Ross Clennett Article

CANDIDATE COMMUNICATION
A Customer for Life:  Building candidate relationships that last

 

by Ross Clennett

This article originally appeared in Recruitment Extra (May 2005 issue)

 

Recruitment Extra is published monthly and is the leading publication for the recruitment and on-hire industry in Australia. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of Loud House Communication Pty Ltd.

 

Heard the one about the 'candidate shortage'?

You know the line that you trot out whenever you cannot seem to find the right candidate for the client.
 

It's about as predictable as the next Police Academy sequel. The only problem is that the so-called candidate shortage is an urban myth - it is wrong, dead wrong.

 

The facts are that the workforce continues to expand - the Australian labour market welcomed an additional 200,300 people into the workforce between December 2003 and December 2004 and it continues to grow every month. There is no shortage of candidates, it just LOOKS that way.

 

How does it look that way?

It looks that way because the number of people actively seeking new employment (whether they are currently employed or unemployed) has dropped. In other words the passive job market is now proportionately much larger than the active job market. The so-called candidate shortage is more accurately described as an active candidate shortage.

 

The challenge for us as recruiters is to tap into this enormous passive job market in ways that we haven't had to do previously. The passive job market is no longer the sole domain of the search recruiter, all recruiters will need to be skilled in tapping into that market in order to fill jobs with appropriate candidates. If you think finding candidates means checking your database and running an advertisement on Seek, then you are fast going to go the way of the dinosaurs.

 

There are more jobs in the economy and there are more people in the workforce and these facts spell good news for recruiters. The smart recruiters know how to take advantage of this good news, the poor recruiters sit around complaining about the so-called candidate shortage and wait for things to change. Guess what? They won't.

 

The critical recruitment skill in the foreseeable future will be the ability to build quality candidate relationships and develop those relationships over time to bring a rich flow of referrals. If you talk to any top performing recruiter I bet they would tell you that a majority of their candidates come via referrals. This golden referral stream is available to all recruiters if they take the time to understand how to create this stream.

 

Firstly some important background information; let me explain in very simple terms how human beings make decisions. As I am sure many of you will know the brain has two 'sides'-the left side and the right side.

 

The left side is called our rational or logical brain and this is the side of the brain we access when we are calculating margins on a temp job, reviewing resumes or reconciling our bank statement.

 

What's the right side of the brain used for? It is our emotional or creative side. We use this side of the brain when we are deciding what colour our new car is going to be or what drink we might start with after work tonight.

 

Now which side do you think is the most powerful; our rational/logical brain or our emotional/creative brain? You only have to think about this for a second to know the answer don't you? It's the emotional side.

When a woman walks into a fashion boutique and spies the perfect dress, all sense of rational thought re price, fabric, likely opportunity to wear said dress again etc, all goes out the window - she knows only one thing - I MUST HAVE THAT DRESS!

 

Overwhelmingly, the way we human beings make decisions is to know emotionally first what it is we want to do and then we attempt to rationally or logically convince ourselves that it is the right decision even though we know it is a done deal. We feel we have to be able to rationalise it or at least be able to justify it to ourselves or others.

 

The most simple and powerful explanation of influencing human decision making using emotions that I have found in all my research on communication is articulated by Stephen Covey in his ground breaking book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

For those of you that haven't read the book, Habit 5 is "Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood" and on page 241 he offers us this gem:

 

"Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival - to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.  When you listen with empathy to another person, you give that person psychological air. And after that vital need is met, you can then focus on influencing and problem solving."

 

Just think about it for a minute.
As a human being the first thing we are focused on is physical survival and the most critical component is air, or more specifically oxygen. Once people have air to survive physically they are seeking metaphorical 'air' to survive psychologically.
 

When you think about it, it makes sense. In the background of our mind there is this continuous loop of internal dialogue running in all of us:

 

Am I okay?

Am I appreciated?

Am I liked?

Am I understood?
 

This information is HUGELY valuable when you are communicating with somebody in any situation, but let's just look at this knowledge in the context of building candidate relationships.

 

The critical factor that Covey is pointing to in the second paragraph is the listening side of the equation. We all focus so much on what is the right thing to say we forget that in fact we may need to say very little, or maybe nothing at all! All you may need to do is to sit there and listen until the person has the experience of being validated, appreciated, affirmed and understood.

 

Bringing that knowledge to recruitment, when the candidate has that experience of you (listening empathetically) then they are ready to be influenced by you and are willing to let you contribute to their job search ('solve their problem^').

 

What do you think is the number one complaint women have about men?
They don't listen!

Now a women doesn't really know whether the man has listened or not but the only thing that really counts is the woman experiencing being heard.

 

The same applies in our interactions with candidates.
Regardless of whether you were listening to a candidate or not the only thing that matters to the candidate is whether they experienced being heard by you.

 

Here are some tips to adopt in the interview that will increase the chances of the candidate breathing 'psychological air' in your presence:

 

Understanding

Ask questions.
Don't just accept answers at face value; probe their reasons for leaving, their skills, their achievements, their career aspirations, their hobbies, their study. Have the candidate leave your interview experiencing being profoundly understood.

 

Affirmation

Provide encouragement.
Regardless of how suitable a candidate is for your current job always look for an opportunity to provide some positive feedback to them about what they have achieved to date, in any aspect of their life, not just career. You will be amazed how much candidates appreciate a few words of encouragement.

I was knocked out one day when a candidate, whom I had placed some years previously, approached me in the street just to say thanks for the positive interview (not the job I found for him, but the interview). At the time that I had interviewed him he had just been through a marriage break up and left his previous job in not-so-great circumstances. He said that the encouragement I provided to him from that interview completely turned his attitude around.
 

Validation
Listen effectively.
Allowing the candidate to finish answers to questions, remembering what they said earlier in the interview, and paraphrasing back to them what they have said are all powerful ways to have a candidate experience being validated. I would often get very positive feedback from candidates when I would refer to something they said at the interview, even when the interview may have been some weeks or months previously. Effective note taking helps enormously here.

Validation does not mean you have to agree with what they say, listening respectfully is all that is required. If you ever get into anything approaching a disagreement in an interview, that is a sure sign the candidate is not experiencing validation.
 

Appreciation
Thanking them.
Thank them for coming to the interview. Thank them for preparing their resume. Thank them for going to a client interview. There are many opportunities to thank a candidate and they appreciate your thanks every time.

It is very simple and easy to do, yet rarely done consistently by recruiters.
 

If you take the time to practice these four skills at interview and during the many interactions you have with a candidate during their job search, then you will find it much easier to gain effortless referrals because so few recruiters in our industry truly take the time to give their candidates 'psychological air'.