Net-Temps Recruiters : Articles : Building a Winning Recruiting Team

An effective recruiting plan can be costly and time-consuming, but it's all worthwhile if in the end you're able to net the most promising candidates. To achieve this goal, the first thing you'll need to do is build a winning recruiting team.

By recruiting teams, we're talking broadly about the individuals chosen to represent your organization throughout the recruiting process, from pre-recruitment activities, such as employer information sessions, to the interviews and follow-up involved. The ideas and strategies here apply not only to undergraduate recruitment but also to recruiting for experienced or industry hires.

Building a winning recruiting team is somewhat like creating and managing a great sports team. It requires drive, focus, and endurance. Following are eight fundamentals for creating an effective recruiting team and actions to take to achieve them.

1. Talented players who deliver. Talented performers are those who do well in play and who take behind-the-scenes preparation seriously. They keep their eyes on the ball, but know what's going on in the overall game. They accomplish their responsibilities, moving the team and organization forward. Put simply, they achieve results. All of your talented players come together to create a dynamic team that can achieve incredible results.

Action: Select individuals from different groups, offices, or regions. Introduce gender and ethnic diversity and a variety of backgrounds, levels, and styles. You don't have to limit your selections to only those groups that have openings. After all, your aim is to build a presence on campuses and offer a broad picture of what kinds of people bring your company to life. Choose people who will be good ambassadors and offer a diversity of perspectives. Bring out your role models and stars, those with incredible and interesting careers. Now is not the time to be modest. Above all, find recruiters who can effectively engage and really enjoy communicating with other people.

2. A good attitude. A favorite role model of mine, the late John Gardener, a professor at Stanford and former HEW Secretary, often talked about "tough-minded optimism." This means stretching yourself to high aspirations and believing you can reach them, while at the same time being realistic about what is possible, the challenges along the way, and what you need to do to succeed in your endeavors. People can learn skills, but attitudes are usually more genetically encoded, so to speak. You either have a positive attitude or you don't.

Action: Call on individuals who are enthusiastic about their jobs and the organization, understand the value of recruiting new talent, and are motivated to play a role in growing the company, but who will also be realistic in talking about what's not so wonderful about the organization and changes they'd like to see take place. Job seekers appreciate the straight scoop and can tell when recruiters enjoy what they do and believe in the organization.

3. Individual and group accountability. Pulling together to accomplish a big feat is key, but the buck stops with each individual. A team's synergy is the sum total of each individual's efforts. When each member takes ownership of his or her part in achieving the team's goals, it is that much more likely that the team will succeed in accomplishing something larger than itself.

Action: Choose individuals who will take initiative and be accountable for the tasks they've taken on. You'll want people who will put the team's (and organization's) interests above their own. These individuals will be quick to share wins and accept responsibility for improving things they could've done better.

4. A sense of purpose. A favorite professor of mine at the Stanford Business School, Jim Collins, author of the best-selling, From Good to Great . . . Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't, notes that great leaders as well as great organizations are clear about what they stand forwhat their sense of purpose is. Likewise, a recruiting team needs a sense of purpose, one that must come from the organization.

Action: Throughout the course of your recruiting planning, you'll need to answer some of the following questions and articulate the answers to the recruiting team:

What does the organization stand for?
What are its values, vision, and mission?
How do new recruits fit into the bigger picture?
Why is recruiting important?
What are the team norms and culture?
How will you know if you've succeeded?
How you will evaluate your results and performance?

5. Endurance and stamina. You need energy and dedication to keep something worthwhile going, through good as well as challenging times. Recruitingwhether on MBA and undergraduate campuses or for experienced industry hiresis all about relationships, not transactions. Recruiting, as relationships, takes year-round effort and activity, and results typically build over years, rather than in one quick shot.

Action: Focus on building relationships with influential faculty, staff, and student leaders at the campuses where you plan to recruit. Initiate feedback loops on how the recruiting process can be improved. If you're just at the first stages of recruiting at a school or coming back after a break, realize that it will take a while to rebuild a presence and start seeing results. Try to integrate your schedule into the school's educational process so that you differentiate yourself from your competitors and get your name in front of the students. Research faculty initiatives, student- or school-sponsored conferences, student clubs, and their slate of activities for the school year. Decide what you'll spend your time and energy on for the year in total.

6. Ability to execute. A brilliant strategy and plan are little more than ideas without the ability to take action and execute them.

Action: Pay attention to the details. Be aware that every action, interaction, and activity reinforces your reputation, and ultimately what you will be able to accomplish in the long run. Develop a team culture that embraces the adage: Actions speak louder than words.

7. The ability to learn from mistakes. Great players are those who are able to look at themselves critically and accept responsibility for failure. Everyone makes mistakes. It's how we learn from them and apply our learning that will ultimately improve our game.

Action: The individuals on your team will have varying experience in recruiting. Those just starting out will inevitably encounter some bumps along the way. Even veterans, however, will make mistakes. Maybe the sentiment towards an entire industry has dramatically changed, and the recruiter who's been scheduled to speak at your event hasn't come prepared to speak to that change. Perhaps bad press about a few firms and their scandals are casting doubt on others, and your interviewers are not sure how to handle the situation. It could be something seemingly small, like an interviewer showing up late and getting lost, causing a backlog with all of the interviews scheduled for the day. Or perhaps a recruiter makes a negative remark about a competitor that doesn't go over well with students. Maybe one of your executives alienates candidates by negotiating offers too aggressively.

We've all made and been witness to mistakes made in the recruiting processboth our own and those of the candidates. The key point is to be open to acknowledging them and learning how to improve on them.

8. Love for the game. Whether you call it love, passion, enjoyment, or satisfactionif neither the individual nor the team has a love for what they're trying to accomplishin terms of both the journey and the destinationthey will most certainly fail to perform at even adequate levels.

Action: Build a team that loves, or at least likes, to take part in and contribute to the recruiting process. Without some modicum of passion for the job, the commitment won't be sustainable. If the team loves what it's doing, it will have the energy to override setbacks if, and when, they occur.

Following these eight fundamentals will not only build you a great recruiting team, it will also get you the best return on your recruiting investment by bringing in the best-fit, most qualified candidates possible. In addition, a great recruiting team can have a positive effect on your organization: Gathering enthusiastic, qualified individuals to work towards a single goal, one that benefits the organization, can create a stronger sense of community. This along with a strong internal hiring capability will serve your organization as a competitive strength.

Author Bio
Sherrie Gong Taguchi, Principal of Career-Inspirations.com, is a leading expert and author on career management, recruiting, and executive coaching. She was VP of Global University Recruiting at Bank of America, Director of Corporate HR for Dole Packaged Foods, and, for the past seven years, Assistant Dean and Director of the Stanford Business School's MBA Career Management Center and Management Communication Program.

Her book for employers, Hiring the Best and the Brightest ... A Roadmap to MBA Recruiting, has been lauded by Jerry Porras, author of Built to Last, who says: "It's a handbook, workbook, casebook, reference book, guidebook, and user's manual all audaciously rolled into one. A better description of the right way to find and retain great people does not exist. Whether you're hiring or wanting to get hired, this book is for you."

Her current book, The Ultimate Guide to Getting the Career You Want (And What to Do Once You Have It) (McGraw-Hill) is for individuals, ranging from recent college graduates through the executive level, who are aspiring to bold, meaningful, dynamic careers over a lifetime. Both of her books are available at BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com.