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| My latest column in Leadership Magazine is out, check it out on page 38 and 39. |
Having the right team on your side is crucial; they can make or break your company. They also play an incredibly important role in how your organisation is perceived, which ultimately contributes to the business’ reputation.
Do you have a recruitment strategy and policy in place, or do you just hire people as the need arises and hope for the best? I recently caught up with Lisa Wannell, Founder and Director of Halogen Search and Selection; they specialise in placing senior level candidates in the corporate communications and investor relations space, and we chatted about the importance of getting the right person on board in a company.
What exactly does a search and selection specialist do?
In short, a search and selection specialist will go out into the market to search for people with particular experience, skills or expertise and from that pool of people select the most appropriate candidates for a client brief. My particular specialism is corporate and marketing communications and investor relations and the majority of positions I work on with clients are at a senior level. The lifeblood of any search consultant is their network within their specialist field, their relationships with their clients and the depth of their knowledge of their particular industry.
Why is it important to invest in a search consultant?
It is important to invest in a search consultant for the simple reason that it will save a client time and money. Specialist recruiters have invariably spent years cultivating a network of professionals who are experts in a particular field. They can quickly tap into this network when taking on a new mandate to begin targeting potential candidates and, critically, asking for referrals and recommendations to identify ‘passive’ talent; people who aren’t actively looking for a new position. They understand the brief and they know the right questions to ask the client to drill down beyond what is outlined in a job description (if there is one). Generalist recruiters don’t have this depth of knowledge or the instant network. Building networks takes time and clients generally don’t want to wait months before they can start interviewing candidates.
What are the top key things to ask your search consultant?
Ask for evidence that they have successfully filled similar briefs, in the same or relevant industry, in organisations of a similar size and operating structure. Find out which other firms they have worked with in your sector, this is important to establish early on to avoid any conflicts of interest, to identify any potential ‘hunting grounds’ or, equally important, which companies are off-limits to the search consultant. The chemistry between a hiring manager and the search consultant is extremely important and you will usually be able to gauge this at the first meeting. Good recruiters will have done their homework on your company before the first briefing meeting and will know the right questions to ask to really get a sense of what the criteria of a role should be, what the key challenges are that the company is facing, what their appetite is for change, what kind of individuals do well there and critically, whether the profile of the person they’re looking to hire is in fact the right one. Experienced search consultants might ask difficult questions around this subject and challenge a client to re-think the role profile.
Are there some non-negotiable / deal breakers to be aware of when investing in a search consultant?
This varies depending on which country you’re working in. In the UK, for instance, it’s rare for a recruiter to be asked to do formal background checks on a candidate, as the hiring company’s Human Resources (HR) team usually prefers to handle this. In South Africa, however, background checks are often undertaken by the search consultant; checking educational credentials is important, given the problem of forged and spurious qualification certificates. It’s usually a very straight-forward process but sometimes it does throw up unforeseen results which can delay an offer process. Discovering that a candidate has a criminal record obviously raises a rather large red flag but whether their career should be held to ransom because of a traffic offence that took place 15 years previously…that might seem a bit harsh!
What does your recruitment process look like?
A meeting with a new client, ideally the hiring manager and HR, is a great opportunity to start building a relationship, finding out more about the company, where they’re at in their evolution, challenges they may have in identifying new talent and to drill down into the details of the particular role. On the candidate side, I try to meet every candidate I introduce to a client, either as part of a shortlisting process or even if I plan to make a speculative approach to a client on their behalf. This meeting is critical. Ideally it happens face to face but failing that, via Skype. Aside from talking through the technical aspects of their experience, this meeting provides a huge amount of valuable insight into a candidate’s personality type, how they think, how they sell themselves, (a critical skill and one which candidates tend to forget, particularly if they haven’t interviewed for a while), as well as what their priorities are in terms of their next role. If I’m considering them for a specific role, I’ll provide as much background to the role and insight into the company and team as possible. The next part of the process is the part I most enjoy and it’s where external recruiters get a chance to really add value: introducing a candidate to a client. A CV only tells part of the candidate’s story; it has to be brought to life, there has to be a strong case for why that candidate is on the shortlist or you’re bringing them to the client’s attention if it’s a speculative approach. This is particularly important if the candidate is off-brief; they may not be an obvious fit for a role but if I believe they have something else to offer which the client may not even have thought of and will be a good cultural fit, then I’ll try to make a strong case for why the client should meet them. Being the middleman/woman between client and candidate during an interview process is a key part of the job. You have to be able to relay feedback, both positive and negative and make sure the process stays on track from the first interview to the offer stage. Candidates can go through wobbles en route and clients may change a brief, you have to be available to advise and counsel both.
What is the one thing you wished clients knew or did, when it comes to investing in your services?
I think search consultants are often brought in as a ‘last resort’ or a necessary evil when internal teams haven’t managed to find the right candidates or self-recruiting hasn’t yielded results. There’s a perception that bringing in an external search consultant will be an unnecessary expense (why can’t we just put and advert up ourselves and see what comes back?) There is enormous value in calling in specialist recruiters right at the start of a process to advise on all aspects of a role; from key skills to salary benchmarking and market mapping. I frequently hear from hiring managers (in my case these tend to be Corporate Affairs or Investor Relations (IR) Directors or Financial Directors (FD)s/Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) that their internal talent teams have sent on a pile of CVs and/or candidate profiles (usually from LinkedIn) but very few of them are strong enough to warrant an interview. To get to this stage may have taken several weeks… It’s also interesting to note that interviewing, getting the best out of a candidate in an hour, is a skill and not all clients are good at it. I spend a lot of time giving candidates interview prep; sometimes I wish clients would ask for it too!
What is the one thing you wished the people on your books hoping to be hired knew / did when it comes to your services?
The relationship between a recruiter and a candidate is a really important one and it’s very much a two-way street. In this job you do develop a bit of a nose for time-wasters and window-shoppers; candidates who aren’t really serious about moving and use the process as leverage to pitch for a salary increase at their current company. This rarely ends well for a candidate as their loyalty to their present company is called into question, the recruitment consultant won’t be inclined to work with that candidate again and they can very quickly get a bad reputation in the market. Sloppy CVs are another bug-bear: it’s an important calling card document and not spending the time to make it look good, correcting spelling and grammatical errors and inconsistences in dates, etc. doesn’t create a good first impression.
What is the one thing that people get wrong about the work you do?
I think that the value that specialist recruiters can offer companies is enormous and the benefits to using their services aren’t always well understood. HR Directors often view external recruiters with suspicion, to be kept at bay, instead of as potential business partners who could bring valuable insights into their company from the outside world. A specialist recruiter will save a client both time and money. The big name global search firms with offices in South Africa may trade on their strong, international C-suite network and their specialist sector teams but ask them to find a Corporate Affairs Director or an Investor Relations specialist to help a company with its JSE listing and they invariably won’t deliver as quickly as a specialist will.
Is there anything else that you would like to add?
I believe that the recruitment industry as a whole, from executive search consultants placing CEOs and Non-Executive Directors (NED) to IT and other high-volume recruiters, is one which urgently needs to reinvent itself and be disrupted. The competition for top talent is fierce and too often hiring new people is a knee-jerk reaction to a post becoming vacant or a restructuring that is already taking place. The majority of job descriptions I see are too prescriptive and they prioritise technical capability over qualities such as leadership potential, mentoring skills and the ability to influence and inspire. Granted, you can’t get all this down in a job spec but the companies who will climb to the top of the list as the ones people want to work for are those that hire the right people, (which may mean being brave enough to hire someone without a pre-defined role in mind), and then empowering them to be the best they can be.
For more information about Halogen Search and Selection visit www.halogensearch.co.za
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