KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Building Relationships With Your Blog

The Recruiting Animal taps Brian Clark and boils business blogging to the basics - build better business relationships (like that alliteration - it's my Friday gift to you).

Animal's take from this post at Copyblogger (a great place to learn about writing online) is that successful business blogging (aside from SEO and traffic benefits), ultimately depends on the success of the connections that you make with other bloggers.  To build strong relationships, you have to gain respect, and in the very process of writing, you establish yourself as a person with something to say.  As a blogger, you've differentiated yourself as more than drone.

So how does a poor recruiter get through to this kind of sophisticate? You have to prove somehow that you know what you're up to and that you're not out to bamboozle anyone.

What does that mean? That you have to build a relationship first. Before you do business you have to get them to trust you. It takes time but you'll have many opportunities to make deals after you've convinced someone that you do deliver the goods.

This makes tutorial marketing on a blog a smart way to present yourself online.

A free introduction to your subject starts the relationship and your regular blog postings keep it going. And eventually, you’ll turn some readers into candidates or clients and get some referrals.

If you give out good information that helps people do their job better, they will refer you to others who need the training.  And the more people you have giving you good word-of-mouth referrals, the better your business.

That's it.  Blog, and find people who evangelize your products and services to your target clients.  That's the basics of all marketing.

Adding The Alliance HR Network Blog

One of the things I'm learning about how the web works is the importance of staking out territory early.  Alliance HR Network is an affiliated company to Keen Hire.  It's the recruiting engine that gave me so much expertise over the course of the last decade.

But Alliance HR Network was always outward focused.  We called out to candidates once clients gve us job reqs.  As the job market for clinical research, pharma marketing, medical education and medical billing gets tighter, the successful recruiters will be the ones who make themselves visible on web.  It's about growing our profile.  But business owners and recruiters have only so much time.

So we're adding an Alliance blog, but it will start as a repository for older information.  We'll put what we know up on line in a new format, and eventually start aggregating information just for the medical community.  Starting now, in  six months we'll be one of the top results on Google for information relating to medical recruiting.

Or so Jim keeps telling me.

New Article In The Hireability Newsletter

Craig Silverman's Hireability puts out a monthly newsletter, and this week I'm one of the authors.  For those who don't know, Hireability is a consortium of independent recruiters that help each other make placements, handle billing, and pass on high-level training.  I was speaking about relationships, and here's a taste of the article.

Over the years, there has been many times in which a client relationship started with the expectation of making one or two placements where I went on to make 20, 30 or even 200 placements. Quite possibly, this has happened to you as well. If so, then you may have also shared the experience of seeing one of your larger client relationships devolve so that they use your services less and less, or perhaps even stop using you entirely.

No matter how good you are or what great service you provide, you’ll find that companies, people, jobs, and responsibilities will change. Often, our key contact at a client location is out of the picture, and before we can blink an eye, so are we. We all know relationships are critical in our line of business. Yet, that alone is not sufficient enough to guarantee our prosperity and long term success as talent management professionals. Instead, it is the systems, process and operating practices that we utilize to deliver our services that sustain the test of time. 

I would go so far as to say that there is nothing that differentiates and solidifies your ability to retain a long term relationship like standardized systems, processes and service offerings. 

The full article can be seen at the Hireability website.  And if you're dying for some omore

Selling Bootcamp/Leverage Your Power and Gain the Exclusive

We have an upcoming class, March 3rd and 4th for Chicago area recruiters. I'm going to be covering the basis on selling and new business development for third party recruiters and independent agencies. This is a rare chance to learn enhanced versions of how to sell, negotiate and break those new accounts. We'll follow Six Sigma Best Practices in teaching you how to MAKE MORE MONEY AND CLOSE MORE DEALS. Sorry about shouting there, but this is what recruiters are in the business for, and nothing gets me more pumped than helping put money into your pockets. The class is a two day live event March 3rd and 4th, but if you absolutely cannot make it, we'll be doing a teleseminar that lasts 8 weeks from May 16th-July 14th. Sign up for a Recruiter's Selling BootCamp at the KeenHire site. The course is 2 credit hours and costs $550 per person. Please contact us with any questions 1-888-KEENHIRE (1-888-533-6447) mgraziano@keenhire.com

Career Discovery Workshop

       

We provide a monthly Hire Ground: Career Discovery Workshop at Alliance HR Network. Don’t spend the rest of your life wondering if you’ve made the right career choices. Take part in this high value, thought provoking seminar that has you ask yourself key questions and hone in on what is truly important to you in a position and in a career.

You will even discover key elements that are important to you in the philosophies of the companies that you choose to work with. This professional workshop consists of exercises in career choice discernment, key technologies to discover why you are suddenly unhappy in the career you thought was perfect, professional interview and resume coaching, optional personality and behavioral assessments and optional skill profiling. Only our tenured career consultants lead these workshops.

Hiring Great Recruiters Is No Accident

I've had the pleasure of following Michael Homula's series on hiring great talent.  Michael is a recruiting guru just across Lake Michigan who works with companies on building world-class recruiting teams.

His three part series on hiring recruiters is a must-read for human resources executives, but staffing firms could use the reminder too.  It's ironic, but the hardest placement we make is usually the one in our own companies.  It's strange that staffing would have such a high turnover rate when it's our business to do this right, but I attribute it to the cobbler's kids.  We're so busy making shoes for our clients, we don't have time to do it for ourselves.

Part 1: Interaction
Part 2: Spoken Communication
Part3:  Commitment to Task

Hey Michael, we ought to cross notes and see what we get.  Ever thought of using assessments to hire recruiters?  I bet we could benchmark what makes your teams so great.

What Recruiters Will Succeed In 2008?

Zoominfo's newsletter is out, and Amitai Givertz gives his take on what we'll see in 2008. 

As the competition in the Web 2.0 market intensifies Ami foresees a proliferation of new applications, platforms, widgets and whiz-bang technology along with increasing usability issues in existing social networks. What was once fun will turn into drudgery with multiple logins and communities of “friends” to manage — detracting from core recruiting activities.

Against this backdrop, Ami predicts a general backlash among the industry’s early adopters. They will increasingly default to using proven resources like online sourcing, direct recruiting and building their personal networks.

For the rest, the gap between those who “get it” and those who “don’t even know” will widen. The real opportunity that Ami sees for established vendors and service providers lies in helping close the gap as the front runners start to slow down and the early majority catches up.

His analysis on social media is spot on.  I'm blogging, and dabbling in other social media, but these tools aren't going to make a recruiter successful on their own.  You have to know how to recruit, and commit yourself to understanding what makes a good recruiter.  Making phone calls isn't enough, especially if you're selling into companies that run results, not bodies.

Benchmarking, personality assessments, behavioral interviewing, goal-planning - these are the keys to success for a recruiter.   All too often we convince ourselves that this is a relationship business, but that doesn't mean it's schmooze or lose.  It's about delivering the best results to your clients.  That's what I train you to do. 

Social media is a tool, but it's one tool.  We'll see more of it, but if you really want to make an impact this year, train on being a better recruiter.

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Hiring Rainmakers Is No Picnic

The topic of the month is discernment.  I'm putting a focus on the ways that we as recruiters filter candidates, because ultimately this is what we're paid to do. 

Hiring "A" players seems to be every executive's dream, but the actual ability to hire the best is hampered by our recruiting processes, our salary packages, and all too often, the candidates themselves.  We've all heard (and probably experienced) the stories of top, top producers who moved from a company for a big fee and salary increase, yet never produced a single sale, much less the hoped for mega-accounts that make careers. 

For hiring cultures trained to believe that past performance is predictive of future success (I think those words are actually tattooed on the eyelids of regional managers in the staffing world), the failure of the rainmaker is a baffling, but common occurrence.  She hasn't written much in the last year, but Terri's Take On Hiring Rainmakers is a very good blog on the efforts of hiring "A" Players.  It turns out that the best salespeople are only the sum of their parts, and those parts are made up of the company infrastructure. 

What does that mean?  It means that top salespeople are often successful because of their support staff.  Remove them from their cozy and familiar environment, and they never again win the Gold Circle Award (or whatever it is your company uses to award people).

Check out some of these links I found at Terri's site.

Covering the Bases When Hiring Rainmakers.
Avoiding Dysfunctional Salespeople.
The Perils Of Hiring Stars.

Our goal at Keen Hire is training recruiters to look past tired cliches and "hunch" recruiting.  We want you to be confident in your choices, relying on expertise and not prayer when you send over a candidate.  Terri's Take is exactly the kind of attitude we look for. 

Upcoming KeenHire Seminars

       

2/25: Acing the Interview, Live Seminar, 8am-noon CST - Empowering the candidate to make the best impression.

2/25: The Recruiting Tour de Force | Snapshot 11:30am -1:00pm CST - A power packed 90 minute seminar that unmasks the secrets of legendary executive recruiters.

2/28-29: The DiSC Difference, Live Seminar/Chicago area, 1.5 days, Thursday, 8am-5pm and Friday, 10am-2pm CST - Become a certified DiSC specialist to build high performing teams for your clients.

3/3-4: Selling Bootcamp: Leverage Your Power and Gain the Exclusive, Live Seminar/Chicago area 2-days, 8am-5pm – Business Development for independent agencies and recruiters that teaches 6 sigma best practices.

3/11-12: Choosing Assessments Wisely, Live Seminar/Chicago area, 2-days, 8am-5pm CST - Pick and use the right assessment products every time.

      

Career Discovery Workshop

       

Career Discovery Workshop

We provide a monthly Hire Ground: Career Discovery Workshop at Alliance HR Network. Don’t spend the rest of your life wondering if you’ve made the right career choices. Take part in this high value, thought provoking seminar that has you ask yourself key questions and hone in on what is truly important to you in a position and in a career.

You will even discover key elements that are important to you in the philosophies of the companies that you choose to work with. This professional workshop consists of exercises in career choice discernment, key technologies to discover why you are suddenly unhappy in the career you thought was perfect, professional interview and resume coaching, optional personality and behavioral assessments and optional skill profiling. Only our tenured career consultants lead these workshops.

To register, please contact us at workshop@alliancehrnetwork.com. Cost is $25 per participant.

Live Seminar

2/25: Acing the Interview, 8am-noon CST - Empowering yourself to make the best impression.