When you’re writing a job order, you need to get six pieces of information. After those six pieces of information are secured, you’re going to look at your watch and say to the hiring manager, “Gee, how time flies. I must leave for an appointment; however I need more information from you. Can I call you at 3 p.m. this afternoon; or would 9 a.m. tomorrow be better? I’ll need about 20 minutes of your time.”
Below are the six pieces of information you’ll need to get for writing a job order:
#1—Contact information
Name of the company, address, name of the HM, title, secretary’s name, phone numbers—all of the regular pieces of ‘contact’ information.
#2—Duties and responsibilities
You need to know a day in the life, a week in the life, or a month in the life of the position. Or, what are the percentages of supervisory time, of technical time and of administrative (paper shuffling) time that equal 100% so that you can find the Candidates who match those percentages.
#3—Salary and fee
You’re going to need to know the low, medium and high salary range (we don’t discuss these amounts with our recruits—more on this next month when we talk about recruiting). Also, you’re going to need to discuss your service charge at this time and cover it in both dollars and percentages so that you can be sure that the HM understands what they will need to pay you.
#4—The hiring process
Here is where you qualify for urgency. You are going to say, “When is the last day that you can keep this position open without something bad happening the next day if it is still open? In other words, what is your ‘drop dead’ date?”
You don’t ask the question, “When would you like this person on board?” That question doesn’t define urgency. What you want to know is the last day. If they say to you, “Well, we’re not going to hire until we find the right person,” what you have just determined is that this is probably a “can’t help” situation. Because that means they can go indefinitely with the position open. Or if they say, “Well, it’s a new position. We just don’t have any time constraints on it.”—again, probably a “can’t help” JO. What you want to do is get a specific date to establish urgency.
You also want to ask about the length of their hiring process, who else interviews, how many interviews are required, and when the decision will be made. What you are doing here is nailing down the hiring process timeline so that you will be able to determine later if the process goes off plan. You are setting the parameters.
#5—The recruitment column
You want to find out who they want, what three or four companies, or competitors, they respect and want someone from, or what industry they want people from. You can then go out and ‘Rifle Shot’ recruit—extract people precisely for this position in the least amount of time.
When you ask, “Who do you want for this position?” if they missed that you are a Recruiter going in, they are now going to know that you are a Headhunter because you are actually asking for a ‘head to hunt.’
Sometimes Recruiters say to me, “But Bob, if they knew who they wanted, they could go out and get that person themselves.” But what those Recruiters don’t understand is that there are a lot of reasons why hiring managers can’t, or won’t, recruit on their own. They can’t do it because they don’t have the talent to do it. They put themselves in jeopardy by trying to take someone from a competitor because they could start an employee poaching war. Or they risk starting a salary escalation war.
A lot of hiring managers don’t take people from their competitors because they don’t want to be rejected. They run the risk of getting into an interview situation (where proprietary information is given) and then being rejected. Now that information can be taken back to the original competitor, with disastrous effects. So, there are just a few reasons why our client companies will use Recruiters and give that Recruiter the exact name of the person they want to fill the position.
#1—The personality of the hiring manager
What schools did that person attend? What are their interests or hobbies? Let’s say that the HM’s major hobby is fishing for sharks. He actually dives into the water and catches the sharks with his bare hands. (and a sharp knife!) I guarantee you that if you find a Candidate, not even a technical match, who jumps in the water and kills sharks by stabbing them with a knife, you are going to get a hire.
In your introduction, you might say, “Mr. HM, I know you wanted an EE, but I’ve uncovered an Industrial Engineer that you will be interested to know not only is terrific at what he does, but also has the same hobby as yours.” Bottom-line is that you are going to get a hire and it wasn’t even for the position for which you were searching. So, always keep in mind the personality matches. They are absolutely critical.
Too often, we work and work making the best technical matches in the history of Western Civilization, but we never find out the chemistry or the personalities of the two parties and we put people together who mix like oil and water. (i.e., they don’t!) And when we don’t get the placement, we wonder why? Sometimes it’s because we weren’t aware of what was going on behind the scenes. We didn’t think past the technical match.
— — —
Bob Marshall of TBMG International, founder of The Marshall Plan, has an extensive background in the recruiting industry as a recruiter, manager, vice president, president, consultant, and trainer. In 2015, Bob is celebrating his 35th year in the recruitment business. Marshall can be reached at bob@themarshallplan.org or at 770.898.5550. His website is www.themarshallplan.org.