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Blog Post: Discover the Top Ten Recruitment Automation Solutions: Recruitment automation software has revolutionized the hiring process, empowering recruiters and hirers to streamline and optimize candidate sourcing and management. These powerful tools leverage…; Added by Pankaj Deshmukh at 10:31am on March 8, 2024

Blog Post: Key Considerations Before Finding the Recruitment SMS Platform

Hiring could be costly, especially if you want the best applicants.

According to an article from Investopedia, even with the most basic recruiting costs such as advertising the opening, the…

Added by Rakuna at 11:38pm on November 14, 2024

Topic: Meet Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw: "Cloud-Based, Database Automation As A Service": I was sick and tired of the expensive and crappy lists the marketing team would buy for my sales teams ... Twelve years in sales left me frustrated with the time-consuming practice of finding contact details. I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’” We live in an economy now where people make a living with their brains as much as with their hands. I spend a lot of time creating and working with people" “We are on a path to go public. We have the chops to become a billion-dollar company” • Jim Fowler • CEO, Jigsaw "The Crowd-Sourced Business Directory" • San Mateo, CA • RecruitingBlogs Profile • Linkedin • Twitter • Jigsaw Tweets • Facebook • Corporate Website • Join Jigsaw and earn 20 free passive contacts Over the last several years, I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jim Fowler at the various staffing industry conferences. He will spontaneously offer to find a bench to catch up, and is one of those executives without any pretentiousness. In fact he is a rare breed among the approachables: he will speak to you and recollect from the mundane to the significant that you have shared with him, and in each response he is direct, substantive and charismatic. For a CEO, he is less about watching the clock than he is more about getting to know you and the topic at hand. He didn't build a business simply for a dollar's glance - he truly wants to contribute to what we consider Game Changing ideas in the art of commerce. Prognosticators will tell you Information is the most powerful weapon of the 21st century. It isn't simply about hardware and software - it's also about field entries. The market for Database information is a $50 Billion dollar business. Billions within it are likewise exceptionally relevant in how our staffing industry generates and collates that data to produce and introduce prospective passive and active candidates to employers of choice. What more relevant subject for today's feature than someone whose daily effort is to find knew ways to vett quality and quality utilizing the social aspect of community data sharing? For me personally, I cannot think of a more valuable way to verify my name generation leads and to contribute them to the broader concept of community. It's a pleasure to introduce you to my friend, Jim Fowler. As Chief Executive Officer of Jigsaw Corporation, Jim Fowler provides direction and leadership toward the achievement of goals and objectives at Jigsaw, a leading provider of business information and data services that uniquely leverages user-generated content contributed by its global business-to-business (B-to-B) community. A veteran sales executive, Jim has more than 12 years selling software for marketing and collaboration applications. Before starting Jigsaw, Jim served as VP of Sales at Digital Impact (DIGI), Paramark and TightLink. In these roles, he built sales departments from the ground up focusing on sales strategies and processes. He was able to leverage his experience as an outstanding sales manager at Personify and NetGravity. Prior to his career in software sales, Jim owned and operated Lookout Pass, a ski resort in Idaho. He also served in the US Navy as a Diving and Salvage Officer. Jim graduated from the University of Colorado. Q&A with Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. Jim: I have been married Holly Wiebe for ten years. We met through my wife's best friend who was dating one of the ski instructors I knew and we were introduced to one another. We have a son named Six (who is eight years old) and a Labradoodle named Comet. Our family skis/snowboards all winter and camps all summer. Our favorite type of camping is canoe camping. You go to really beautiful and remote places and still carry enough stuff to eat and drink really well. There is nothing better than an after dinner cigar around a campfire beside a high Sierra lake! Six Degrees: Tell us about your Company, Jim JIM: I am the CEO and Co-Founder of Jigsaw.com. We have 120 employees. Most of our employees are software developers or sales people, but we do have a full time recruiter! Jigsaw is a Global Business Directory of company and contact information. Jigsaw was in Beta through summer of 2004 and officially launched in December 2004. We have over three million complete company records and 19 million complete contact records. Members get contacts they need to recruit, sell or market by adding, updating or graveyarding records. Jigsaw Pioneers Data-as-a-Service. The ability to quickly find people in a target organization and contact them directly is an essential means to gain an edge in a very competitive marketplace. Jigsaw provides very simple, but required data that every single recruiter needs to do their jobs – company and contact records. Jigsaw is essentially an open database, along the lines of Wikipedia. Salespeople looking for say, a buying manager in a given company, swap one of their contacts to access the lead they need or they can buy it for $1. Every one of its contact records is complete with email and phone number. (Note: 72% of Jigsaw records have a direct dial.) We make money by selling data and data hygiene services to corporations. Six Degrees: How was Your Company Founded? JIM: Jigsaw was founded by myself and Garth Mouton on Oct. 31,2003. We are venture backed and have raised $18M in venture funding. I came up with the idea for Jigsaw after 12 years in software sales left me frustrated with the time-consuming practice of finding correct contact details within a company. Prospecting lists were costly and usually full of outdated information. Six Degrees: How did you get started in the industry? JIM: Jigsaw was founded out of pain. I was sick and tired of the expensive and crappy lists the marketing team would buy for my sales teams. (I was VP of Sales at an email marketing company called Digital Impact). I knew there had to be a better way and the idea of a crowdsourced business directory popped into my mind. The idea for Jigsaw was germinated in the summer of 2003. We raised our first round of funding (of three total) in December of 2003 and formally launched Jigsaw in December of 2004. When I was vice president of sales at online advertiser Netgravity (now part of Google’s DoubleClick), I asked a sales rep nicknamed Tark “to cold call into Sprint PCS until he got us a meeting. It took him two weeks. I said, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’” Six Degrees: What is the broader picture of how the data business operates Each year, corporations spend over $50 billion a year on B2B marketing data. Your usual data acquisition avenues – list rentals, online data services like Hoovers, OneSource, and that old technique cold calling – are hard and expensive and don’t provide automatic updates, maintenance or net new records. Six Degrees: How/ where did you develop investors? JIM: We are located in the Silicon Valley. This is the land of venture capitalists. Just follow the signs to Sand Hill Road! Six Degrees: What is Your Company’s Value Proposition? JIM: Our value proposition is that we are the best source of data for recruiters who do passive recruiting. Every one of our 19M records is complete with name, title, business phone and business email. Our service is free. You can exchange business cards you have for business cards you need. If you don’t want to exchange you can purchase our records. Our data is the best available because we have one million members who clean and maintain the database (for credits). We are similar to Wikipedia in that many people build and maintain our database. Six Degrees: How do you plan to make Jigsaw into a Game Changer? JIM:The goal is to do the same exact thing to the data layer that salesforce has done to the software layer. Ten years ago, when Salesforce first got started procuring and managing software, Today if you look every company that sells B-to-B, they're procuring and managing the records that populate their CRM solution. the lead records. contact records, the account and the lead records. What Jigsaw DataFusion provides is unlimited access to Jigsaw's community vetted database. Overall, Jigsaw has established a robust database of over 19 million records, and it grows daily by 25,000. The Database as a service is their Game changing premise. It used to be known simply as a cool social aspect of keeping data fresh to make sure it is kept up-to-date, but now the concept has expanded by volume, accuracy and automation: With DataFusion, What we do nightly is that we take that data and put it in the cloud and every night compare our client's data to Jigsaw's. Given Jigsaw doesn't allow partial data - the data is refreshed and complete, coming in everyday, flagging records, piping all those changes every night in an automated way; Matching, filling in all the fields, flagging their dupes, a process of 'stare and compare' of records. We pipe in new data that matches the client's administrative criteria. In an SaaS mode. It will no longer will be a one off, and will transform the data business. Data Fusion comes as a monthly subscription service but companies can reduce the usage costs by contributing back to the Jigsaw system. It connects with a CRM system and automatically matches and updates records daily, with a dashboard to monitor activity and changes and the option of accepting or rejecting any specific updates. Administrators can pick which fields in each record they want to synch daily. After Salesforce, Jigsaw expects to add other CRM systems and databases this year and next. It has published an open API and a Developer Toolkit so any CRM or database vendor can integrate Jigsaw. Data Fusion comes on a per-seat, per-month basis just like Salesforce and other SaaS providers. A full license like a big OEM just bought runs $500,000. With Data Fusion, if you have 25 seats of Salesforce, then you buy 25 seats of Jigsaw. Six Degrees: Are you importing contacts from sites like LinkedIn, Hoovers and others? JIM: No. Every contact in Jigsaw has been added by a member. We started with 20K contacts and now have over 1.7M (and growing by 10K new contacts per day). Even if we wanted to import contacts from other sites we couldn't because Jigsaw requires every contact to have complete information including phone, email, title, etc. Phone numbers and emails are hard to get and are usually not provided on other sites. Six Degrees: How does Jigsaw use social media networks and your blog to connect with customers and prospects? JIM: Like Wikipedia, Jigsaw links out to the best possible information. Every contact record has a link to Google and LinkedIn for automated research on the contact – such as looking at a biography. Because Jigsaw is a community of sales professionals our blog and message boards are critical for communicating closely with our community. We also have large followings on Twitter and Facebook. Six Degrees: How do you control members from sending out spam emails to contacts in Jigsaw? JIM: Jigsaw's model isn't a good fit for spammers. Too much work or money is required to get information off in the quantity needed by a spammer. Jigsaw’s members primarily do one-to-one marketing versus one-to-many marketing. If a member is caught doing anything unlawful or against Jigsaw's rules, the member will be banned from Jigsaw permanently. Six Degrees: What is the pricing structure for your services/products? JIM: Most of our million members use Jigsaw for free (the add, update or graveyard records in exchange for the data they need). We sell subscriptions and lists that fit every budget. Six Degrees: How has your Company adopted to the economic downturn? What is the long-term future for Your Company? JIM: We expect to double revenue this year. We want to get companies out of the business of procuring and managing company and contact records. We want the Jigsaw database to power every CRM solution by providing all the prospecting data a company could ever need, and keeping those records up to date in real time. We are in heavy duty hiring mode. We’ve just released this product in beta and hope to see it take the market by storm! Six Degrees: How has your company promoted its brand and aligned itself with Staffing Industry communities, both virtual and on-site ? JIM: Not as well as we need to. We are getting ready to hire a marketing person who’s full time job will be to address the recruiting industry. Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your overall staffing industry expertise? JIM: I am an expert in only one narrow (but important!) part of the staffing industry – information. The single event that had the most impact on my expertise was founding Jigsaw and the people who I have met throughout the journey. I’ve learned an incredible amount over the past six years of Jigsaw’s life and it keeps feeding our passion to innovate. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on modeling your career after? JIM: I really admire Steve Jobs. Not his management style, but his vision. The guy is just an incredibly talented individual. Six Degrees: Aside from simply the generic term “Networking” what specific efforts have you made on your own behalf, or on behalf of colleagues to broaden your opportunities. JIM: The single biggest has been to been as a “Featured Networker” listing with SixDegreesfromDave.com. We became more motivated to connect and reconnect with our following within the recruitment industry in a big way. The process gave us a more approachable introduction to both our users and those who have inquired about our utility as a passive talent database. We will continue driving home the message to the recruitment community and to our database of 19M business contacts to drive awareness of Jigsaw and to recruit passive candidates to organizations. Six Degrees: Given your own Trial and Error experiences as a Networker, what advice do you have for your peers on what NOT to do? JIM: Use extreme caution when sending out a single message to your entire network. Networking is generally about one-to-one communications. Mass messaging is irritating within a social or business network. Six Degrees: Do you blog? JIM: No – my Co-Founder Garth Moulton writes our company blog. Six Degrees: Reading up on you, I understand you are a Triathlete, a big time Giant's fan, who loves playing hearts and "No Limit Hold Em", and, not surprisingly, you are not a big fan of puzzles. Tell me something others may not know about you JIM: I’m a complete history geek. I unwind by reading history. Curiously, I find studying history helps me in business. The decisions politicians and generals have had to make since the beginning of history are not unlike the decisions you have to make as a start-up CEO. There is usually less actual blood involved. • Join Jigsaw and earn 20 free passive contacts …; Added by Dave Mendoza at 4:40am on January 18, 2010

Blog Post: Can’t Always Trust Expert Advice: Added by Steve Levy at 2:39pm on November 30, 2014

Blog Post: HS Graduates Should Embrace Flexibility & Recruiters as They Enter College: Take Heed Millennials it Could be a Bumpy (But Exciting) Ride

It’s…; Added by Jason S. Capps, Ph.D. at 8:12pm on July 21, 2016

Blog Post: 7 Best Practice Strategies for Virtual Campus Recruiting: Hiring graduate talents is one of the biggest challenges companies face today. That’s why hiring teams are steadily adopting virtual campus recruitment efforts in today’s digitized…; Added by Rakuna at 8:46pm on February 13, 2022

Blog Post: Remote Work and Its Impact on Accounting in 2024: Introduction

The Evolution of Remote…; Added by Adrian Lawrence FCA at 3:12pm on September 26, 2024

Topic: Meet Kristen Durkin, Applying Her Passion for Salsa to People: IIPE Website: Facebook: Meet my friend, Kristen Durkin, Director of Business Development at International Executive Research (IIPE), a firm which specializes in multilingual talent research, Name Generation, Prescreening/ Qualifying of candidates, and direct contact; i.e. cold-calling and email Campaigns. Kristen is a member of my networking group, "Six Degrees from Dave", however it wasn't until last October during Shally's "Talent Researching in Latin America" session at the ERE Conference that we met. She sat across the aisle with avid interest and providing her own perspectives on staffing challenges and opportunities in Mexico. After the session, shaking hands I realized the familiar name was indeed an RBC regular and conistent networker within SixDegrees. I smiled, knowing that this was yet one more example of many that our group members come face to face within the industry - not a coincidence that its members are most active within it. The handshake began a day to evening to day after conference buddy-thon with Kristen supplying the wry wit and us delivering the laughter. One thing was certain, I would know Kristen for years to come - she is a walking best practices manual on Latin America and a good friend to have, not least of which is the quality of her friendship offered, but likewise knowledge gained. This is one smart, talented industry player with much to offer. I trust all of our community can embrace her with networking holiday wishes! Q&A with Kristen Durkin Six Degrees: Tell us of your home world. KRISTEN: I currently live between Mexico, but I travel a lot back to NYC where my family is and throughout the U.S.A for conferences. Basically, my “home” life is usually packed in my brown and pink luggage. I am not married, nor do I have kids (My father hasn’t been able to buy enough cattle for barter to get me married, but I promise once that happens I will request a follow-up Q&A to release the big news). I do have a greatly close immediate family; I am the middle child with an older brother, Jason who was recently featured on the History Channel; followed and documented as a NYC “Sandhog” and a younger sister, Maureen. My sister is a bilingual (Spanish/English) Speech pathologist. I have happily married parents named Mom and Dad, although some call them Andrea and Eddie, both of whom work in the medical field. Before I moved to Mexico I participated in Big Brother Big Sisters of NYC for many years www.bigsnyc.org. For those who are not familiar it is a mentoring program for inner-city youth. I perform Spoken Word Poetry throughout New York; including the NuYoRican Poetry Café. I try to perform at least once with every return to NYC from Mexico. The most important fact to know about me is that I am a “salsaholic” I dance salsa whenever I have time to get out there. It’s in my blood, if there is salsa music playing, I’m dancing! Six Degrees: How many years have you been in the staffing industry? KRISTEN: I have been in the industry for quite a few years, I first started when I was a freshman in High school. Six Degrees: How did you get started as a recruiter? KRISTEN: I began interning while in H.S at an HR Recruiting firm based in Connecticut, K. Russo Associates, Inc. I started by filing paperwork (which I hated) and uploading resumes into Vurve. Slowly, they allowed me to answer the telephones. The position continued to gradually evolve. Karen (the president of K. Russo Associates) began to invite me into the interviews, where I was strictly instructed to take notes and shut-up. Following the interviews I would compare my notes with the notes of Karen or the other recruiter’s. Eventually, I began screening resumes, searching the database for internal candidates, researching passive leads on the internet, and interviewing new, junior leveled candidates. After graduating High School I wanted to ensure I liked recruiting and not just K. Russo Associates. I took a position with a boutique consulting firm who places CPA’s. I had a mini office on 5th Ave. in NYC and thought I was going to move up quickly. After my first commission check, I swiftly discovered- I had much to learn; like negotiating! I learned a great deal from my “5th Ave” boss, but I decided to focus on school, graduate college and later I went back to work with K. Russo Associates again. Whew, that was a mouth full! Six Degrees: What single event had the most impact on your sourcing/recruiting career? KRISTEN: ONE single event? I remember answering the telephone while still interning and asking the candidate while I went to put him on hold: “Can I hold you for one moment?” The bullpen erupted in laughter and I was positive I would thereafter be banned from phone answering and sent back to the filing cabinets. Instead, I went on lunch, and returned to the whole office having added screensavers quoting my mistake; Karen thought it was hysterical and apologized for the “silly intern” who answered the phone. I know it’s a funny story, but as a newbie in the business it taught me everyone is human, when you make a mistake on the phone, laugh it off and keep on keepin’ on. For each mistake I’ve made on the phone I improved my future calls. Mistakes like this have impacted my career; when training other researchers I always emphasize that people like humans, not machines reading 100% off of a script, if you make a mistake learn and move on. If it was an innocently entertaining mistake, then laugh. Do you have a mentor to whom you attribute your overall outlook on recruitment, capabilities, and/or model your career after? KRISTEN: Here is where I look like a big schmoozer and all of my coworkers will make fun of me, but hands down my mentor in this industry has been my boss, Karen Russo. There is no “fluff” with Karen when you do something wrong, but when you do something right she will be the first to let you know. I remember at one point we were an office of only women and after one of the recruiters closed a deal, Karen would do a summersault or cartwheel (In a pant suit, of course!) to show her support and enthusiasm. She’s pretty hardcore. Six Degrees: Detail your position, responsibilities, size of your staffing organization: KRISTEN: I am the Director of Business Development for IIPE- we are an executive research firm based in Mexico. HYPERLINK "http://www.iipe.net" www.iipe.net I am usually found at Recruiting Conferences, either as a vendor selling the business, or as an attendee learning and bringing back new information taught in the sessions to our team in Mexico. I can still be found doing research and applying the new techniques learned in a conference session on a research assignment. We are continuing to build our team, right now we have a team of 5, but this is not including our back office support. I suppose I am different from the average bear interviewed by Dave, because I am on the research side of the business. Six Degrees: (A) What other companies' recruiting operations do you admire or have heard are best-practice examples? KRISTEN: As a researcher, I admire the great sourcers; Shally Steckerl and Glenn Gutmacher for all of their help in teaching some of the most effective ways to use Boolean search strings. In addition to them a shameless plug goes out to Dave Mendoza as well, he’s helped build my network on LinkedIn and long before I had the delight of meeting him I always forwarded his weekly e-mails of the “top 10” and found him to be a great link to power-networking! (B) In what aspects are they superior? KRISTEN: A brief example: In October of 2008 I attended the ERE, fall meeting in Hollywood Beach, Florida. For anyone who knows me, they know I flew in from Mexico for the conference, I am an internet/phone sourcer and I happen to come from a Latin background. With that said attending Shally Steckerls “Sourcing for Latin America” was going to be exciting for me. I am not sure if I expected greatness from it, because I am so familiar with the topic , but I did in fact get greatness. Most of what was discussed is part of my everyday life, but Shally gave an excellent presentation, he was incredibly on point with his guidance as to how to approach a sourcing/cold-call and how it is culturally a different approach in Latin America. In addition I left the session and I was introduced to a few new websites, but for me- most important was that the topic of recruiting/sourcing in Latin America was brought to the table and was up for open discussion. It is, after all, an important part of the world! As for Dave Mendoza, I always admired the magic he’s worked on my LinkedIn network with his weekly top10 and have you seen his amount of connections lately? Funny enough the first time I met Dave was in Shally’s session for sourcing in Latin America. Six Degrees: What recent general news story or industry trend do you feel will have an impact on your work in the future? Why? KRISTEN: Outsourcing research has become a huge topic of conversation amongst recruiters. As a provider of outsourced research, this impacts my work and IIPE greatly. As a growing commodity we’re forced to stay ahead of the curve with cutting edge technology and new training. The education for our group never ends. Six Degrees: Have you represented your company in the broader conference circuit? KRISTEN: I have represented IIPE at NEAPS, The Fordyce Forum, ERE, CAPS. For 2009 I am looking into the Kennedy Conference, NAPS and ASA in addition to the aforementioned, but we will see. Six Degrees: What is your next career goal? What do you need to do to get there? KRISTEN: One goal is to contribute in breaking the stereotypes of outsourced research. Not every internationally based research firm is strictly tactical (although trust me that I know, a lot of them are!). Our researchers have been trained by recruiters; they have been in the office with recruiters and understand the corporate infrastructure of the U.S. I can only help break this stereotype by proving out-of-house research can produce great results too! Six Degrees: What talent niche groups do you target and are these particular talent areas specialized under your review? KRISTEN: We have worked within specialized areas of talent such as IT, HR, PR, Biotech, Manufacturing, Security Cleared Professionals. This is just to name a few examples. Six Degrees: What types of training in sourcing/recruitment are available to you and have you taken advantage of? KRISTEN: Because we are located in Mexico, most of our training comes from webinars. Second to webinars comes in-house training from Karen and myself and our training never ends. Six Degrees: What recruitment software tools do you use in your day to day recruitment activities & do they translate effectively within all of the different countries where you recruit? KRISTEN: If I listed every recruitment tool we use I would bore any reader from enjoying Dave’s Q&A’s ever again. We use SugarCRM everyday and Broadlook Technologies, our fingers for typing the necessary search strings and our mouths for getting past the gatekeepers. Six Degrees: What tools (technology or old school file folder, for example) did you first encounter early in your recruitment career? KRISTEN: I did do a lot of old school filing with a “Sort-All” (This tool is a yard-stick long list of the alphabet with slots so for placing the resumes in the correct order to thereafter be filed alphabetically). As for technology I used RecruitMax (Vurve), then of course excel, the internet and the telephone. Six Degrees: How did your expectations of being a recruiter compare to the actual, first time you got on the phone or in the cubicle? In your opinion, how do people's assumptions about our vocation differ from reality? KRISTEN: I am not sure I ever had expectations of being a recruiter, in fact I was going through the process of for law school when I moved to Mexico and decided to stay focused within the industry. However, I did expect to be intimidated on my first cold-call, but it turned out to be an absolute high. Everyone always talks about the initial fear, it rarely bothered me. With that said, when I began as the Director of Business Development, I remember walking into my first conference alone and being MORTIFIED. I was worried I was going to spend every meal, of every day, at a table by myself (which as most of you know, is impossible at a conference full of outgoing recruiters). In my opinion I would say the biggest assumption about my job is that people think because I live in Mexico – life’s a beach. Not so much! I try to get to the beach a few times a month. Six Degrees: Worst mistake, biggest goof, lousiest practice you thought would fly but didn’t…and how that was a learning experience? KRISTEN: Oh! Really, just one? Well… When I first started to attend business meetings and conferences – I thought it was important to get as many business cards as you can and just network, network, network. Truth be told- that’s a LOUSY practice to have. At the end of an event you have 500 business cards and about 30 seconds of conversation from each person, there’s no relationship develop. Even if you take notes on the back of your cards there is no way you can remember enough detail to make a non-generic e-mail for each of the business cards you snagged. My learning experience has been, develop relationships not just “contacts” in the Outlook address book. When you come back from a forum and you don’t have 3 good leads or candidate or contacts (whatever your goal is) it’s because you weren’t focused on developing the relationship! Six Degrees: “Best practice” you are most proud of developing (now or in the past) in your recruiting career? KRISTEN: I don’t think this is the miracle “best practice” you’re all looking to read about, but what about good ol’ fashioned honesty being a best practice? I maintain honesty with my boss, our researchers and our clients. Honesty is my saving grace! Six Degrees: What are some of the frustrating aspects/obstacles to your day to day as a staffing professional and in general? KRISTEN: Certainly, being asked how many names IIPE will generate per hour is frustrating. We do have such numbers because of metrics measures our in-house hours worked and naturally we can approximate the amount of leads developed in an hour. Nevertheless, it really depends on the research assignment. I have asked many researchers how many leads they will generate per hour and received a flat number in response, I’ve also I’ve asked others who are on my level and won’t lower standards to meet a lead per hour quota. It should be about quality vs. quantity. Six Degrees: Considering all of the frustrations you have experienced in your career as a recruiter, -- what inspires you as you continue in your career? KRISTEN: I am thrilled when research has a result. On our side of the business the result is not always glorified or as immediate as a recruiter, but when a placement occurs off a list we produce it’s exciting news! Six Degrees: What one thing do you ideally hope to accomplish in 2008? KRISTEN: Professionally, I would like to increase IIPE business by 60% (or more) with at least half of our clients on retainer. A personal goal is to start a successful and sometimes read blog. For those who know me… know I like to talk. It would be a great outlet and prevent me from bothering everyone in my office with info they’ve heard from me100 times before. Look out for my blog… Coming To Audiences Soon! Six Degrees: Anything you want to plug? KRISTEN: Both of the below blogs are usually very funny, entertaining blogs which are most of the time geared toward our industry or sales. Try reading these: http://www.krussoassociates.blogspot.com/ http://www.feedyourdatabase.com/ http://www.fordyceletter.com/author/hdhuntrgmailcom/ If you’re interested in Behavioral Assessment Tools contact: Cynthia Rogers on LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiarogers Six Degrees: How Are You Going To Change The Recruitment Industry? KRISTEN: There is a core group of people who always attend the recruiting conferences. On the last day of the ERE conference this past October one of the vendors asked me “How are you always so smiley, even in the morning?” When I am at a conference, learning how to improve our industry it’s motivating. I hope to change the industry by staying passionate about what I do and getting plenty of rest to stay alert! (see photo)…; Added by Dave Mendoza at 9:35pm on November 30, 2008

Topic: How to deliver quality headhunts that WILL win more business.: earch technique they can only aspire to understand one day, or those who think a few direct approach calls producing a handful of candidates will suffice. In my opinion both are wrong. Conducting a headhunt does take application and an ability to see things through, however the skills required aren’t that far away from contingent recruitment. However making a few calls producing a handful of candidates is not a headhunt, and certainly will not result in loyal clients who will call you with their next senior appointment. The ways the headhunting businesses I’ve built conduct their assignments are to excel in two very key areas. Fill the position with the very best possible candidate available Do it in a way the client feels they’ve had real value for money and come back for more! What is a genuine headhunt? My definition of a genuine headhunt is where you as a recruiter identify all the professionals possible who fit the criteria of the person specification for the headhunt you’re retained on, and make direct approaches to every single one possible (and that’s not an Inmail on LinkedIn!) If your headhunt assignment is a “generalist” headhunt i.e. not sector specific, this is one heck of a task. But even for a market specific role this means not only the clients sector but also any allied sectors where someone might exist with the skills that match your job brief. This means being very, very thorough and delivering real quality, which is the big differentiator. For the purposes of this blog I’m going to deal only with sector specific searches, because these are the most common and the type I get asked about the most. The generalist headhunt is for another blog. Also for this blog, I’ll keep it focused on how to deliver a headhunt, not sell one (again this is another blog). However, I will touch on some aspects of search delivery you will use to sell to your client, so if you want to learn to sell search read on, this blog might help. The mind-set for first class headhunt assignment delivery. The vast majority of recruiters are brought up to believe getting a candidate placed is the most important thing, not necessarily getting the best candidate for your client. Just fill it fast, get paid, and spend your commission! Yes this can make you a big biller in contingent recruiting, but it does mean you’ll always have to do new business as you won’t get as many repeat, loyal clients as you need. My ethos has always been quality, quality, quality. This ethos delivers clients who value you and return that with loyalty, your positive reputation spreads, and hey presto you spend virtually all of your recruitment day just filling assignments with clients ringing you every time they want a new hire. This is how I became such a big biller, and was reflected in the culture of the recruitment businesses I built. I also feel recruiting with quality as the main driver is a far more enjoyable and rewarding way to work. This is also why I think I found moving to headhunting so easy; I had the right mindset. If your client is going to give you a third of the fee up front and pay you a 50% higher rate than you get for your success only work, believe me they will expect quality. This is not just the quality of candidates you put forward, but the whole process needs to be so much better than your usual candidate search. So if you’re the sort to see tasks through to the end and/ or don’t have a resourcer to do it for you, then you may struggle with the delivery aspect. There’s no room for “that’ll do” in true search delivery. Sorry if this has put you off, but this is a blog to help you complete searches in a way that I have experienced will generate regular repeat business from your client, not hit and run recruitment. Where to start. During the sales process you should have sold to your client that you will not only show them the list of target companies you will headhunt from, but also a report to show who you have identified and what their responses were to your approach. This is important in the sales pitch because it reassures the client that they will be able to see what they get for their money. It also transforms your intangible “trust me” to that of substance. Showing your client the source company list is great for both sides. This allows the client to remove any companies that a) they don’t respect and so wouldn’t take someone from, b) have too good a relationship with to headhunt from and c) any group companies you may have unwittingly included! This saves you wasted time, plus it reassures the client on the work you’ll be doing on their search. The latter is extremely helpful for two reasons: - a) Your client is far more likely to leave you alone to get on with the headhunt rather than asking for constant updates. b) Your client is far more likely to take someone from your shortlist, secure in the knowledge there are no other places as a recruiter you could’ve looked. This second reason is key; having the millstone round your neck of a client who has paid you a retainer but expects you to do the search again because they’re not satisfied with your shortlist is no fun at all. So you need to do all you can to get your client to see the shortlist you present as the very best they could possibly get, with no doubt there may be more out there. Word of caution. Before you show your client the list of target companies, here’s a clever little safe guard. Compile your list, then name gather on that list of companies BEFORE you show the list of companies to the client. “But I thought them seeing the list first saved me time?” you ask. Yes, but it could also leave you open to looking like you don’t know your market, plus a search report list with lots of companies with no names identified to headhunt. Your list of source companies should cover every single company out there that could contain your placement/candidate. To put this list together, in addition to your sector knowledge, you will have to use Internet research to cover all bases. In doing this you are open to old or misleading information e.g. businesses that have gone bump or changed their name, one-man bands and businesses that purport to be in the sector you’re targeting but in reality it’s only a tiny part of what they do. If you do your name gathering and research before you give your list to your client, you have a far higher chance of eliminating these businesses out. It also means you’re only presenting companies you can actually gather names from. Some companies you may come up against a brick wall in identifying who in that business can do your role, or there being no one in the company who undertakes that role. So finding this out first, and taking these companies off your list removes those conspicuous gaps with no name next to any companies on your report. Lastly, you can be picking up market info during this process. So when you give your client the list, if they ask any challenging questions on your market knowledge you’re more likely to have the smart answers ready! It’s also good practice to go through the list with your client and probe for any candidates known to them in these companies they wouldn’t take, any they’ve already spoken to, and importantly any they know of that they rate. Again, another way of saving yourself time. You can also be quite smart in dropping a few names into the conversation you’ve picked up at the name gathering stage and look even more well connected! To present your list to your client, ask that they add or omit any businesses from the list and “sign it off”. Getting them to sign off or OK the list means they are semi committed to your list as the only place you need to conduct your search, leading them to be far more likely to simply choose from your candidates shorltist, safe in the knowledge you’ve looked everywhere. ###################################### Name gathering Otherwise known as mining for candidates, but regardless of what you call it, it’s compiling your target list of people to approach. How to name gather well is a key subject and will be influenced on the type of role you are headhunting on and the sector. It could also be another blog as it is a skill in itself. But for as much as illustrative purposes I’ll touch on a few techniques to get those names. Call the company This is where I prefer my recruiters to start. It’s too easy to rely on LinkedIn, often this info is old, candidates use poetic license to describe their role, and wont allow you to be thorough. Lazy recruiters rely too heavily on LinkedIn and you can’t be lazy if you want to deliver a quality headhunt. So start with ringing the company and using whatever story you think best to get the info of the name of person or people that cover the role you’re headhunting on. You may want to pretend to be a potential client, trade association or discipline association. Simply be creative to gather the name(s) you need. Depending on the role, I’d suggest you find out who else is in the surrounding roles in case they also fit your spec. LinkedIn Yes still use LinkedIn, it is an amazing tool. You can check out the profiles of “people similar” and “people also viewed” to those you’ve identified on the phone that could also be right for your job. Google Playing around with search terms, look for job titles in the sector, discipline directories, and trade directories. Again depending on the role, there could be some smart search string to use here. Also boolean searching … Some of the good database systems will allow you to Boolean search through their interface, and there are also other tools that conduct long tail Boolean string searches from a variety of sources all in one place, a good example is Source Hub. To x-ray search LinkedIn yourself directly via Google (particularly useful at the moment if you don’t have some of the higher level LinkedIn subscriptions to access full profiles of 3rd degree connections). Use the below command followed by any additional search phrases such as job title, skill or location, separated by the syntax operators (), “”, AND, OR. ((site:www.linkedin.com AND (inurl:linkedin.com/pub/ OR inurl:linkedin.com/in/)) AND -dir) ********************************** Do you show the client the populated target list? You can show your client the list of names identified before you make your calls, however if it’s a new client I’d probably hold back. The reasons for this is, on the odd rare occasion it can lead to reminding your client of someone they “know”, commenting they’re already in conversation with the prospect when in fact its someone they know is right for the job and they’re kicking themselves for not tapping them up before retaining you! Also as it’s the first time they’ve used you for a headhunt, they may read your list thoroughly and spot some mistakes you’ve made in the name gathering or some of your web research maybe out of date and which will undermine their confidence in you. One you’ve conducted one or more searches for your client I would suggest showing them the list, by then you should have built trust and respect so the above shouldn’t apply. How to make the headhunt call. Since the advent of LinkedIn, it’s handy to have it open on the target candidates profile for every call. This way when you do get into a conversation with the target candidate you can drop in details of their career to sound like you’ve really done your research, so inflating their ego plus gaining respect for your work. It can also help if they aren’t interested, to use the follow up referral question “I understand you used to work at ABC company who there in your opinion would be best suited to this role”. How to make your approach call. We all know most candidates complain about “recruiters pestering me all the time” so this can bring on the PPI call syndrome i.e. they just fob you off without even listening to the fantastic new employment opportunity you’re offering them . The pre pitch intro should at the very least get past this ever increasing PPI call syndrome, plus it may not actually be convenient for your target to concentrate on what you’re saying so if you pile into your pitch you could lose a great candidate who’ll just fob you off. The pre pitch intro is your greeting and opening hook of what the call is about, before you sell the opportunity to your target candidate. As an example, below is a standard intro I have passed on to some of the headhunters I had in my businesses to use as a starting point. The reason I say starting point is, I do recommend measuring the ratio of success of call-to -interest in your pre pitch intro, then altering your pitch, measuring again, and over time honing a pitch that has the best call to interest ratio for you and your sector. “Good morning/ afternoon Mr. /Mrs. X or Christian name (your sector will generally prefer one of Christian name or Mr. /Mrs. so you choose) we’ve not spoken before my name is Joe Bloggs, I’m a specialist headhunter for the ABC sector. I’ve found specialist headhunter gets the attention more than recruiter. “The reason why I’m calling you is I’ve been retained by one of my key clients.” Keeps the senior headhunter style going. “to search for the very best person possible (optional insert of generic role e.g. in the Design arena) for a role that’s pivotal to the growth of their business.” This bit may need some finessing depending on your role but make sure you pump up your need to find the best talent, and a phrase that ups the importance of the role in your clients business. “You’ve been recommended to me as being highly regarded in this area.” People love to think someone else is saying good things about them hence the recommended and the phrase highly regarded. “and I wanted to speak with you about this role, is now a good time to speak?” As you want to speak with them about this role even if they’re not interested in the role themselves, hopefully you’ll have pumped up their ego and your headhunter status enough they’ll still be happy to talk more to you, which may lead to a referral, them as a future candidate or even better a future client. This might need to be adapted depending on the role but it’s a very good starting point. Try using this against your usual intro and measure the ratio of success, adapt and find the best one for you. Do you initially leave a voice mail? I prefer not to so I would suggest you try a few times, and leave no message . But this can’t go on forever, so you will eventually have to leave a message. I’d also vary between calling from a landline, mobile and even a second mobile number. If your office number is withheld a lot of people now won’t take anonymous calls to avoid the dreaded telesales of PPI, plus if you have alternate numbers you can use you won’t look like a stalker! To increase the chances of a return call, I try the vanity card again; “Hi Christian name (Mr. or Mrs. will sound like sales call) you’ve been recommended to me can you call me back on” and leave a mobile number. They won’t always call back but this isn’t a bad way to increase your chances through intrigue. The second blog in this series of two covers: The headhunt call to get the highest interest to call ratio How to interview the candidate in a way that creates business and gives you plenty for your interview notes How to present your client with the shortlist in a way they see huge value and commit to interviewing all your shortlist And finally how to add the real value to ensure your clients come back to you every time for more. - Written by Davidson Gray Managing Director Rhys Jones. Rhys’ experience has come from progressing from a big billing contingent recruiter to a successful headhunter and onto building two Headhunting firms. Rhys sold out of those businesses in 2014 to focus on working with recruitment start ups with every one to date being a success.…; Added by Rhys Jones at 6:38am on March 18, 2016

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