Chapter 4
Elephant: No One Likes Your Recruiters
I remember the first time I was contacted by a recruiter. I was at Virgin, putting in long hours every day in an environment that didn’t suit my personality. I was a workaholic in what seemed to be a toxic environment, approaching burnout at the beginning of my career. The working world wasn’t what I’d thought it would be.
Then a phone call came through to my desk: “Hello, Caroline, I’ve seen all you’re doing at Virgin and would like to tell you about another opportunity …”
The recruiter spoke fast. He had to. This was the preinternet era, and recruiters hustled even more than they do now. To get past reception, the recruiter had to lie—he would never have been put through to me if he had said his goal was to lure me away from Virgin.
“Job XYZ would be a fantastic opportunity for you,” he continued. “Are you interested?”
Was I? I scarcely knew how to respond. The entire conversation was a complete surprise. Here I was, plowing away at Virgin, nose to the grindstone. Yet someone had noticed! I felt both shocked and gratified.
“Well … no,” was all I could muster after several moments. “I’m not interested in another opportunity at the moment.”
I wasn’t actually sure whether that statement was true, but the open-plan office seemed far too quiet to continue talking. Besides, I had my ever-present to-do list and the uncomfortable sensation that this phone call was making me look conspicuous. I needed to get back to my job.
The recruiter reacted with shock, which threw me into even more of a muddle. I didn’t even know about this opportunity five minutes ago, and now you’re stunned I didn’t leap at it?
Little did I know then how frequently that conversation would be repeated over the coming months. The unexpected phone call to my desk, the rushed voice of a recruiter. “Caroline, I see the great things you’re doing at Virgin. I have another opportunity that may interest you.” It was like being flagged down on the street by random suitors: “Hey there! Want to go on a date with me?” I don’t know anyone who’s found romance that way, and it didn’t work for me when it came to jobs. Even though I was unhappy at Virgin, I found the recruiters who came calling so distasteful that I didn’t bite at their offers.
After each “no,” the recruiter was as quick to end the conversation as he had been to begin it. “All right, thanks.” Click. Rather than feeling gratified, as I had after my first recruiter phone call, subsequent calls left me feeling cold. The hustle became so clear. They were playing a numbers game, not a human game. I felt cheap. The recruiters had zero interest in me personally—they cared only about hitting their quotas for the month.
What a wasted opportunity. Remember, I was unhappy at Virgin! Had a recruiter shown the slightest interest in me as a person and really cared about what I wanted, I might have left much sooner.
Times have changed drastically since the early 1990s when I was first being courted. Thanks to the internet, individuals can be contacted upwards of ten times a day by recruiters. It’s exhausting. Though the methods by which recruiters contact candidates have changed, the end result is often the same: Candidates end up feeling used.
The people you approach to join you deserve better. In this chapter, we’ll talk about how your recruiters can keep the delicate recruiter-candidate dance enjoyable—something that ultimately benefits everyone. We’ll also talk about how the higher-ups can model emotional intelligence so that their stress doesn’t leak to recruiters and then transmit on to candidates.
How the Recruiting Landscape Has Changed—And How It Hasn’t
The recruiting landscape has changed very little since my time at Virgin for several reasons. First, recall the harried CEOs and hiring managers in a rush to fill a position. They transmit their stress to the recruiter. The internal recruiter wants to satisfy the hiring manager as quickly as possible, or the external recruiter typically needs to reach their commission goals so they can pay their bills next month—she is not thinking of the well-being of the candidate in this scenario. It’s often all about how quickly she can get a body for the open spot and collect her check.
Second, recruiters’ attitudes suck. We’ll talk more about this in the next chapter. No, not all recruiters. And, as mentioned before, they’re not solely to blame. Often a stressed-out, short-tempered recruiter is simply reflecting the attitudes of the hiring manager and the CEO. Yet I believe firmly that recruiters must develop their emotional intelligence if they want to have productive relationships with hiring managers that result in placing the right candidates in the right roles—and, in turn, experience more success themselves. I’ve met very few recruiters who are interested in this type of personal development. I’m convinced this attitude must change, and I’m making it my mission to change minds on this front.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. You need to attract the best talent to your company. A recruiter will provide your would-be unicorn with the first taste of your employer brand. It’s a big job, and there’s a lot at stake: The recruiter must find the right talent, present the opportunity and answer all her questions, and then help her decide to leave her job and embark on a new path. Emotions are high on both ends. The candidate’s career trajectory could completely change as a result of that first contact with a recruiter, while the company may gain a superstar who helps them achieve goals beyond their imagination.
A recruiter holds that power. What an immense opportunity! Amid the demands of the hiring manager and the hustle to fill open spots, it’s easy to forget this. Recruiters lose sight of the human being on the other end of the line, and when that happens, everyone is worse off. Candidates feel cheapened, recruiters fail to connect authentically, and the hiring manager loses her unicorn; that special spark just isn’t there.
Granted, it’s hard to maintain the “spark” when a company suddenly needs to scale up by hundreds of people. One recruiter I spoke to recently had 150 roles to fill. How do you manage a job like that? From advertising a position to onboarding, there are so many tasks that must be done. The recruiter must advertise the role and then somehow manage all the streams of information coming in through social media channels. Then she must narrow the search and actually speak to the candidates. For this task, the recruiter must have an intimate knowledge of the organization. A candidate may have dozens of questions about the ins and outs of the company. The recruiter, like a patient matchmaker, must do her best to answer truthfully while still presenting the organization in the best possible light. There are so many opportunities for the flame of interest within the candidate to be snuffed out. The candidate-recruiter-company dance is delicate, and sometimes it lasts for months. Throughout all this, the recruiter must maintain genuine enthusiasm for and interest in the candidate.
It’s all a dance. Think of dancing with your high school sweetheart or playing “Ring Around the Rosie” as a child. Then, you were carefree and enjoying the moment. But when a recruiter’s stress leaks into the process, the dance is no longer a dance. Without the human element, the recruiter’s job becomes joyless. Roles must be filled pronto. Hiring managers must be answered to. It becomes all about how quickly the recruiter can finish the job rather than about the people whose lives will potentially be changed forever as a result of the placement.
This is the wrong approach. A recruiter should have enough awareness to realize that, at the end of the day, it’s not about them. This is not meant to diminish the recruiter. It’s actually liberating! It can relieve you of enormous amounts of stress. The recruiter’s job is ultimately about persuading someone to leave her job for a new opportunity. Therefore, whenever a recruiter is on a call with a candidate, he presents the opportunity and answers any questions the candidate may have as best as he can. Then he puts the ball back in the candidate’s court.
I start the recruitment dance with something I call the “coach approach.” I developed this technique while undergoing my coaching certification. It’s a remarkably simple method that encourages open communication and requires engagement from the candidate (as opposed to the recruiter driving the conversation). I begin each conversation with a question: “How would you like this conversation to start?”
I teach this technique wherever I go, whether at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) or other recruitment events. It’s a great joy to watch conference participants role-play with this conversation starter. With this one opener, participants become more open and connected in their conversations. I find that beginning the recruitment dance with this simple question can achieve a collaborative, meaningful conversation that gets to the heart of what the candidate wants.
But here’s the key to making it work: The recruiter must be genuinely curious. The recruiter’s agenda must not override his desire to help the candidate find the best way forward. For the coach approach to work, the recruiter must be 100-percent committed to the candidate’s highest good—whether or not that good lies with the company they’re recruiting for or elsewhere. Pressure needs to be taken out of the equation.
In my work as an executive headhunter, I’ve found that taking the coach approach is absolutely essential in matching the right person with the right opportunity. I present the role to the candidate, and then I put my coaching hat on and ask, “How would you like to proceed?”
That’s it. Again, I’ve removed the onus from me by asking a simple question. Ultimately, it’s not about me. “How would you like to proceed?” places me in a posture of openness and generosity instead of a combative, high-pressure posture. I want to move forward with the candidate, of course. But if I try to ram someone through so I can move on to the next item on my to-do list, I’m setting both him and the company up for failure.
If a recruiter pressures someone into moving further along in the process than he’s ready to go, she is taking the candidate’s power away. The person the recruiter is meant to serve feels cornered. If the candidate does end up going along without enough time to explore all his options—if he feels disempowered in the process—it will impact his engagement to the point that he’ll be looking for the exit sign from day one of his new job (either consciously or subconsciously). “How would you like to proceed?” gives the power to fully engage to the candidate.
How to Not Unconsciously Drive Your Best People Away
A certain retail giant comes to mind when I think about how easy it can be to drive your best people away. When said retail giant (which shall remain nameless) comes courting, it has a horrendous track record of managing candidates. Engineers are contacted multiple times by different recruiters via emails that are one or two lines long. “We’d like to interview you for this position.” Repeat, repeat. There’s no warmth and no acknowledgment that the same email previously came through. Candidates’ first taste of the company’s culture is thus a sour one—they’re treated as numbers, as pawns to be inserted into vacant positions. As a result, I know many very talented people who declare that they will never work for this company.
One example is my Canadian friend Mike. A few years ago, he wrote a screed against this company on his LinkedIn page that went viral. At the time, Mike had a header at the top of his LinkedIn page directed at the company: PLEASE DON’T CONTACT ME. He had publicly boycotted the company based on their treatment of employees and business practices. And yet their recruiters continued to contact him on a weekly basis. Mike shared one of these recruiting emails, which began cheerily: Hi Future Employee! The email went on to explain how Mike needed to take a coding test within 48 hours. If he passed, he could travel to one of the engineering hubs at a specified time for the in-person interview. If he passed the interview and was hired on, he would have a choice of working in either Los Angeles or New York.
This email missed the mark on so many levels, it’s no wonder Mike grew frustrated. There’s the greeting—Future Employee? How about using his name? Next, the email gave him “homework”: take this coding test before you’ve talked to any human within our organization even though your schedule is probably jam-packed. It might as well have said that, at least. Then, there is the invitation to attend the in-person interviews, in another city, a mere 11-hour car ride away! Finally, there is the line about getting to choose between two American cities. So if he does his “homework,” travels 600 miles for the in-person interview, and gets hired—if he does all that, then he gets to uproot his entire life and choose between two cities where he most likely knows no one and where the cost of living is outrageous (both cities are in the top ten highest cost of living in the U.S.).
There’s an enormous gap here. I asked Mike the other day if he still gets contacted by the company’s recruiters. Amazingly, the answer was yes.
If the company really wanted to hire Mike, they would choose another tactic. Someone senior could reach out and offer to take him out for coffee or lunch. From there, they could have an honest conversation and ask, “What are we doing wrong? What can we do to make it better?” Even if Mike didn’t end up signing on the dotted line (which he wouldn’t—he’s made that clear), such a conversation would be enormously helpful for the organization. There’s a reason recruiters keep reaching out to Mike, even if their approach is entirely clueless. He’s a phenomenal cryptocurrency leader with experience across all the hot markets over the past 20 years. He could be hired by any top company in the blink of an eye. Any company in this situation would be wise to listen to what Mike has to say and change their approach in recruiting others like Mike.
When an organization has thousands of employees, it can sometimes be hard to teach a giant new tricks. But that doesn’t mean you and your organization can’t learn from this example.
A simple human touch goes a long way. There are so many little things recruiters can do to enhance the candidate experience—it’s not rocket science. Remember candidates’ names and the details of their lives. Be respectful of their time; call when you say you will; don’t ask candidates to be available all day for a phone interview (even the refrigerator repairman has more respect for their time than that!). Follow up with candidates, even if the position has already been filled, rather than simply ghosting them. When speaking to a candidate, do your homework. Don’t ask questions the candidate has already answered thoroughly.
These are basic reminders of how to treat people with courtesy. Yet they will improve the candidate experience immensely. As a company’s first unofficial PR person, recruiters can enhance the employer brand. Kind, courteous recruiters inspire trust and create portable relationships—a connected, engaging conversation during a cold call with a candidate can evolve into a relationship that lasts for years. Even if that candidate doesn’t turn out to be the unicorn the company needs right now, she might be the perfect match in a few years’ time.
The Emotional Intelligence Factor
From an emotional intelligence perspective, there’s so much going on during the hiring process. From the stress-management sphere, the recruiter must be aware enough to manage his own emotions and make sure he is not leaking stress that’s coming from a hiring manager or CEO. From an interpersonal standpoint, empathy (there’s that word again!) is crucial. The recruiter must employ empathetic listening and be able to truly understand the candidate’s feelings. From the decision-making component, the recruiter must exert impulse control and have patience for the twists and turns of the candidate-recruiter-company dance. The people leader at the company may want everything tied up and ready to go right away. But on the other side, there’s a human being weighing his options for the future—considering how a change in jobs would affect his family, retirement, friendships, etc. Even if the recruiter is offering him a seat on the proverbial rocket ship, it’s still a huge ask. No one can ever afford to lose sight of that.
The recruiter must leave plenty of space for the candidate’s emotions as well. It’s vital that she allows the candidate to express himself clearly by employing empathetic listening so the candidate can explore his feelings about the opportunity. When this happens—when the candidate speaks openly and is able to make a genuine connection with the recruiter—it’s magic. The candidate may say something like, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but …” or “I can’t believe I’m saying this …” These verbal cues are how you know he feels safe sharing with you. They are a signal that the opportunity has registered and the candidate is truly considering the impact it would have on his life and career. The recruiter has managed to connect and enabled the candidate to speak openly about what is most important to him. The candidate has chosen to be vulnerable and is offering that vulnerability to the recruiter. It’s a tremendous gift. To quote social scientist and University of Houston professor Brené Brown, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.” Amazing things can happen when you reach this place of open sharing in a conversation.
Furthermore, the recruiter must give the candidate space to exercise the decision-making component of emotional intelligence. The candidate must work through his emotions and be able to objectively look at the situation and determine if the new opportunity is a good fit. Stressed people don’t make good decisions. When recruiters take a high-pressure stance and try to shoehorn a candidate into a specific role, they’re creating stress around a decision that ought to be made with as clear a head as possible. It’s bullying, frankly, and I believe it should be criminal. In this era in which candidates have so many choices so frequently presented, recruiters should never adopt the pushy, urgent, and self-serving tone so common in the pre-internet days when they had to con their way through reception to reach a candidate’s direct line. Such an attitude is highly inappropriate—yet recruiters too often behave this way all the time.
As a CEO or hiring manager, your recruiters give potential unicorns their first taste of your employer brand. How do you want candidates to feel after coming into contact with a brand ambassador?
Not sure how your recruitment practices measure up? Below are some questions for company-wide reflection. Place yourself in your recruit’s shoes and imagine that you are coming into contact with your company for the very first time. Engage your curiosity and take an honest look at your recruitment strategy. Where can you make it more human? Remember: The more you infuse your recruitment practices with humanity, the more you will attract quality candidates. Think on these questions:
▶ How do you want candidates to feel after coming into contact with a recruiter from your company?
▶ How personal are your people leaders’ outreach methods? Do they have a corporate, cookie-cutter style? Is there a strong human element?
▶ Are you targeting talent with care? (Beware the Mike/large corporation dynamic!)
▶ What do you need to do to create a more human-centered and purpose-oriented candidate journey from first contact?
▶ How are you empowering or disempowering your company evangelists from showing the human side of your company?
No one should feel like a cog in a machine—neither the candidate nor the recruiter. Each party should have the opportunity to appear as their best self. If you infuse your recruitment practices with humanity, you lay the groundwork for an open, trusting relationship between employer and (eventual) new hire.