Recently, we celebrated Independence Day, so I feel inspired to write about American Heroes. But not the kind of heroes you might be thinking of. If you are currently employed as an Executive Recruiter, Executive Search Consultant, Headhunter, or whatever you prefer calling yourself, I am writing about you.

Instantly, I can conjure up three reasons to support the claim of heroism for third party recruiters.

First of all, you have overcome being one of the 5 million or so Americans to continue to file for unemployment reimbursement after the recession ravaged approximately 8 million jobs.

Secondly, you most likely earn your income through pure performance.

That’s right. According to results from the Survey of Search Firms owners I conducted at Fordyce Forums 2007-2010 as well as RMAR.org owner/operators, more than 2/3 of the headhunters in the United States of America with more than 2 years of experience do not get paid a base salary; at all. So, you are probably a straight-commission “sales” professional that has learned how to execute in an extremely challenging economy to pay your bills. If you make placements often against rigorous odds and multiple obstacles, you survive. Fail to find a client company willing to engage your services and then identify the ideal candidate for them, and you perish.

As a “solo” operator of a search firm myself, I like to keep it simple so that my audience gets the message. No one is paying me except myself. If you are on your own, I am sure you feel the same way. Either way, your boss’ payroll is only as good as your last successfully orchestrated deal and invoice…once paid. In other words, in a society laden with excess baggage, executive recruiters carry their own weight!

Thirdly, and I believe most importantly, independent recruiters create jobs for Americans and help put people to work every day.  Sure, some companies rely upon us to “fill openings”; which in and of itself is a noble task. But what rarely, if ever, gets reported are the calls we make to prospective employers to create a sense of urgency for them to hire by exposing them to a gem of a candidate that is highly qualified to benefit their company. The bottom line is that “we”, the executive search and placement industry, significantly impact the economic efficiencies of our paying customer.

We survive because the candidates we uncover, recruit, and persuade to accept employment with our clients perform at the top ranks of corporate America. But due to the confidential nature of the relationships headhunters share with their hiring authorities and candidates, most executive recruitment activity never gets reported in the press or mentioned at the Monday morning meeting introducing the new, highly acclaimed employee. Add to it the fact that no one ever really thinks they need “us” until they do, and our industry lives on in virtual anonymity.

Despite over a decade of zero employment growth in this great country of ours, we move ahead. Our mere existence in an industry that has no growth and an increasing number of efficient, internet-based tools designed to couple job seekers and hirers at lesser costs is proof positive of our value and power. So, in honor of the freedom and independence we celebrated earlier this month, celebrate yourself, your role, and your contribution.

Why should a recruiting firm start, develop, and maintain relationships with hiring managers as a key activity? We have found that over the years the largest contribution to our ability to survive in an ever more competitive environment has been our desire to establish and maintain strong rapport with hiring managers. It didn’t start as a planned activity – it just happened over time. The benefits have been many. It’s much easier to understand “the secret sauce” of openings when you have known the hiring managers over a long period of time. Having worked with them as candidates in the past adds to a level of credibility the competition cannot easily match. And being able to get their opinions about their ex-co-workers is priceless.

With the benefit of hindsight, the formula for successful networking with hiring managers is rather simple. You start by concentrating your attention on the best people in your industry. You get to know them professionally and, quite often, personally. You learn what they do and don’t do that makes them rising stars. You try to get opinions from people who know them about what makes them special and then discuss it with them.  In this way, you are developing relationships with both current and future hiring managers.

If you can create a connection when these people are happily employed and are not looking to change jobs, you build a relationship that could weather a storm for many years. Sooner or later, when they decide to look for new opportunities, you are there to help and advise. You build your rapport over a long period of time – someone with less than 10-15 years of experience in the industry is seldom senior enough to have influence in the hiring process.

So where do you begin?  Whom do you connect with? Be very careful in selecting members of your network. Concentrate on rising stars with whom you “click”. There has to be a connection at the personal level. Look for similarities such as attending the same high school or college, coming from similar small towns, an interest in sports and the like.   Then, over the years, you keep in touch by emailing them once a quarter or so, and make an attempt to meet them in person a couple of times per year (if possible). If you show genuine interest in what they do, the conversations tend to be rather easy and pleasant. The catch – it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation with a rising star in any complex field if you are not an expert. So make yourself an expert. If not in the nitty-gritty technical details, then in learning who are the stars in your fields, where they work, what they do and what makes them special.

Information is key. Read all the industry publications you can get your hands on and every time you see an interesting story or article, share it with the people you are cultivating.  By being an expert in the people and companies in your field, you will be able to add valuable information to the exchanges you have with your rising stars. Very few professionals have the time or interest in doing the work it takes to really master this subject. As a rule, if you have an in-depth conversation with ten or more people working for a given mid-sized firm and you get them to tell you anything about the people around them, you will become an expert on that firm. This further encourages their belief that you are the only one capable of helping them.

There are challenges in maintaining these activities productively. You must work very hard at distinguishing the difference between Data and Metadata.

Data is resumes with their collections of education, firm names, project descriptions, technical skills, other keywords, visible progression of responsibilities and the like. Data is when a candidate describes to you their projects – what they did and what the results were. Data is when you collect lots of resumes or LinkedIn profiles and determine which candidates are open to the opportunities you have. Data is facts.

Metadata is the collection of opinions about all of these. You need to be as well informed about these as possible, and that gives you an edge and allows you to enhance your relationships with your rising star hiring managers. Metadata is knowledge of what are the best schools in your field at the Bachelor level and at Master level?  They may not be the same. What firms are the hardest hires? Who do they tend to select? Who can share with you internal opinions about various potential candidates? To what degree can you rely on those opinions? What do you do when you have multiple opinions that disagree? What are the hottest technical skills? To what degree do different firms have proficiency in deploying the latest technology that calls for these skills? What kinds of questions do you ask to ascertain if the candidates have these skills, and to what degree?

As your mid-level hiring stars progress in the field, you will be called upon to help them build their careers, teams, and eventually, their companies. By this point you should have a good idea of who the key firms are in your field, who are winning in the market place and who are losing. As your contacts’ levels of seniority rise they will become more and more interested in discussing their industry and where the various firms are in the competitive market place. Here again your research will pay off.

As you get more involved with your hiring clients you should become more aware of the organizational issues they are dealing with. What are the conflicts the organization is dealing with today? What problems had the organization dealt with in the past and how did they deal with these? What worked and what did not? In other words, to the degree possible, become an expert on your hiring manager’s companies.

How will this benefit you in the long run? In today’s ultra competitive recruiting environment, unless you have a sustainable edge you will be out of business soon enough. Lowering your fees is NOT a competitive edge – your competition from low labor cost countries has you beat on that one. Having a strong relationship with hiring managers where your integrity, your expertise in a competitive labor marketplace, knowledge of technological competitiveness, in-depth knowledge of what makes your clients’ firms and your clients individually tick – all of these constitute a high barrier the competition will have a hard time overcoming.

The manner in which you open your marketing call remains the most important element of the call because in order to achieve success you need to accomplish a minimum of three things within the first 30 seconds:

1. You must get your prospect’s attention. Nothing else matters if you do not gain their attention.
2. You must eliminate or at least not create a “reflex rejection” — an automatic negative response to your opening statement.
3. You must change the call from a monologue (you talk) to a directed business dialogue (they talk in response to your questions while you listen).

If you achieve these initial objectives, one of the following outcomes should be possible.

1. You secure an opportunity to provide a service, e.g. a search/ job order, contract assignment or consulting options.
2. You do not secure an opportunity to be of service at this time but determine when and under what circumstances to make a follow-up business development call/ contact.
3. You determine there is no need for your service now or in the foreseeable future. However, the prospect does have long-term potential and you lay the foundation for a future business relationship.
4. Although the prospect has no real potential to become a client, they may serve as a source of referrals or as a center of influence.

As important as the opening of your call may be, the manner in which you close it many times will create a more lasting impact on your prospect.

This is particularly true in those instances where you do not come away with an immediate opportunity to provide service. This is the outcome that most recruiters achieve on the majority of their marketing calls; therefore, it is imperative you know how to properly close the call.

The standard close is to establish a time and date for a follow-up call and to send/e-mail information about your company and services. In and by itself, there is nothing inherently wrong with this close. However, it is not memorable and certainly doesn’t separate you from the others who call and close in a similar manner.

Remember

The close of your marketing call provides an opportunity to offer value to your prospect in a unique and sometimes unexpected context.

The value I reference has more to do with your knowledge of those who function within your specialty than with your ability to put together a deal.

What most recruiters fail to appreciate is that starting with their first day in this business they are continually building a knowledge base consisting of names, contacts, company information, and industry specific intelligence, all of which have value under the right set of circumstances.

Perhaps the first time I realized this was when I overheard my five-year-old daughter tell a friend that, “My Daddy doesn’t know everyone but he knows people who know everyone.” Daily, over these many years, I am reminded of the truth contained in those words as I refer to my “Carefully cross-referenced network of contacts.”

Even though your marketing call is designed to elicit interest on the part of the prospect in using your services, many times that interest does not result in actual business. It’s in those situations where you need to know how best to use your knowledge base as a value-add when closing the call. Here are a couple of examples.

You have completed your directed business dialogue with the prospect, established a time and date for follow-up, and promised to send/e-mail information on your company/services.

“(Client’s name), keeping in mind that I am a recruiter who specializes in this industry, is there any particular background, skill sets, or experience that if I were to encounter a (name position title if appropriate) professional who possessed them, you would want me to call regarding their potential availability thereby providing you the ‘right of first refusal’?”

This marketing call close is one that we have used for many years. We’ve tracked our results when using it and consistently hit the following numbers.

Approximately, one in four times we have used it with a qualified prospect they identify a target for us even if it’s only to have the “right of first refusal.”

Approximately one in four prospects who identify a target for us, upon further questioning, indicate they are actively seeking someone like this at the present time (even when they had stated “no openings” earlier on the call).

When using this close, one in eight marketing calls that would have otherwise concluded without an opportunity for business, suddenly present that possibility.

That’s a statistically significant ratio that is also consistent for those recruiters we have trained to use this close.

Here is another marketing call close that can be used by itself or in conjunction with the above-referenced option.

“(Client’s name), from time to time you may have a problem, question, concern, or situation arise where objective third-party input would be helpful. When that occurs, even if it has nothing to do with recruiting, give me a call. I may not be able to provide the necessary input but, because of my carefully cross-referenced network of business contacts, the odds are pretty good I can put you in-touch with someone who can. Will you keep that in mind?”

Many times the prospect is surprised by this offer and may ask about its cost. I generally reply:

“It costs you nothing. What I’m trying to demonstrate is the potential value of using me as a resource.”

Although most prospects (hiring authorities) will not initially call me as a resource, almost all remember that I offered to serve as one. This comes up many times in my follow-up calls, particularly when I remind them of my offer. The key here is to be remembered, to be separated on a qualitative basis from the competition.
Most of our ongoing clients learn very quickly that we bring added value by serving as a resource. From “who do you know …” to potential merger or acquisition possibilities, serving as a resource for our clients has brought added value and strength to our relationship.

Remember

The best way to retain a client is to have them view you as absolutely indispensable to their continued success both as an organization and as a professional.

The most important element of achieving “indispensable” status with your clients is the consistency in which you successfully provide your services. However, knowing how to properly close your marketing calls can provide a very important first step to achieving that status.