Everyone’s a Recruiter in Business and at Work

Leading Corporate Recruitment at an entertainment retailer with climbing stock prices was a lot of fun. We hired great folks who loved music and movies, and who lived to meet the artists who would periodically appear and perform at our stores to promote their latest product.  The caliber of our music subject-matter experts was second to none.   One of many memorable experiences was walking into one of our local stores and telling the Assistant General Manager that I’d heard a song on the radio that day that I loved, but I did not know either the title or the artist.  So I sang him a few bars of the chorus:  “Now I say hey, ay, ay, ay, hey….” He knew immediately.  “4 Non Blondes, What’s Up?

With 12,000 employees based at 1,300 locations in all 50 states and 4.5 employees on the Corporate Recruitment team (which included me), it was a no-brainer that every Manager and Executive, regardless of their level in the company was officially deputized as a Recruiter, charged to always be on the lookout for potential employees who exhibited great customer service and sales skills.  We all carried business cards, and on the reverse was written:

 

I Like Your (Work) Style.  

Please Send Your Résumé to Jobs@MyCompany.com.

 

This simple tool allowed all of us, regardless of our role and/or function, to recruit great folks professionally.   Those managers who understood that hiring great people was critical to their success were our most successful managers, and their overall KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) showed it.

So how does it play out to support the success of your organization?

  • Is everyone from the CEO to the Receptionist officially deputized to recruit great candidates who fit your employee success profile?  (And for that matter:  does every employee in your organization understand that they work in Sales and Recruiting?  Do you?  Another blog post topic for another Sunday.)
  • Do you know what your employee success profile is (e.g., what are the success factors of the right candidate, so you’ll recognize them when they apply)?
  • Does your employee success profile meet the needs of the organization?  Or are you pining for a purple squirrel?
  • Do your employees know what your employee success profile is?
  • Do your organization’s interviewers understand the difference between interviewing and interrogation? (Hint:  prospective employees don’t want to work for jerks, and will tell you plainly when they encounter an interviewer who treats them badly.  Invest some time in interview training, please.)
  • Do you have a Candidate Referral bonus program for your employees to encourage the referral of great candidates?
  • Are your Marketing and Recruitment teams working together to integrate your Product / Service Branding and your Recruitment Branding?
  • Do you have Recruitment Branding?
  • Do you have a Recruitment Strategy that you periodically update, share and implement with your organization’s Recruiting Evangelists (e.g., every one of your employees)?
  • Are your business cards ready to catch a great candidate doing a great job?
  • Are you all actively playing out your role as organizational Evangelists on all of the Social Media channels, at minimum on LinkedIn, promoting your great organization and your great job opportunities?
  • Are you all on LinkedIn, currently the hottest resource for passive candidates?
  • Are your hiring managers measured on both the recruitment and retention of their teams?  (If this is not shared between your HR / Corporate Recruitment Team and your Hiring Executives and  Managers and merely delegated as the sole responsibility of your HR / Corporate Recruitment team, you’re severely limiting your best internal recruiting resource:  the hiring managers.)

Everyone is a Recruiter in business and at work.  Happy hunting this week, y’all.