My presentation to small round table groups at SourceCon in September 2016

1. Working The Recruiting
Funnel
By Evan Herman

2. The Problem – Urgent Need For 1 Director of
Strategy & 1 VP of Business Development
 New urgent job openings due to corporate growth and anticipated new
business within next 90 days
 Need to gather market intelligence, develop a strategy & plan, and deliver!
 Business looking for following from talent acquisition team:
1) Understanding of the competitive landscape/marketplace for talent
2) Sound sourcing strategy to find & deliver top talent
3) Overall plan on everything from selection process to tools to costs

3. Words Matter! Recruiting vs. Staffing
 Recruiting & Staffing are not synonymous. The approach I am am about to
discuss applies only to recruiting. The following approach is not advisable or
practical for staffing.
 For my personal use and for purposes of this presentation, recruiting is
defined as searching for & hiring non-entry level, non-high volume, non-
hiring a “class” of people for the same role for the same start date type roles.
 Staffing, while highly related and similar to recruiting is not the same thing.
Staffing requires completely different tactics, approaches, and strategies
when compared with recruiting.
 Staffing is searching for and hiring for roles that are either entry level and/or
open to people without direct experience, are high volume roles, and/or are
roles regularly hired in bulk and/or are always in need of being hired.

4. Step 1 – Hold A Job Opening Intake Meeting w.
All Relevant Business Partners
 Caveat – In real life, talent acquisition should & would never presume to
provide advice to business leaders and partners without first consulting with
them, asking questions, and gathering information.
 Any talent acquisition professional who proceeds to provide advice, plans,
and/or a strategy for job openings without first doing a job opening intake
call is doing their business partners, their prospective candidates, and
themselves a disservice
 A job opening intake meeting is necessary for talent acquisition to understand
the businesses' true needs, and, if nothing else, provides the information
needed for talent acquisition to put together a great “job achievement
description” which will be explained in Step 2

5. Step 1 Cont’d – The Job Opening Intake
Meeting
 There is no standard job opening intake meeting, but they all entail the
talent acquisition team speaking with as many relevant business leaders and
partners as possible in order to fully understand their needs and the role the
job opening will play in the company’s overall financial and strategic goals as
well as it’s talent acquisition compliance goals
 A second component of all job opening intake meetings is asking the questions
needed to understand what the business expects a hired person to actually
achieve once on the job
 Standard and default job descriptions are insufficient, as they, among other
reasons, describe a person, not a job, and do not describe what the business
truly needs

6. Step 1 – Cont’d – The Job Opening Intake
Meeting
 The job opening intake meeting usually takes 30-45 minutes, and besides
basic questions about the job, team overview, etc. and will involve questions
such as the following:
1) What precise type of work will this person(s) be performing most of the time?
2) What are the biggest challenges or problems this person would need to
address as an individual?
3) What are the top team issues, problems, or challenges?
4) What are the precise key deliverables/achievements for this person?
5) What are some regular typical problems/challenges this person will face?
6) Help me sell this job. Why should your target candidates be interested in this
job? How precisely will it advance their career?

7. Step 2 – Transform The Job Descriptions
Into Job Achievement Descriptions
 Job achievement descriptions have several benefits.
 They better allow prospective top candidates to match themselves for the
jobs.
 They make for much better job candidate profiling or marketing calls and
discussions
 Often times, this will lead to much better referrals due to people who
converse with the recruiters, hiring managers, etc. having a much better
understanding of precisely what the business is targeting.
 Job achievement descriptions are also an affirmative defense, thus
prospective huge legal costs saver against claims of discriminatory hiring
practices, etc.

8. Step 3 – Proactively Work W. Business To
Construct A Target Contact List of 50/75/100
People
 Back to the job opening intake meeting- Part 2 of the meeting would be to
get specific guidance as to the precise profile and people to target.
 In other words, talent acquisition would interview relevant business partners
to get a better sense of the precise target profile and, ideally, specific
“benchmark” candidates (ie – “someone just like this guy would be great!”)
 This will give talent acquisition the foundation with which build the best
50/75/100 person target contact list and recruiting funnel possible for both
searches
 If the business is properly interviewed and coached by talent acquisition an
initial list of 10-20 people to target and contact should be produced
 This will be used as a starting point to get an additional 40-80 people to
contact (not necessarily recruit) for the opening

9. Step 3 Cont’d – What Does A Target List
Look Like? This X 50/75/100
Name Employer Title Location Phone Email Social
Media
Links
Activity
John
Doe
Lockheed X Chicago X X X 9/20 LI
invite
msg
9/19 –
lvm ,
sent
email,

10. Step 4 – Filling In The List of 50/75/100.
Tactics, etc.
 Before doing so, in real life talent acquisition would lay out ALL options for
business leaders before proceeding.
 These options will include doing nothing (do you really have to hire anyone if the
“right” person is not found or available in 90 days?) and the option to use an
outside search firm (proceed to explain contingent vs retainted, costs, benefits,
etc.)
 Start by Boolean searching for your company/client’s own current employees on
the relevant LOB/team by doing the following in google: site:linkedin.com AND
“Boeing” AND “strategy” OR “business development” if you were hypothetically
looking to source a strategy/business development executive for Boeing
 Proceed to check with business leaders to see how useful these current profiles,
sources of hire, etc. are to the current job openings
 Repeat Boolean searching for candidates replacing your company/client name with
competitors and other relevant companies to source from.

11. Step 5 – Narrow Pipelines To 10 Candidates
Worth A Phone Interview W. Hiring Leaders
 After concurrently contacting and building out the contacts on the list of
50/75/100, talent acquisition will begin profiling candidates over the phone
 The candidate profiling questions will mirror the questions asked of hiring
leaders to develop the “job achievement description”
 After walking prospective candidates through your company/client, the role
,etc. I will ask each of them 2 basic questions as a foundation for a full
profile.
1) Describe for me your great achievement that demonstrates you are prepared
to achieve for my company/clientwhat I just described? Use STAR questions to
deterimine if they are indeed a star candidate
2) How would you go about solving the problems, challenges I described if you
were at my company/client? – make sure in intake call to get guidance from
hring leaders on satisfactory vs. unsatisfactory answers to this question

12. Step 5 Cont’d – Illustration Of A
Completed Candidate Profile
 Candidate Name – Candidate For Job X
 Graduate Degree yr, degree type, school, & location
 Undergraduate Degree yr, degree type, school, & location
 Present/ Most Recent Job Title & Employer
 Previous relevant Job Titles & Employers
 Brief description of job responsibilities
 Active/Passive? Why looking/open to new job? Top Motivators to make a move
 Answers to 2 questions – 1) Success Story, and 2) What Would You Do?
 Present/Recent Salary, bonus %, stock, retirement, etc. details
 Job Move Explanations – 1 quick sentence each

13. Step 6 – Proactively Work With Business
Leaders To Narrow 10 to 5 then 2 & 1
 From the 50/75/100 person contact list and, more so, from the 5-10
candidates profile/interviewed, your company/client will learn a lot more
about the real competitive landscape for the talent it needs and where the
company stands
 Talent acquisition can help your company/client adjust the job,
compensation, target profile, etc. as needed every step of the way
 If 5-10 qualified on paper and by profiling call w. talent acquisition candidates
are entered into the pipeline, your company/client should be able to narrow
it down to 5 well qualified candidates and ultimately a final 2
 The final 2 are the top choice candidate & the back-up
 Every step of the way, talent acquisition will be sharing any and all
marketplace intelligence learned & will provide recommendation on
appropriate responses from your company/client

14. Step 7 – Close Top Candidate On Offer
 Proactively work with the business leaders to put together a one and best
offer together for the top candidates so as to avoid the drama, and
back/forth of a protracted negotiation with uncertain outcome
 It is important to put together, whenever possible, an offer that not only is
acceptable to a candidate, but one which he/she is excited about

15. Step 8 – Review Of Tools, Tactics, Etc. To
Use To Find, Contact, & Sell Top Talent
 Don’t reinvent the wheel– vigorously interview all relevant business leaders, to see
who they already know that would be a great fit.
 Conduct a post mortem on all relevant job openings at employer in last 3 years
and see if there are any candidates to reconsider for current job openings
 Coach all business leaders and team members on how they can help talent
acquisition help themselves (the business). Advise them of plethora of statistics
showing the best hires are likely to come from employee referrals as they now the
people, have worked with them, know they are a culture fit, etc.
 Use Boolean searches like one shown earlier combined with other free tools such
as LinkedIn, chrome extensions (i.e. Prophet, Hubspot, and Discoverly) and your
own CRM/database to find, gather contact information, research, and reach out to
target contacts and candidates.

16. Review, Conclusion, & Questions?
 1) Understanding of the competitive landscape/marketplace for talent
- No presumptions made other than presumed difficulty at this time of year to
source talent at this level. Other info to be obtained throughout the search
process and relayed to business leaders every step of the way
 2) Sound sourcing strategy to find & deliver top talent
- Working together with business to use great intake call and new “job
achievement description” to start with 100 contacts, narrow it to 10 worth an
interview, then 5 then 2 & 1
 3) Overall plan on everything from selection process to tools to costs
- Process described above. Tools to be used will all be free. Costs will only
involve the time of talent acquisition and hiring leaders involved in the search