It is the responsibility of the recruitment industry to show companies the outstanding value of a recruiting fee on their bottom line. Unfortunately, most companies still waste their time and money on job boards with access to millions of resumes thinking it is a better investment.

It’s time for Headhunters to shift the pendulum and start educating companies on the ROI of a recruiting fee. Let’s look at the value of a recruiting fee in hard dollars.

1) Industry Advice: A professional Headhunter is a subject matter expert. They advise companies on the “market value” of Top Talent and what they need to do to attract them. They create a partnership with companies and give them the strategic advice to attract the best in class AAA Candidates. Professional Headhunters are in fact business advisors no different than lawyers or accountants who earn $300-$500 per hour for their professional advice. Recruiters spend many, many hours on each search and companies most of the time only pay a recruiting fee when a placement is made.

2) Value of a Passive Candidate: The most valuable candidates are not putting their resumes on public job boards for the world to see contrary to popular belief. The most valuable candidates are passive. They can only be accessed by Professional Headhunters. For example, if you were going to hire a Sales manager who sells $1 million+ worth of goods or service, would they be post their resume on a job board for their employer to see? Of course not! That Sales manager would want to look for a new role confidentially and typically use a Headhunter to represent them. Once placed that Sales Manager can impact the bottom line by increasing your sales by $1 million dollars+. The investment of a $20,000 recruitment fee has just created a $1 million dollar ROI

3) Cost of hiring the wrong candidate: Between training costs, on boarding time and a new employee’s salary with benefits, the cost of hiring is expensive! But what’s even more costly is having to de-hire the wrong candidate. Termination pay and severance adds to the cost. Turnover is costly whichever way your look at it . Professional Headhunters find fully qualified candidates. They are vetted through extensive testing and reference checking. In addition, guarantees on the candidates placed by Professional Headhunters give companies financial security on their investment.

4) Time is money: Let’s look at how much time it takes to hire on your own with no guarantees of a hire.

Resumes from Job Ads x200 Time to review 6 hours

Phone Interviews x10 Phone time 10 hours

Office Interviews x5 Meeting time 10 hours

2nd interview x3 Meeting Time 6 hours

References x1 Phone time 2 hours

Offer Extended x1 Meeting Time 1 hour

35 HOURS Minimum

5) 100% Business expense: All companies have business expenses but a recruiting fee is the best type of business expense because it comes with an ROI. That is why top tier companies spend billions of dollars in recruiting fees each year.

THOUGHT LEADERS, MAKE RECRUITING A SHARED ECONOMY

With over $400 Billion dollars spent globally on recruiting by corporations, it is time to look at a better way to share the revenue of this large pie.

Currently most of the pie is eaten up by the multinational staffing firms, leaving thousands of SME’s and independent recruiters by the wayside with the scraps.

Interestingly, we have already seen many industries from transportation to housing, find a better way to create a shared economy in their own billion dollar industries.

So, why not the recruiting industry?

There are many complexities to the answer but the 3 Keys to the solution revolve around Recruiters, Clients and Candidates.

All the stakeholder need to be on the same page

An excellent starting point would be the need for Key #1, the recruiters, to see the benefits of sharing.

From lower costs to increased placement volume or lower turnover to standardized training, the benefits are vast.

It’s interesting to note that even as children we were taught to share. However, as grown-up recruiters we seem to have forgotten this basic life principle.

It also appears that due to lack of regulation and the failure to certify recruiters as a profession, we have failed Key #2 and Key #3, the candidates and clients.

But its never too late to solve a problem. We have already seen other professions like Real Estate, Insurance and Financial Planning lead the way. They have shown us that you can build trust and integrity by creating a true profession. So now we have some examples of the path we need to take

With some of the greatest minds in the recruiting industry there is no reason that these same minds can help lead the way to a shared economy. They have already helped make the industry great. But now its time to make the recruiting industry greater!

Together we are stronger. United we stand divided we fall!

I invite you to an open a dialogue via the article comments below. I look forward to your thoughts and feedback.

Going to your first interview is no different then auditioning for the the lead role in a movie, except that YOU are the one auditioning and hoping to land the next big step in your career.

Going to your first interview is no different then auditioning for the the lead role in a movie, except that YOU are the one auditioning and hoping to land the next big step in your career.

So how do you prepare for the audition? Here are 5 Audition Tips:

1) You need to have the mindset of winning. You are competing with many other people who also want the role but unfortunately only one person can win the part. You need to ask yourself “what is my competitive edge and how do I win?” Make sure your answers demonstrate and clearly express that edge.

2) Research the role you are auditioning for. Research is the key to knowing as much about the position you are auditioning for. Examples include:

Finding out what the job entails, the history and current news of the company, what the professional backgrounds of the people you are meeting with, knowing the corporate culture of the company or why the last person left the role. Make your edge SHARPER.

Between Googling and the Company’s website, you can find out all the information you need to be prepared.

3) Practice your script. As the expression goes, practice makes perfect! Stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself the typical types of questions you can expect from the interviewer. Common questions include: What makes you a great candidate for this role? What do you know about our company? What are your salary expectations? and the most difficult one: Tell us a little about yourself. Recording and listening to yourself will help too.

4) Dress the part. If you interviewing for a role that requires a corporate image, be prepared to look the part. That could mean suit, tie and shiny shoes or a white shirt and blazer with low heels.

Even if the company website looks like it is “business casual”, show the director a great first impression by looking your best. Look them in the eyes, sit up straight and be ready to present the best you because that is who they want to hire.

5) Always have a final pitch ready when asked “is there anything you would like to add?” This is your final chance to add some sizzle to your audition. This is where you are free to improvise, free of script and express who YOU are. Pull out your portfolio of awards and accomplishments. Put them on the spot by asking when you can start! Show them your references. Or leave them with something thought provoking such as why you believe you are a great investment for the company while explaining how much ROI you will create for them.

So, who knows you may become the next Tom Cruise or Julia Roberts and be a star in your next career move!!

Who would have imagined that going to university to become a Public Accountant would turn into a 30 year career in Headhunting. Form the 80’s to 90’s to the new millennium.

In fact, I remember how it all started in April of 1988 as clear as yesterday. I was contacted by a headhunter in Toronto to interview for an accounting role at a leading bank when the conversation turned into “Richard, have you ever considered becoming an accounting Headhunter?” Needless to say my immediate answer was a firm “no” but I was still curious as to what the term Headhunting really meant. I had no idea it that it was a multibillion industry that involved consulting with leading corporations or that it helped gainfully employed people find a better career opportunity confidentially.

Interestingly, that headhunter did get me a job offer for the banking job but he also gave me an offer to become a Headhunter. I took the job at the bank and started on a Monday but as I stared at the wall sitting at my desk, I wondered why not take a chance at Headhunting at the young age of 24. I quit that job at the end of the day and started with the headhunting company on the Tuesday.

In those days there were no short cuts like job boards, LinkedIn, or even computers. There was only the yellow pages, a pen, pad of paper and a fax machine. But what we did have was the human touch of meeting people in person and the Power of the Phone. The next day I booked 3 sendouts (interviews) and unbelievably on the Friday of my first week the client made an offer to one of my candidates. The candidate accepted and I made my first placement in a mere 4 days.

Those billings paid off my student loan which would have taken me years to do so if I were still working at the bank.

I was now bitten by the Headhunting bug and realized I could apply my accounting background to becoming a successful Accounting Headhunter versus crunching numbers as an accountant. I also wondered why more people did not know about how amazing the headhunting industry was as a profession. It was part entrepreneur, sales person, detective, researcher, advocate, business consultant and much more.

Fast forward to 2018, having trained hundreds of recruiters and built an owner based platform for Headhunters to make shared placements, I wonder how much has been lost from the ethos of headhunting.

In fact, I even took an even deeper commitment to the profession by going into the jungle to meet real Headhunters! I had always been intrigued by who the real Headhunters were While the macabre of real headhunting may be hard to fathom, the fact is those headhunters were on the hunt for heads the same way we hunted down the best candidates for our clients. Of course, the heads we hunt were more to do with the brain our clients wanted inside those heads.

Similarly, the real headhunters had their own organizational structure much like our corporate world. From specialized teams, techniques and processes they solved their own simple problems with human resources.

Another highlight in their jungle was their ability to even communicate and with animals like the Orangutan which has 98% of our human DNA. I was given the privilege to actually sit down with one and interact with him. From holding hands and sharing food it felt like a corporate lunch meeting in the jungle!

So what has happened to true headhunting in the millennium? What happened to the days of interviewing candidates in person, connecting with passive candidates over the phone or meeting with clients at their office?

Well, I can tell you that what is old is new again! Old School Headhunting is back and with a fervor. The unemployment rate is at the lowest it has been in 40 years, the population is aging, the birth rate is low and there is an anticipated skills shortage of over 1.2 million people by 2020. Human capital will become the most valuable commodity in the market place and it the reason that the $400 billion dollar headhunting industry is growing at an unprecedented rate.

The Job Boards will NOT replace headhunters. In fact, companies will realize sooner than later that the best candidates who want to find new career opportunities want to do so confidentially. And more importantly only humans can identify the best qualities of other humans.

There has never been a better time to become a Headhunter and solve the skills shortages for both companies and the gainfully employed who are dissatisfied with their jobs.

Even after 30 years, this industry continues to be the best things that has ever happened to me!

Toronto Recruiter Conference success story!

Yesterday was  a great day of sharing and collaboration between recruiters at the Toronto Recruiter Conference. The guest speakers have been outstanding along with the networking and handshaking amongst colleagues.

Over the past decades that I have been in the recruitment industry, I have rarely seen live regular recruiter networking events in the Canadian marketplace. 

Our industry is worth over $15 Billion Dollars in Canada but is yet still  highly fragmented with many firms operating with less then 5 employees and without collaboration. There are over 1,600 agencies and 9,000 recruiters in total across Canada 

This is the time to encourage all recruiters across Canada to come together more often and bring thought leadership to this fast growing industry.

As we all know, the word TEAM stands for Together Everybody Achieves More. 

So, here are 5 suggestions to network more and bring this industry closer as a community

1. create a monthly social for recruiters to come together and share their success stories 
2. Have suppliers from insurance to payroll funding to cell phone companies offering our industry discounted rates 
3. For new recruiters we should have mentoring programs available to them delivered by senior recruiters
4. A central website for Recruiting events by city or town
5. Set up a monthly newsletter for recruiters to contribute 

I’m also heavily-invested in the community where I work and live.

In fact, for the past two years, I’ve had the privilege to serve on the Board of Directors of Catholic Crosscultural Services (CCS), a GTA-based, national not-for-profit organization that helps newcomers, immigrants and refugees of various religions, ethnicities and cultural backgrounds settle, integrate and prosper in Canada.

Since seeing the work first-hand, it’s clear that what the organization does from a diversity perspective is very important. From its humble beginnings in a downtown church in 1954, CCS has grown into one of the largest settlement organizations in Canada, a leader in the social services field and an innovator in service delivery. In 2018 alone, over 200 employees and 100’s of volunteers collaborated with over forty social services’ partners in delivering more than thirty programs to over 28,000 clients in the GTA and across Canada through our Refugee Sponsorship Training Program brand.   

But CCS wants to do more and I heartily endorse this goal. Here’s why. One million newcomers have come to Canada in the last three years. As a nation, we help people get here, but sometimes integration isn’t easy for them. Language can be a barrier and it can be a big challenge to gain a strategic understanding of what it takes to successfully transition into the Canadian workforce.

The challenge is how do we help them grow their careers, not just work at a ‘job’? We need to help them connect the dots, address the misconceptions in the marketplace and better package their value proposition.

Simply put, everybody deserves the opportunity to have a great career and enjoy the dignity and respect that go along with it.  While many newcomers come here with no Canadian work experience, they do have excellent experience, nonetheless. Many newcomers, such as health care professionals, for example, enjoyed thriving careers in their countries of origin, but once in Canada, they not only needed to learn the language, they also had to acquire the licensing and accreditation to practice legally.

CSS addresses this scenario head-on with programs offering English-language training and workshops tailored to international health care professionals and their industry. One of the speakers at their recent annual general meeting was a graduate of this program. He said it gave him back his self-confidence. Imagine that, a doctor in his home country, and educated at one of the best schools prior to immigrating, and he still found it daunting as a newcomer to Canada!?

CCS’ goal is to scale up offerings like these to give newcomers a competitive advantage, and they need your help.

I encourage you to visit the organization’s website: https://www.cathcrosscultural.org/ for a more substantial overview of the CCS mission. I am happy to connect you with CCS’ fund development director, Darcy Bonner, who can walk you through options on how you can support their work, or you can donate directly at: https://www.cathcrosscultural.org/how-can-you-help/

Your investment will enable CCS to increase capacity, lead change and accelerate the value of dignity.

Sincerely,

Richard