You can’t hear it often enough—you’re not looking for good candidates, but excellent employees. While good candidates always have the right answers because they know what you want to hear, passive candidates will make you work harder. You’ll need to get through to them, appeal to them, know what drives them, and motivate them to enter the selection process, without every losing sight of the fact that you have to assess them. To do all this, you have to earn their trust. Recruiters who still believe that candidates have to sell themselves will not have much luck in recruiting the best talents.
They will only be able to deliver to their managers and internal clients people who are motivated by earning more money, a more prestigious position or the cushy comfort of a company with better benefits. Such employees will only last a certain time—the time that it takes them to start searching for yet a better opportunity. In fact, the person you are looking for and that your manager is eagerly awaiting must adopt the company’s values, and adhere to its project and vision by harnessing all of his or her technical and soft skills for the job he or she was hired for.
Dear recruiters, you have today become gold seekers and diamond prospectors. There should be nothing mechanical in your process, because adventure awaits you. Put aside your stuffy interviewing guides and tired selection techniques. Get to know this individual with all the sincerity, authenticity and humility you have (you certainly do not have all the answers to his or her questions). You have to like people and be interested in them to do this job well; if not, all you are is a recruiter seeking to fill job openings. Recruiters who have been around a long time and are known by their clients and candidates for their active listening skills are those who really care about people. Only they know how to turn discarded candidates into loyal allies for future assignments. Always keep in mind that a recruiting assignment is an adventure and an experience above all.
- Create a climate of trust. Don’t greet a candidate, but do greet a person, a professional. Be open and ready to listen. Don’t rush your questions and don’t try to fill out your selection grid as soon as the person arrives. Give the person time by breaking the ice and making him or feel comfortable. Schedule enough time and don’t run through your interviews back-to-back. You’ll need all your mental availability. The quality of your interview depends entirely on your own frame of mind and not the candidate’s. Welcome the candidate as you would welcome a new acquaintance, a future friend, to your home.
- Find out some personal interests you and the person share—maybe a love for sports, culture, an author or a movie. Perhaps you come from the same hometown, went to the same university, or had the same teachers? Recently, I learned more at the very end of an interview than in the whole preceding hour. The person had written in his résumé that he had run a marathon in 2002. I asked him if he still ran, and his transformation was eye opening. Up until that point, he had been rather reserved and unforthcoming, but he then opened up and told me that it was his last marathon because he had become a father in 2003. With a young family, he had no time to train, especially since his partner had a high-powered job and had gone back to work quickly. In the space of just a few minutes, I learned more about him and his personal and professional situation (accordingly, we talked about his motivations freely and openly).
- Don’t discuss the job in the first few minutes. Let the person talk about his or her job, career path, and likes and dislikes. Let him or her come to you without leaping to conclusions and trying to validate your grid or following your interview guide to the letter. Regardless of the order, what ultimately matters is getting your answers, a bit like winning the lottery with out-of-sequence numbers!
- When you get to the heart of the matter, tell the candidate you completely understand he or she is not actively looking for a job and that you are simply there to get to know him or her better, whether it be for this opportunity or the next. No pressure, no rapid-fire questions. Just saying it will put the person at ease, while piquing his or her curiosity. After all, he or she did invest the time and effort to come meet with you, so he or she probably has a certain interest. No one has that much time to waste, and that’s when he or she will start to promote himself or herself. When you try too hard, you don’t succeed. This is a lesson that trout fishermen have learned—you have to feign disinterest for the fish to bite.
- When you have a handle on the person and have done a quick check of his or her motivations, suggest that he or she think about it, take a day or two to mull over your opportunity and what your organization has to offer. Instead of trying to set up another interview at all costs, let him or her call you back. Resist the (strong) temptation to show your interest. Just say that you see a potential for him or her to grow within your company and that your group could certainly benefit from hiring him or her but that everything is a question of timing.
- Make the person think about his or her current situation, and what he or she is missing today (from the hints dropped at the start of the interview). Look for the weakness and bring him the candidate to realize and become aware of it.
When you are about to wrap up the interview, go back to the beginning of your discussion, closing on a warm and friendly note and on a topic other than that for which you met. Tell the person how much you enjoyed the opportunity to meet with him or her and that regardless of the outcome of the process, you will stay in touch in the future. In so doing, you will have gained a valuable ally who will help you find your precious gem, or join your company, convinced that he or she shares the same values—whether he or she is your one-in-a-million candidate or not. Never forget that the passive candidate, as appealing as he or she might be, may not be the person you are seeking. Should you choose to discontinue the process, your approach will allow you to exit gracefully without offending the person.
Nathalie Francisci, Adma, CRHA
Executive Vice-president
at Mandrake Groupe Conseil