on a stick. But somewhere inside lies ooey, gooey, delicious goodness.

As a Recruiter, every time I sit down to an interview, I'm wondering: How many licks will it take to take to get to the centre of the... 

If I have to lick until this happens:

There's a good chance you're not getting the job.

However, if I get hooked on the sweet sweet goodness inside of you, I'm going to give my client a call to tell them about what I've tasted and encourage them to have a lick as well.

That's how it works.

***

Here's a Dramatic Scene for you:

A Dramatic Scene

 

Me: How many years of experience do you have?

Interviewee: I've been working Technical Support for as long as I can remember.

Me: Great, which gives you how many years of experience?

Interviewee: I started right out of college.

Me: (Flipping through resume) So 2002?

Interviewee: Yep.

Me: Do you have any experience with Ticketing Systems?

Interviewee: Pretty much everywhere I've worked.

Me: Okay. Which ones?

Interviewee: Once you've used one, you've pretty much used them all.

Me: Sure. Which ones have you specifically used? 

Interviewee: Let me think. Remedy way back in the day. Heat, I believe and something at the last place, I can't remember the name. It was custom built.

Me: Okay. Do you have any questions for me?

 

Had this interview been the last of four, at the end of a bad day, they would have been discounted from the competition after their first answer. Luckily it's 10:00 am, I just scored a big placement and I'm feeling good. I'll humor the candidate with a few licks to try to get to the centre of their...

 

To start, I ask a broad question:

 

Me: How many years of experience do you have?

 

 To which I get a non-answer:

 

Interviewee: I've been working Technical Support for as long as I can remember.

 

Although I am currently in the process of developing a tool that will allow Recruiter's to dig into their Candidate's memories to gather past information, it's not ready yet.

 

So I do one of my least favourite things, repeat myself:

 

Me: Great, which gives you how many years of experience?:

Interviewee: I started right out of college.

 

Another non-answer. This one requires me to dig into the Candidate's resume to find it myself. Two questions in. Two strikes deep. Another lick.

 

Me: (Flipping through resume) So 2002?

Interviewee: Yep.

 

Let's pause for AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF ADVICE

 

If you give a Yes or No answer in an interview and leave it hanging without further explanation, you're giving a BAD answer. No exceptions.

 

I continue to lick:

 

Me: Do you have any experience with Ticketing Systems?

 

If you're being asked about something specific, it's probably because, if hired, it's something you'd encounter on the job. Here's the chance to strut your stuff.

 

 

Interviewee: Pretty much everywhere I've worked

 

This is a YES answer with four more words than it needs and no adequate explanation. My tongue hurts.

 

Me: Okay, which ones?

Interviewee: Once you've used one, you've pretty much used them all.

 

No delicious filling in site. Apparently I'm the sucker. One more lick. 

 

Me: Sure, which ones have you specifically used? 

Interviewee: Let me think. Remedy way back in the day. Heat, I believe and something at the last place, I can't remember . It was custom built.

 

The moment I sense you don't know how to speak to your background or what is in your resume, the interview is over. I ask the final question to indicate you've used up all your licks:

 

Me: Do you have any questions for me?

 

***

 

Here's how the scene should have played:

 

A Dramatic Scene Redux

 

Me: How many years of experience do you have?

Interviewee: I picked up a gig at Tech Company A pretty much right out of college. That was 2002. They needed someone to come in and answer the phones, which I did for about a year before being promoted to Deskside Support. That lasted six months until they folded and I grabbed a Tech Support position at Tech Company B. After two years they decided to outsource IT overseas so I took the package and moved to Tech Company C.

Me: Excellent. Do you have any experience with Ticketing Systems?

Interviewee: Lots. They used Remedy at Tech Company A. When I was at Tech Company B they were using Spiceworks then switched to Heat . Tech Company C had a custom built one that was similar to Remedy. Once you've used one, you've pretty much used them all.

Interviewee: Excellent. Tell me more about what you were responsible for at Tech Company A.

 

In this redux, after two licks I've gained more insight than I did after six in the original. I am also convinced this person not only knows Ticketing Systems but is worthy of promotion. Instead of feeling like I'm flogging dead horses, I'm intrigued. It sounds like this person has some deliciousness at their centre and I want a taste.

 

 

This person got the job. Not only did they know their centre, but they let me get to it with ease.  

 

Before your next interview stop and ask yourself, how many licks does it take to get to the centre of my...?

The Recruiter Mail Box

Dear Recruiter,

I applied for a senior comms role with a not-for-profit. I sent my application late on a Sunday and got a call from the recruiter first thing on the Monday morning - the day of the application deadline.

We had a good conversation, she told me I was a great applicant and that the client would definitely want to meet with me. She hadn't received my cover letter and asked me to re-send, which I did. She replied thanking me and said she'd be in touch.

I didn't hear from her for about a week so I followed up with an e-mail to say I was still very interested in the role, hoped I was still in consideration and asked whether she needed any more information from me. She replied right away asking me to call her before 4 pm that day. When I called her, she proceeded to lecture me - as though I were an inexperienced job seeker - about how I had a good thing going where I was and shouldn't be looking to leave, especially since I have a couple of short contract stints on my resume. I was baffled by the tone of the conversation and her message, and when I said I was only following up based on our earlier interactions she had no recollection of them! Truly bizarre.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your tale of Recruitment woe.

This story is  bizarre indeed and I'm sorry you had to go through it. I'd like to say it was probably a rare case of you getting a bad agent

In reality, it's all too common.

I hope that you have decided to end contact with this agency and have told anyone in your personal network not to use them either. There's a certain point where agents need to be responsible for their actions and it's the job seeker's responsibility to see it happen.

The sad reality is that there are a lot of bad agents out there. This is primarily because the bar to enter the profession is so low and the turnover so high that most agencies will hire more agents than they need, expecting a percentage of them to drop off within the first three to eight months.

By the time I left one of my agencies the entire office received an e mail from a division manager outlining a lunch encounter he had with one of the Green Peace people who solicit donations on the sidewalk during the day. Upon discussing, he found that most of these people are paid only in commission as a full-time job and some of them are pretty persuasive salespeople. Therefore, if you're out and about and happen to meet one, give them a card and tell them they should consider a career in Recruitment.

I wish I was kidding.

The bar is low.

The first sign that you were not dealing with a professional was this:

The Agent Should Never Speak on Behalf of the Client

If ever you encounter this, it's time to get inquisitive. Ask them what about your background they think will guarantee you an interview with the client? How long have they been working with the client? Are they working with the client on an exclusive basis?

Unless the agent has an exclusive relationship with the client, there is no way for them to guarantee how a client will react to an applicant and should not be offering false hope over the phone.

 

The second sign that you were not dealing with a professional was the lecture.

 

Granted, a good Recruiter should know their client, should know their candidate, should know the market and should know what makes a good resume. However, they should not be in the business of lecturing candidates.

 

This comes back to the old William Goldman saying I pulled for my first post:

 

 





Your reasons for wanting to find a new job are not an Agent's concern. Sure, we have probing questions to make sure you're not the type who hops ship every six months or can't hold down a job on your own accord, but by and large, the agent's job is listening to what they can do to help you get the job you are looking for.

 

If this happens to you, again, get inquisitive. Ask them what it is that is prompting this line of thinking and see what they come back with. Probably what happened was that this is what the client came back with and they were unloading it onto you.

 

 

The third indicator that you were not dealing with a professional is that the Agent didn't remember you.

 

Recruitment agents meet with a lot of people. As part of their KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) they need to meet with anywhere from five to ten new candidates each week. That's a lot of people to keep track of.

 

That being said, every agent should know who they have applied to their jobs. My educated guess is that this person was either tasked with meeting their weekly interview KPI's or to find a pool of candidates to submit to their open job order. They fed you a line about you looking great on paper to appease you and hoped you'd forget about them the same way they forgot about you.

 

There are two things going on here. One is that just because an agent says they are putting you forward for a job, it doesn't guarantee they actually will. Agents generally aim to submit three candidates to every open job. Hopefully you're one of them. If a better candidate comes in after they say they'll submit you, guess what?

 

 

The second is that, as a general rule, if an agent submits you to a job, you'll never hear back from them unless the client agrees to interview you. Agents live for Yes. Yes is where the money is. If a client says No, there is no incentive to get back in touch with you. In order to combat this, make sure to set follow-up dates with your agent. Ask them when you should follow-up with them, take note and make sure you do. Unless you give them a reason to remember you, most won't.

 

Keep these simple things in mind and hopefully your experience with Recruitment Agents going forward can be a positive and rewarding one.

 

Questions for the Recruiter Mail Box can be sent to michaelllippert@gmail.com or directly to Michael Lippert via LinkedIn.

What Are Your References Saying About You?

Here's something you maybe didn't know:

Before I call a single one of your references, they are telling me about you.

Giving references in Canada can be tricky and some companies shy away from it altogether. One wrong thing said against a candidate by an employer during a reference could result in defamation lawsuits or Human Rights issues. References are risky business.

Which is why they can also be misleading. Very few are willing to risk their company's well being over a bad reference. Most will either refuse or tailor the reference to discount all the negative feelings they may have had about a former employee. If I'm getting a bad reference, I usually assume it's because the referee doesn't know much about Employment Law.

Whenever a former manager of mine would get calls for references he would say he would only answer yes or no questions and not elaborate on any details further than that. He was protecting his own ass.

So, in the end, a good reference doesn't necessarily mean much. But that's okay. Like I said, even if your references are glowing, they may have said bad things about you before we've even chatted.

How?

Whenever I gather a reference I ask for five key pieces of information: 1) Name, 2) Company, 3) Title, 4) Phone Number and 5) E mail address.

Name is obvious. I need to know who I'm talking to.

For company, I want to make sure you're providing references from places you've actually worked. If you're sending me a reference from someone at a company that doesn't appear on your resume, I want to know why. Who is this person? What is your relation to them?

Company also helps me date your reference. If I ask for three references and all of them come from companies you haven't worked for in eight years, I'm going to start wondering why there hasn't been anyone since who felt you suitable enough to provide a reference for? Red flags are flying high.

 

Collecting Position Title is very important in reference taking. Maybe you've sent me three glowing references from your last company. But they were all your co-workers. One of them was your water cooler buddy who didn't even work in the same department as you. They all like you, but I expect your friends to all like you.

 

What about the person you reported to? The person who can speak directly to your work and how you were as an employee? If I ask you for three names and not a single one of them is a former supervisor, you're references are going to read as suspect. If you've been working for the past 5 years and you can't find a single supervisor to say something nice about you, you're going to come off like someone who doesn't get along well with management. You don't want that. We certainly don't either. 

 

 

As for the contact info, I want to make sure you're keeping up to date and in touch with your references. Why can you only provide e mail but not phone? Why does the e mail keep bouncing back to me? References are people you should still be in touch with and who should know I'm going to be calling. If I call a reference and they are caught off guard because they didn't know I'd be calling, I'm wondering why you don't keep in touch with your references. Are we going to have communication breakdown problems with you?

 

 

So before you send your references out, take a look at them and ask yourself what you think they say about you. Are they current? Do they include at least one person in a position of authority who can speak directly to your performance on the job? If not, it's probably time to reconsider who you're engaging to be references.

 

They're talking about you before I get a chance to talk to them. Make sure they're saying only the best.  

A Recruiter's Take On Walk-Ins

We don't like them.

A walk-in is how we refer to someone who, without an appointment, walks in off the street with a resume and demands to speak with someone.

Why don't we like them?

Because it's Thursday afternoon, I have a day and a half before the weekend to hit my weekly targets, the guy I had scheduled to start this morning didn't show, and my 20K placement for this month just e mailed to let me know he's going to move forward with an offer from someone else. Unlikely I'll hit my monthly sales target now. And what's this? There's a guy in the lobby that no one has heard of who wants someone to interview him?

 

 

Are these really the conditions you want to be interviewed under?

 

I get the logic behind why people walk-in. Somewhere out there, someone is telling people that one way to get a job is walk in to offices with a resume and demand to be seen.

 

It could work.

 

But here's a secret. The ratio between the number of people who walk off the street with a resume that actually get a job to those who don't is very, very low. In most cases, you're probably killing your chances before anyone has met you. You'd better have some serious talent if you decide that this is the approach for you. Unless you're anything less than this: 

 

 

You're probably not getting a job.

 

In most cases, you're going to potentially create a bad first impression by interrupting someone's day without warning. Our thinking is, if you're any good, you wouldn't need to be walking in off the street. We would have heard of you by now. The expectation that the interview will be a waste of time is raised considerably when you've walked in.

 

Here's another secret: if you walk in, someone will probably sit down with you. However, rarely will it be with a seasoned Recruiter. In the past, whenever we'd to get a call from reception asking who'd be free to take a walk-in, the general response would go something like this:

 

 

Who usually got assigned the walk-in? The junior Recruiter who just started and needs to ramp up their talent pool by doing practice interviews. We don't expect much from walk-ins, may as well let the juniors hit their targets and make their mistakes with them.

 

Of course, we'll assign someone to make sure that you don't actually have the cure for cancer or any other such superpowers that may be of value to our clients. More realistically though we expect that you're there to waste our time. You'll need to put in double the effort to convince us otherwise. If we wanted to meet with you, we would have returned your call or responded to your e mail. Walking in isn't really going to change that.  



What Is A Purple Squirrel?

A Purple Squirrel looks like this:

And they always translate into this:

But trying to find them makes Recruiters feel like this:

At the end of the day, all any good Recruiter is looking for are Purple Squirrels.

Purple Squirrel is a term used in the Recruitment Industry to describe the hardest kind of candidate to find: The perfect one.

If a client calls and says they need a CFO with eight years of experience who is also fully skilled in Java Development, must be Trilingual and needs to start next Monday, that's a Purple Squirrel. Why? Because good f@#%ing luck finding that. This is the kind of candidate that Recruiters could spend their entire career searching for and still come up empty handed.

And for a lot of Recruiters who don't have the skills to hunt Purple Squirrels, a very short career it will be.

The reason is that Purple Squirrel jobs are generally the ones clients are most willing to shop out to Recruitment Agencies. They are the jobs by which most young Recruiters will be judged. In short, Recruiters live and die on the backs of Purple Squirrels.

Cute, aren't they?

Purple Squirrels often act as the gateway into establishing a relationship with a client. Clients get an endless number of calls from Recruiters every week, all promising the same things: the best talent pool, the best guarantees, the best candidate screening tools, etc. They're all the same. What really differentiates one agency from the next, is how skilled their Recruiters are at catching Purple Squirrels. So, to test the waters, the client with throw them one and see what happens.

Most clients, especially in Toronto, are not going to throw out jobs to Recruiters that they could easily fill themselves. They're going to send out the job that every other Recruiter in the city has worked and that all have come up blank on. If you want to party at the top, you need to prove yourself at the bottom first.

The general mentality is that, if you can find a candidate to match an unrealistic job description, you can probably find just about anything and it's worth a client's time to know you. Catching a Purple Squirrel is almost an automatic invitation onto a client's vendor list and into their good books. That is, if you don't get on their nerves first. 

These are the positions that separate the great Recruiters from the ones just passing through.

Ed - I am pleased to announce to all the fans and followers of this blog, that this post acts as a direct tie-in with a new Canadian television series, co-written and directed by yours truly, set in a Recruitment Agency, entitled Purple Squirrels. If you like Notes From the Recruitment Desk, you're going to love Purple Squirrels.

Be sure to follow us: 

Twitter: @PSquirrelsTO
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/purplesquirrels    
Web: www.purplesquirrels.ca

Canadian Television Will Never Be The Same

Please Leave A Message and I'll Call You Back As Soon As I Can

In my life as a Recruitment Agent, I've worked for a British company, an American company and a local company. The local company was by far the best because they understood the mentality behind providing service in Canada.

What our British and American counterparts don't understand is that we Canadians are a fickle bunch and need to be handled with care and caution.

The British way of doing things is to bully their way into the marketplace. If you don't want to work with us, that's fine, we'll work with the competition across the street, steal all your best talent and put them to work there. That'll show you.

The American's believe that if they deliver all their pitches like infomercials, clientele will be lining up around the corner to buy their product. This is, after all, a nation of people who buy Miracle Spring Water off of their television for one guaranteed low price.

But Canadians don't respond well to either of these techniques. They respond well to good, convenient customer service that is available to them WHEN THEY NEED IT. This last point is key. Their attitude is, we'll let you know when we need you, otherwise go away. We've got better things to do.

One of the things that always catches outsiders off guard about working in Toronto is how passive aggressive we all are.

No one likes to pick up their phones, few like to return voice mails and if you earn the distinct privilege of working with your desired client, the moment you step outside of their comfort zone (IE start to become an inconvenience), there will be no warning. They'll simply stop taking your calls and stop responding to your e mails. Don't like it? Too bad. You blew it.

If clients are like that to us, then guess what?

We're going to be like that to you, the candidate.

Why? Because similar to how our clients get frustrated when we hassle them too much, we get equally frustrated when hassled by you too much.

Last week I left a voicemail for a candidate who was one in a stack of twenty. I made the call, left the message then got up from my desk to tend to some other business. When I returned half an hour later I had three voicemails from this candidate waiting for me. That's an average of one call every ten minutes. I will never call this person back.

When your follow-up is that aggressive, you don't look like a keen performer who is interested in the opportunity. You look desperate and in need of any job. You generally will not find Desperate and in need of any job listed as a required skill on a job description, so why give that impression before we have met?

You must instead trust that one message will do, that it is safe in my voicemail and that I will follow-up at my next available convenience. End of story. If you haven't heard from me within 24 to 48 hours, then sure, give me another call. Anything more is excess.

A similar rule applies to following-up post interview. If you e mail me once before week's end, I'm going to think that you're organized and on top of things. If you follow-up every day for two weeks I'm going to think you're sitting at home, desperate for any job that comes your way. I don't want to hire that person.

Remember, if you are being recruited, chances are that you are but one candidate on a pile of twenty to thirty. Every Recruiter is looking for an excuse to exclude you from that pile. If the initial impression of you is If this guy is this big a pain in the ass before I've even met him, I don't want to think about what he'd be like to work with, that's a good enough excuse for me.  

The Hidden Downside of Working With A Recruitment Agency

Here's a scenario:

You met with a Recruitment Agent who promised you the sun, the moon and the sky.

The week after the initial meeting your phone rings. It's the Recruiter. They've got a gig for you. It's only for a couple weeks. Could potentially extend to a month or two. Fairly standard work, but for a reputable company and decent money in your pocket. You'll take it. You sign on the dotted line and kick back, relaxed that your unemployment blues look to be coming to an end.

You do the gig, love the people, love the company, but they don't have anything more for you to do outside that initial two week engagement. You thank them, they thank you and you go about your merry way. Your Recruiter says they are working diligently on finding you your next gig. You don't hear from them in six months.

The unemployment blues are starting to get you down again, when a sliver of light peaks through the cracks. The company you temped at six months ago gives you a call. They currently have a full-time opening and loved your work so much they want you to come in and meet with them about it.

You ace the interview and they're ready to move forward until they get a call from your Recruiter. They've caught wind that the client is preparing to send you an offer, the agency has you under contract and they're looking for a finder's fee on your head.

The client refuses to pay. The agency says "tough shit" and you, once again, are out of a job. The company that swore they would do everything in their power to help you secure a job, has just screwed you out of one.

This Actually Happens

 

Provisions are sewn into every agency contract that will prevent you from doing work with any one of their clients without them collecting a fee on your head. It doesn't matter that you only worked for them for two weeks. It doesn't matter that they haven't called you in six months. If that client wants to consider bringing you back, the agency isn't going to let you go without collecting a fee, which, in most cases, and with good reason, the company will refuse to pay.

 

This is the Catch 22 that you must confront every time you decide to deal with an agency, especially on a temp or contract basis. Without the agency you may never have gotten the gig. Because you got the gig you won't be able to work full-time for that company unless they pay your agency the standard fee. Bummer.

 

The Moral of the Story: Before signing any agency agreements, make sure to read all of the fine print and decide if it is really worth agreeing to not work directly with a client without the agency managing the relationship. This is why it is especially imperative to trust your Recruiter and ensure that they have your best interest in mind. If they don't, the only loser will be you.