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Permalink Reply by Beverly Wilcox on November 15, 2011 at 11:19am

Martin, you are hiring people who are fresh out of school, like clay that still needs to be molded. You could try a mix of freshers and people with expereince in in your niches...Quantitative, Research, Audit, Controllers.

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Permalink Reply by Al Merrill on November 15, 2011 at 11:54am

Martin-

    First of all, stop worrying about the knowledge front, and stop hiring MBA's! Get strong sales people who will make the calls directly into the banks and recruit the candidates off their desks. I did this when I had to recruit similar types from the fifty largest banks worldwide. You get a copy of many bank directories and cold call the people you want to talk to at their desk phone. Stop trying to educate the recruiters, which is not nedessary, when all they need is a job description. The candidates you call have forgotten more about the job than your recruiters will ever need to know! You need to be a headhunter to be successful doing this. This is a sales job, not continuing education! Good luck-   

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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on November 15, 2011 at 12:15pm

Martin, a very good question and not at all sluggish. Hiring recruitersand training them is a problem we all experience. From what you say I think you may be hiring the wrong backgrounds. New grads with no business experience seem to struggle in trying to fill positions in the niche you represent. Perhaps people with some sales background, people with some experience in bank marketing who know something about the industry you serve would have a better understanding of what your clients want.

As to closing the knowledge gap, I suggest you pull a stack of resumes of candidates who have the background your clients look for,then have your new recruiters do nothing but read resumes for two weeks then have them do in depth interviews with those candidates until they understand what those people do and what they want to do. Before anyone can sell a skill set they have to understand what they are selling. Putting a new recruiter next to an experienced recruiter so they can listen for a few weeks before they get on the phone will give them some real world training and confidence. If they find what they think is a good candidate ask them to present to an experienced recruiter before they present to a client. If they miss it or the candidate is not a fit tell them why or what they missed.

Hiring young HR grads hardly ever works in third party recruiting. They may know rules and regs but seem to struggle with the sales piece of recruiting and the nuances of why some clients do not hire what appear to be qualified candidates who are not a culture fit.

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Permalink Reply by Martin on November 16, 2011 at 3:17am

Thanks for the comments Beverly, trust me i do a lot of molding, and like you have pointed out since they are freshers. I have asked my internal admin team to try and look out for exp people, i have interviewed them some of them, shall see how it goes. :)

Beverly Wilcox said:

Martin, you are hiring people who are fresh out of school, like clay that still needs to be molded. You could try a mix of freshers and people with expereince in in your niches...Quantitative, Research, Audit, Controllers.

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Permalink Reply by Martin on November 16, 2011 at 3:27am

Hi Al, 

     First off, appreciate the inputs. Al, there is one point i would have to say, in the hiring that i do, i think if not a complete then atleast some understanding of the  subject is required. When you are hiring lets say a software coder - coding for search algorithms or other multi-variant algos and ask them to move to a quant role in an I bank, you will have to explain the nuances of the role to him / her and not just send the JD. Its not just about "are you interested", it more about explaining how his skills sets would be used in a I Banking quant role, how much of challenge it is going to be etc. JD , well i dont know about the JDs your clients give but about 60% of the JDs that i get mostly are vague and i get a clearer picture only after talking to the Hiring Manager ( not from the HR dept ).

I truly believe in cold calling, mapping out departments of the target companies, but one cannot approach it in a robotic or automated fashion, it all comes down to common sense about whom to speak to and who fits and how to find the one that fits, sadly i face a situation where common sense is not common.

It is not a continuing education in a regulated sense but i do think a headhunter learns in his/ her process of headhunting.

Thanks for the inputs once again.

Martin

Al Merrill said:

Martin-

    First of all, stop worrying about the knowledge front, and stop hiring MBA's! Get strong sales people who will make the calls directly into the banks and recruit the candidates off their desks. I did this when I had to recruit similar types from the fifty largest banks worldwide. You get a copy of many bank directories and cold call the people you want to talk to at their desk phone. Stop trying to educate the recruiters, which is not nedessary, when all they need is a job description. The candidates you call have forgotten more about the job than your recruiters will ever need to know! You need to be a headhunter to be successful doing this. This is a sales job, not continuing education! Good luck-   

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Permalink Reply by Martin on November 16, 2011 at 5:12am

Hi Sandra,

             Thank you for kind of echoing my believes or rather the shortcomings i am facing right now. 

Sandra McCartt said:

Martin, a very good question and not at all sluggish. Hiring recruitersand training them is a problem we all experience. From what you say I think you may be hiring the wrong backgrounds. New grads with no business experience seem to struggle in trying to fill positions in the niche you represent. Perhaps people with some sales background, people with some experience in bank marketing who know something about the industry you serve would have a better understanding of what your clients want.

As to closing the knowledge gap, I suggest you pull a stack of resumes of candidates who have the background your clients look for,then have your new recruiters do nothing but read resumes for two weeks then have them do in depth interviews with those candidates until they understand what those people do and what they want to do. Before anyone can sell a skill set they have to understand what they are selling. Putting a new recruiter next to an experienced recruiter so they can listen for a few weeks before they get on the phone will give them some real world training and confidence. If they find what they think is a good candidate ask them to present to an experienced recruiter before they present to a client. If they miss it or the candidate is not a fit tell them why or what they missed.

Hiring young HR grads hardly ever works in third party recruiting. They may know rules and regs but seem to struggle with the sales piece of recruiting and the nuances of why some clients do not hire what appear to be qualified candidates who are not a culture fit.

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