There is one question that I get asked more often than any other question by people I meet who are aspiring to be great recruiters. In fact, I've now come to call it The Question.
It is a little ironic that the inspiration for this post came from the side of a Starbucks cup this morning. I ventured out of the house today, despite the Seattle cold, rain and snow-threatening skies, and went to my local Starbucks to get my morning Grande Drip Coffee With Room for Cream. I personally fill the room with nonfat milk but that is how you order it. Did you know there are 55,000 different drink variations at your local Starbucks? That is one of the things they told me before I left.
So I'm sitting there sipping my coffee, and on the side of the cup is The Way I See It #119. I actually saved the cup, and am staring at it now. Have you seen these? These are little quips or quotations that are designed to make you think, and start a conversation whilst you are sipping on one of those Starbucks beverages. Number 119 works pretty well I guess. I always thought we should have slipped in a little subtle employment branding on that cup-side real estate, but I digress. Maybe The Way I See It #984 will say, "Why I work at Starbucks...or my greatest experience as a Starbucks partner was when..." and then tell a little anecdote about how great the company is. You can actually read more or respond to these cup-side quotations by going to this link.
The Way I See It #119 says, "As you sip your coffee, think about all the science behind it: in agriculture, processing, roasting, extraction. Then think of all the science around you: in your cell phone, your computer, even your food. Shouldn't everyone be educated to understand the science that permeates their lives? -- Dr. David Baltimore, President, California Institute of Technology, and Nobel laueate in Physiology or Medicine." Which leads me to The Question.
As I mentioned, I get asked The Question by junior recruiters or other people who are new to the recruiting profession on a regular basis: "What advice do you have for me as I'm starting out on my way to becoming a really great recruiter?"
Because of how prevalent this question is, I've spent a fair amount of time during the last few years of my senior leadership career contemplating The Question, and I've boiled it down to this foundational tenent: The difference between great recruiters (or recruiting managers) and other recruiters (whether that be average recruiters or 'not-great recruiters' or anything in-between) is how they approach their personal learning. I believe this is the primary differentiator between The Great Ones and The Others.
I was having this very conversation with a member of my extended team at Starbucks right before I left. Her name is Eden and she is very smart and has great communication skills (which are two prerequisite competencies to be a great recruiter) but she doesn't have much recruiting experience as she is just getting started in her recruiting career. She asked me The Question, and I tried to share with her this concept of what I call Advanced Personal Learning (APL). I'm sure this holds true for other professions, but all I know is recruiting so if you aren't in recruiting, YMMV.
So I was sharing with her that as one considers all of the learning one does in one's life, it mostly falls into the schooling years, and then dramatically drops off after one graduates from an institute of higher learning. Letting this commitment and discipline related to learning diminish after school is one of the biggest mistakes a recruiting professional (and others) can make. We all worked (at least relatively) hard in school, because that was the purpose: cram as much learning into those years in order to prepare you for The Next Part of Your Life. Using my advanced Microsoft Excel skills, I created a nifty graph you can click to illustrate what I'm talking about.
But if one considers that the world continues to grow in complexity year over year (and I would argue at an exponential rate) a career strategy that does not involve APL is a road to obsolescence. Many professions have an inherent checks and balances component that keeps people in the game. For example, members of the medical profession are continuously challenged to learn and grow their personal knowledge and skill base or they will quickly become ineffective (and unemployed) practitioners. Advances in medicinal technology, diagnosis, treatment and drug therapy, et cetera all require a medical professional to apply APL as part of the way they manage their career. Software development, lawyers, IT professionals,... the list goes on regarding the types of professions that have these 'checks and balances' to keep their professional careerists focused on personal learning.
One challenge with professions like recruiting (or HR in general) is that the inherent checks and balances are generational in nature. Indeed, many do not recognize this dynamic until it is too late. If one is a corporate professional, one might want to think about this statement for a moment.
But recruiting and HR have grown in complexity over the last decade in the exact same manner as medicine or other more technically focused disciplines. 10 years ago, things were a lot less complex in recruiting then they are today (and because of this, the skills required to be a recruiter were different):
- applicant tracking systems were all client / server achitecture (if that) and none were hosted applications or had near the feature set of those today. Restrac comes to mind.
- technology based assessments were uncommon
- other recruiting tools such as Jobster, H3, LinkedIn, and similar technology extensions did not exist
- few companies had websites and the level of transparency and information that candidates possessed was nothing compared to today
- the candidate population was barely online. Faxed or hardcopy resumes were the norm
- and the list of changes and additional complexities go on and on and on...
So the answer to The Question is to develop a discipline to apply Advanced Personal Learning so as to become and remain a true subject matter expert in recruiting. I am always a little surprised how few people recognize this in their careers, or apply any sort of proactive efforts to evolve their skills, given that the world around them is racing ahead in terms of complexity and innovation (yes even in recruiting). Based on my observations there are few true SMEs in the recruiting profession. To be truly great at recruiting, one should become an expert in all components of the recruiting lifecycle. How does one get there? Apply the discipline of APL.
There are some relatively simple things that recruiting professionals can do to propel their career if they apply a level of discipline to the effort:
- Read Books: By books I mean business books. Some recent ones I have read are to the right. Reading makes you smarter, and uses a different part of your brain than you use at work. Additionally, all of a recruiters' best customers and business leaders are reading books. Savvy recruiting professionals should read them to. My advice: One should always be reading a good business or skills-related book. When you are done with the book, give them to your customers to read, and talk about them with others.
- Read Other Stuff: Blogs. Periodicals. Other online resources. Other periodicals such as the Harvard Business Review, Businessweek Magazine; I like Wired magazine as a fringe example. My Advice: One should read 2-4 hours a week if one wants to to be an expert. Make it part of a daily routine.
- Network: I wrote this post a few months ago on the value of networking. The value of networking cannot be overstated, regardless of the profession you might be in. My advice: Crack the code on effective networking, but keep the bar high with regards to the connections you make and the quality of those relationships. Learn from others, and ask questions of those that have gone before. One should spend 1/2 hour to 1 hour a week focused on networking outside of one's company.
- Get really clear on what Subject Matter Expertise means: If you aren't an expert at negotiation, objection handling and understanding negotiation theory, then you aren't a SME. If you aren't an expert at qualifying the needs of your hiring managers, and asking the tough questions, you aren't a SME. Sales skills. Sourcing skills. Consultation skills. Communication skills. Interview skills. Time management and productivity skills. The list goes on. My Advice: map out everything that goes into the candidate lifecycle (I like to do so with a pie chart or a wheel chart.) Then pick an area and go deep in your studies and develop expertise. Find those around you that are great, and learn from them.
So going back to the Starbucks cup: maybe we should understand the science that permeates our lives, or maybe we shouldn't. I personally do not need to know how my cellular phone works. But to be really great at recruiting, one should apply advanced personal learning as a discipline in one's career.
And that is one answer to The Question.
Jason, Amitai Girwitz recommended you to me to be a member of a board for a new non profit I am forming investigating how to make recommendations to investment analysts for SRI and Non Profit investment on the value of Human Capital and how to measure that.
If you are interested, email me at [email protected] so we can set up a call.
I have great respect for Amitai and his recommendations. I don't even try to call people I don't know at large companies like Google and leave messages to call me. High tech has this way of silence and ignoring things that I don't buy into. So if you want to show manners and let me know --- yes or no, please do.
Best,
Lavinia Weissman
www.linkedin.com/in/laviniaweissman
to read about me.
Posted by: Lavinia Weissman | August 28, 2007 at 06:06 PM