Now IS the time to be Recruiting but not for the reasons you would think

There’s a link circulating out in cyberspace about a Podcast in which Steve Mullen is interviewing Brad Smart, the author of Topgrading.  The focus of the interview is all around Hiring in a Weak Economy.

I had a great conversation with a friend of mine just the other day around this exact topic.  We were specifically discussing the fact that the Press obviously doesn’t understand what is going on and they’re printing the same things about recruiting as they are about investing in the stock market and buying real estate: that there are huge advantages to being a contrarian.  

As someone who runs a consulting company that focuses on recruiting for a living as well as having some stock holdings and a small real estate portfolio: I couldn’t agree more.  

But being a contrarian is tough.  And in this market, recruiting in a traditional manner is absolutely NOT the prudent thing to do.  Prior to the unemployment rate being where it is, we had a member of our team who did nothing but research the very best places for us to be posting every position that we work on.  The results were always solid because we could get 300-500+ applicants no matter what the role was.  While direct applicants usually make up between 60-80% of the total pool of people we consider for a role, they rarely comprise more than 1 of the 3 finalists we end up with.  Today, even if you’ve got no posting strategy at all, you can get well over 500 applicants for nearly everything.    It may come as a surprise to many, that even with an exponential increase in direct applicants, this pool of pool of candidates still only represent about 1/3 of the total finalists for any position.  Why?  Even with over 10% unemployment in states like California, nearly 90% of the people in the state are still employed.

However, I’ll still contend that now is the best time in recent history to recruit.  My reasoning isn’t scientific.  Rather, it’s based on our own internal survey of how things are going.  Our justification: there are very few people who are currently employed turning down phone calls.  In fact, they’re returning calls at a higher rate than we’ve ever seen before!  Lots of things could be causing it but we feel that there are a couple that are most prevalent:

• Their companies aren’t communicating about their direction.
• Management has reacted to market conditions and eliminated performance based pay.
• Salespeople have had quotas increased but compensation decreased.

Starting tomorrow we’ll launch a new search for a Vice President of Sales with a target compensation of around $250,000.  Care to guess how many websites we’ll post it on?  ZERO.  We know that the right person for this job has a great career right now.  We’re going to need to RECRUIT them away.  

It is tougher than posting for the job and watching the resumes come flowing in from hundreds of people?  Absolutely.

Is it fair to our clients to have us spend hours sorting through (potentially) thousands of resumes instead of targeting the 75-100 companies who we think have the person we’re most interested in?  I think Dr. Smart would agree with me – in an economy like this, the best return on investment is to recruit, not post and hope.

Tags: A-Player, Brad Smart, caps on commission, contrarian, decreased compensation, earning caps, endgame PR, hiring in a weak economy, increased quota, job applications, performance-based pay, posting jobs, recruit don't absorb, startup bizcast, steve mullen, Topgrading, Topgrading, unemployment, vice president of sales