FIVE RULES of SUCCESS with HTC RESEARCH

FIVE RULES of SUCCESS
Our objective is for the Client to make a hire off each and every project that they initiate with us. For a Client to use our research successfully we have laid down some rules to follow. We have found that if these rules are followed our Clients have a much higher success rate, as high as 90%. If a Client does not follow these rules then failure is more likely.
RULE #1- The 72 Hour Rule Clients (the Hiring Manager or Recruiter) have 72 hours to contact a Qualified Interested Candidate. After 72 hours a greater percentage of Candidates will drop out of the running. For one reason or another they lose interest.
RULE #2- Sell the Opportunity, Company, Product or Service FIRST. When a Hiring Manager or Recruiter calls the Candidate for the first time, the first 15 -25 minutes of the conversation should be selling the opportunity, Company, product or service. After the "pitch" is completed and all the Candidate’s questions have been answered there is nothing wrong with continuing with the phone interview and qualifying the candidate for experience and background. This portion of the process will allow you to determine if a face-to-face interview is warranted.
RULE #3- Passive-VS-Active. HTC Research Corp. specializes in both Active and Passive candidate research. A Passive Candidate that is someone that is not necessarily looking for a new job but if the right opportunity were presented to him/her at the right time they would be willing to pursue it. An Active Candidate is someone who is actively seeking new employment. Since a Resume is what an Active Candidate uses to market themselves, they usually have a current one readily available. However, since the Passive Candidate is not actively looking they usually will NOT have an up to date Resume. This does not mean they are any less qualified than the Active Candidate. This is why we provide a Profile of the candidate. A typical Profile will include most of the pertinent information needed to conduct a phone interview with a candidate regardless of their status.
RULE #4 - The Follow Up Rule - Our Clients must provide us with follow-up on all candidates we send to them in a timely manner. Follow-up in the form of a phone call or e-mail to the sales representative is acceptable. Feedback on every candidate is crucial to the success of the research project. Researching the passive candidate market is an imperfect science. If our research staff is off target for any reason the feedback we get from you will help us get them back on track quickly. The longer it takes to get us back on track the more costly it is to do the research. Be assured that as a Client you will never pay for a candidate that is not Qualified and Interested in new opportunities as per the job specifications which were outlined in the original job order.
RULE # 5 - HTC Research is a research/sourcing company, not a recruiting firm. We provide passive candidates that are Qualified and Interested in new job opportunities. We do this very quickly and at a reasonable price. At this time, we do not perform background checks, drug screens, set up interviews or negotiate contracts with candidates.
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What changes would I like to see in the Contract Recruiting and Strategic Sourcing arena?

Question was originally posted by Josh LeTouneau on Linked in
my reply is below.
Contract Recruiters and Sourcers: What Changes In The Current Model Would You Like To See?

Good afternoon, Contract Recruiters and Strategic Sourcers! I wanted to briefly reach out to ask what kind of changes you'd like to see in the contract recruiting and strategic sourcing market (particularly the U.S.). Would changes be compensation related, process related, recruiting architecture related, etc.?

Joshua Letourneau
Managing Director
LG & Associates Search / Talent Strategy
jletourneau (at) lgexec.com
www.lgexec.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jletourneau
My Reply

What changes would I like to see contract recruiting and strategic sourcing market?
1) Staffing needs to be removed from HR. Most High Tech companies have done this, especially those on the west coast but other industries need to catch up. Staffing is not an HR function any more.
2) Pricing models for strategic sourcing will be completely revamped. (The market will do theis naturally) This is because the skills needed to be an internet researcher are easily duplicated across organizations and there has been a plethora of companies, individuals creating training seminars on the subject. There will be a huge influx of internet researching talent which will flood the market as the market goes through it's next phase of growth, (baby boomer replacements etc) this influx will drive going market rates for internet researchers down. Additional pressure from offshore companies from India and other locations will also force US providers to become more efficient and reduce pricing models for the same services. Pricing could fall below $1000 per month for a researcher as competition heats up as there are few other market deliniations and variations in the range of services offered.
3) Pricing models for Phone Based Candidate Sourcing will remain at current levels as the talent pool for doing this type of work as not increased as more and more researchers have taken to internet based research. Additionally, when internet researchers are not successful in finding enough prospects Employers/Clients have few alternatives.
4) Hiring Managers need to be more in tune with the current and future staffing market. As the staffing model becomes more and more of a "low touch" model. In an effort to reduce costs the marching orders for staffing has been to get the candidates as far along in the recruiting process as possible before someone has to speak to them. In some cases the first person to have a real relationship building conversation with the candidate is the hiring manager. Unfortunately, few hiring managers are prepared for this especially in the high tech arena and don't know how to build rapport, yet alone close a candidate on the position.
5) Much of the disconnect starts with the writing of the requisition. Left to their own devices many Hiring Managers either make the requirements so restrictive that the potential pool of candidates is a water droplet and others are so nebulous that there is little direction other than I want the best that I can find that does this___.
6)The current battles between Internet and Phone based researchers need to be resolved. When internet researchers started coming on the scene a rift began to open between them and the war of words on ERExchange etc started to come to a head. What researchers on both sides of the coin need to realize is that the client doesn't care one way or another where/how the candiadte was sourced. The client just wants the end result, a hire. The process should always be, find low hanging fruit first then move up the tree. And low hanging doesn't mean more or less qualified or more or less interested. Low hanging means it was either cheaper, easier or faster to locate, identify, pre-screen that candidate the method or tactics don't matter. All methods should be implemented by a good researcher/research firm. Process matters very little to the hiring manager and it doesn't come in to play when making a decision on whether or not to make an offer to a candidate.
7) The Semantic Web, adding context to internet search results will dramtically change how companies locate and identify top talent. Right now Internet search engines are missing the mark on quality.
8) There need to be some rules/boundaries on candidate online privacy especially for people that will be entering the workforce in the next few years and that were early adopters of social networks. I think we've all heard of a candidate or two that hasn't been hired because of what was on a personal MySpace or FaceBook account. It would be a shame if a few indescretions that a "young" person made on-line were to be immortalized in digital cyber space forever.
9) Companies need to better define the staffing and recruiting models within their own organizations. Staffing strategies take time to implement, strategies are not faucets you can turn on and turn off. I see company after company, create a strategy, implement it only to abandon it 2 to 3 months later and create and implement a new strategy which lasts for 2 or 3 months. This is not only poor planning on the part of the executive staff but also of a colosal waste of time and resources.
10) I agree with Rob McIntosh's # 7 about "More effective use of competitive and business intelligence (both internally and external) to better map the size of the realistic talent pools" but feel that this process should start before a requisition is even opened/approved and that aqualified recruiter or recruiting manager should work with the Hiring Manager to identify those talent pools. If it's decided that the talent pool is too small that would give better direction to writing a better job description rather than having a req that's going to remain open for upwards of 6 to 9 months.

Thanks
Jeff Weidner
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HTC Research Corp
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