I recently attended the National Association of Personnel Services (NAPS360.org) conference in Boston. If you are a recruiter serious about your trade, you should belong to NAPS (your industry’s trade association). You can learn much from attending the conferences because there is considerable focus on training. It is some super content delivered by real recruiters!
Jeremy Sisemore was one of the presenters (www.asaptalentservices.com). I really liked his style, but even more importantly his content. One of the topics he covered was learning to take a good job brief. There is obviously an opportunity to do this well or to do this quickly. He shared how a great recruiter can do this well.
There are 3 questions for recruiters to consider:
- Ask your client to list for you the priorities for the hire to fill this opening. Ask about the priorities around the cost of this hire, the urgency of this hire, the importance of this role. Armed with those facts you are in a better position to prioritize your effort and deliver on the client’s expectations. If you don’t ask these questions, you may be going slowly after high-priced talent for a critical role and the client expects a low-cost speedy fill of a very mundane position.
- Ask why the position is open. Is it hard to keep people in the role because they get promoted, get bored and leave, or are they underpaid and overworked?
- Ask if you may present your “pitch” or presentation back to the hiring manager before moving forward with the search. This is something that the best recruiters always do. You are then selling a reality to the candidate that the client is tuned into and can support in the interview and hiring process. Otherwise what you are promoting can be undone by the client during the hiring process.
Are there other questions for recruiters to always ask of clients? What are the highest value questions built into your job brief process?
