what happened to IT Recruitment?

When I started in IT Recruitment it was all about developing relationships with people, be that with those with the skills (candidates) and those who wanted to hire those skills (client).

Placing great people into great jobs, projects and companies starts and ends with good relationships across the tri-partite “components” of the Client, Candidate and I.

TRANSACTIONAL RECRUITMENT

Today, we have the wonderful advantage of locating great people on Social Media and Job-Boards.

Imagine, a few words in a boolean search, finding a few CVs, sending a few email / text messages to the candidate, getting their agreement or not as appears to be the case these days and sending over the CVs for a job the recruiter knows nothing about, never mind understands and hey presto, everyone’s a winner!

I’m finding a world of recruiters who believe in this transactional / “mud-throwing” strategy and some how they frequently get away with it!

HOW CAN THIS RIGHT?

Please understand me, much of this can work for commoditized roles, not requiring any real communication skills and clients rewarding agency success care of CV volumes and speed.

But it doesn’t work for me.

You see I believe people, projects and companies rely on some fundamentals and ethics for success….

THE FUNDAMENTALS

We’ve all learnt over the years, lack of communication is the root of all evils and recruitment is no different. Relationships live or die care of it!

We have so many channels these days to use and they all have their part to play, but let’s be honest when there’s anything important or touching our emotions, a conversation is critical and delivers each time.

Let’s relate that to recruitment. This is arguably the most valuable transaction you’ll undertake on an ongoing basis in your life and getting it right for you is vital and of course for me too. Let me walk you through my steps to making it right:

1. A Great Client   

We all need “A Great Client” – good at what they do, highly communicative, long-term thinking and understanding that a good team of people can achieve amazing things together

2.    A Great Project

it blends a best practice approach to the business with a solid and proven IT enabler. The highly-experienced Project Management is looking to build a good team culture, looking for the best skills and gives me a very detailed job specification and plenty of lead-time before hiring

3.    Best-skills Strategy

frequently I find industry skills equal, if not surpass the technical skills and so we often start here but never compromise on IT skills. I need good team-workers, excellent communication skills, loyalty and a good sense of humor, frequently defined by an ability to laugh at themselves!

4.    Search Strategy

finding great people takes focus, dedication and lateral thinking. Winding our way through and directly calling people in companies, locating people while blended with referrals, job-boards, and social media needs to be done fast but thoroughly. I need to find exactly the right people and team for the management, project and equally the team.

5.    Next is my favorite part with each person – Communicating

Approaching people, learning about them, their goals, their strategies, what motivates them and in turn offering them what I have, is the fun part. Knowing I have something that someone wants I love to do. Know if I can pull the “fit” together, I will make three people and their future team very happy. Together we build loyalty.

You see in talking to people you find out so much more about what they can do and far more than you’ll ever gain from their CV. Communication creates emotion and emotion is motion. The best people can “move” others and when that happens, projects succeed.

6.    References

oh yes, and this week I was reminded just how important they are. Two already great candidates passed me their references and I am so glad I made time to take those referenes. They were exemplary, but more importantly they taught me more about the candidates that I hadn’t grasped already.

It allowed me to talk to my clients about other roles for them in the project. For me references are critical, so I can not only learn more about my candidates from people who’ve worked with them, but to really increase my loyalty and motivation to find them the right role.

7.    Presentation

having found great people, talking to my client about them is crucial. A well written CV or sometimes I like to undertake an Infographic is never as good as a conversation about the candidate.

Again we’re building relationships on trust, loyalty and good communication skills, so everyone wins.

You must really love people to do what I do. There’s no greater feeling than knowing by caring, listening and acting, you can put two people and their new team together and not only deliver fantastic projects, but create friends in so doing.