The Career Tree Network Blog

When recruiting for hard-to-fill positions, there is a tendency to oversell a position in order to persuade a particular candidate to join the team.

It’s easy to see how this can happen. A recruiter spends a good deal of time working with a candidate and then the recruiter is asked a question that they’d simply rather not answer.

Examples:
1. Why did the last person leave this position?
2. How long has this position been open?
3. How often will I work past 6pm?
4. Will I frequently be scheduled on Saturday or Sunday?
5. How quickly can I expect a promotion?
6. Are you generous with the salary increases for this position?
7. Do you offer (insert any benefit that you don’t offer)?

There are two sides to every coin and every organization has both positive and negative attributes. In a recruitment context, candidates must see the whole picture and have access to both sides of an organization’s coin.

Just as you want to develop a clear understanding of candidate strengths and weaknesses…candidates should understand an organization’s strengths and weaknesses.

If this mutual discovery process does not take place, the candidate will join your team and will quickly become frustrated by organizational shortcomings. This frustration will lead to low morale, poor patient care, and employee turnover (which will start the hiring process all over again).

The Career Tree Network is a resource solely for Healthcare employers who will be directly hiring an individual to join their organization. Our websites are not set up to accommodate Third Party Recruiters like Headhunters or Recruitment Agencies. As a result, we frequently turn down requests (and revenue) from these organizations.

Which begs the question: If nearly every other job board gladly works with Third Party Recruiters, why don’t you as well?

There are three reasons:

1. Duplication of job postings.
Let’s say that a Hospital in Fond du Lac is looking for a Speech-Language Pathologist. The organization has this position posted on their website and also engages four headhunters to help with the search. With five organizations looking for the same SLP, we have a situation where this one position could be posted on SLPCareerTree.com five times!

From a candidate perspective, this is misleading and confusing. In addition, our website is then filled with extra “phantom” postings that only distract candidates from seeing the real postings from paying advertisers. If you’d like to see this in action, visit any other job board and search their openings…you’ll find many third party job postings.

2. Possible abuse of resume database.
Frequently a third party recruiter will be sourcing candidates for a variety of positions and has the time and resources to incorporate proactive techniques, like cold calling and broad email blasts. A resume database can be a wonderful tool to source candidate information.

We have built trust from our candidate members and want to limit access to our resume database. Aggressive contact from recruiters will lead to candidate frustration, which will cause people to remove their contact information…making the resume database less valuable for everyone.

3. Unnecessary piece of the puzzle.
On our websites, we give employers free or paid advertising space to showcase their open positions. We also give candidates free access to our website. Giving both employers and candidates free access to our website is part of our long term strategy to create a centralized marketplace that connects Wisconsin’s healthcare employers with candidates.

With information freely available and with both employers and candidates using a centralized marketplace…the need for third party recruiters is greatly diminished. At the risk of upsetting my colleagues, I would argue that, in ideal conditions, third party recruiters are an unnecessary piece of the puzzle.

Often I hear the words “alive” and “dead” being used as adjectives to describe a situation. Here are some examples: “Man, that bar was dead last night.” Vs. “The office came alive with activity at 9am.”

It’s clear that being “alive” is the ideal state. No one wants to spend time in an establishment that’s “dead” and it’s just feels good to take part in something “alive”!

Which brings up a question for you: Would candidates consider your organization to be “alive”?

In order to help answer this, let’s brainstorm characteristics of organizations that are either “alive” or “dead”.

Alive Organizations:
- incorporate new technology
- are flexible and move quickly
- easily acquire new patients through referrals
- have employees who are excited to come to work each day
- are open to feedback and growth orientated

Dead Organizations:
- resist innovation
- strictly follow antiquated procedures
- have unhappy frustrated patients
- experience high staff turnover
- make it difficult for employees to share ideas

I encourage you to look for opportunities to make your organization “alive”. Then, most importantly, communicate how you are “alive” to prospective employees. You wouldn’t want to work for a “dead” organization and neither do candidates.

As a general rule, I dislike car salespeople. This rule is based the mostly negative experiences that I’ve had over the years when purchasing cars. I don’t appreciate the over used aggressive sales tactics and high frequency of dishonest information. There are exceptions to every rule and Bob Castelli is the exception here.

I recently purchased a car from Bob and greatly enjoyed the experience. We communicated and agreed to a price via e-mail. He never applied a single aggressive sales tactic. And, most of all….he is an honest and trustworthy guy. (See below for Bob’s contact information.)

So, how does this link to Human Resources and Recruitment? Well I’m glad you asked!

I have a general dislike of car salespeople while many people dislike Human Resources professionals and recruiters. There are a variety of reasons for these feelings - - just Google “Hate HR” and browse the results.

Within employee recruitment, most candidate frustration happens when companies incorporate what I would call a Recruitment 1.0 strategy.

Recruitment 1.0
Best suited when there are many qualified job seekers and the jobs are simple to perform. Also used where success in the position will not have a major impact on the business.

Examples: Assembly line worker, fast food employee, telemarketer, grocery store clerk, etc.

Recruiters operating at the 1.0 level hide their information from candidates. They do not want to be bothered by emails and phone calls from job seekers. Candidates must apply on-line to “interact” with the recruiter. Top priority may simply be to fill the open positions with live bodies.

Recruitment 2.0
Most often used when talent is scarce. (ie: Physical Therapists in Wisconsin) Also essential when a recruiter needs top talent to help their organization remain competitive and achieve profitability.

Examples: Any position involving complex thinking and/or decision making. Business Manager, Occupational Therapist, Sales Manager, etc.

Recruiters operating at the 2.0 level gladly share their contact information and encourage dialog with interested candidates. They are willing to sift through unwanted emails in order to source talented people who don’t want to deal with Applicant Tracking Software. Social networking and other methods are leveraged to personally engage candidates.

I believe that companies must actively choose between the incorporation of a Recruitment 1.0 vs 2.0 strategy. The default for most organizations is to follow a Recruitment 1.0 approach and in my opinion, this is a mistake!

Today, many organizations require top talent to ensure their success. Just as I won’t buy a car from a salesperson that I dislike…why should top talent give their resume to an organization that doesn’t want to engage with them?

What about Bob?
(Bob sells new and used cars at the Acura dealership in Brookfield, WI. He can be reached via email: bcastelli@zimbrick.com or via their website: http://www.acurabrookfield.com – Tell him I send you and he may give me a free car wash.)