Fame and Fortune Can Be Yours: 5 Rules to grow Your Recruiting Practice.

Posted by Jim Stroud

August 21, 2007

Fame and Fortune Can Be Yours
5 Rules to grow Your Recruiting Practice.

Howard Adamsky
My work involves interfacing with search and recruiting firms on behalf of clients on a regular basis. Sadly, much of what I see are things that need to change because so many of the problems that existed two decades ago when I was in the agency business are, much to my amazement, still rampant and this reality should be flat out unacceptable to a business thinker like yourself.

I see firms get larger; I see them get smaller. I see them come, and I see them go. I see key players break off from one firm to form their own with the grandest of hopes and aspirations; only to suffer the same fate and become much like the very practice they left in the first place. This is madness.

Clearly, something has got to change. It is my belief that those individuals who run these firms would be able to build much better businesses if they made a few changes in how they think and, as a result, how they operate.

If you believe that the agency business will never change because this is the nature of the beast, you are probably right and that will be your fate. However, if you believe that there has to be a better way of building a strong and profitable practice then that belief alone has you on your way to making that ideal a reality. Many things need to change in order to make that happen, but consider the following five as a great place to start:

1. Stop hiring employees just to “give them a try”. This thinking is deadly and will never support long term growth and profitability. Great organizations would never do this and neither should you. Hiring the right people for the right reasons is as important for you as it is for the clients with which you place candidates. Turnover and turmoil kills motivation, damages morale and hurts client relationships. Hire slow and hire smart if you want to build a great organization.

2. Develop an inspired compensation plan. Compensation drives behavior and you should use this maxim to your advantage. Come up with a compensation plan that is new, creative, and exciting. Be an innovator. Hire a sales comp guy if you have to and tell him to bend the rules. (A lot.) Use bonuses, dinners, prizes, recognition and anything else that it takes to keep people hot on the trail of hitting that next compensation level and making the big dollars they came for in the first place.

3. Diversify your practice. Some people say “specialize or die.” That is wrong. I say specialize and die! I know of an agency that specialized in only a very specific technology. They had thirty-seven recruiters at their peak. Last I heard, there were only three left after outsourcing swallowed their business. Recruiting is a core competency. A good recruiter can find Systems Analysts today and Medicinal Chemists tomorrow. I know this for a fact; I did it. Diversify or pay the price for not doing so.

4. Train and build great teams. Endless training and teambuilding leads to a level of joint effort and collaborative thinking that will make all of your recruiters more successful. Want your recruiters to make more placements? Turn them into better recruiters and everyone makes more money. (By the way, it is good for retention as well.)

5. Worry about your recruiter’s income before you worry about your income. Do you think about how much money you will make before you think about how much money your recruiters will make? If so, reverse that thinking. Worrying about what you will make does nothing for the recruiters who work for you. If you spend more time thinking about their compensation and less about yours, you can be free to come up with strategies for supporting their success and this alone will put more dollars in your pocket. This is clearly doing well by doing right.

In closing, please understand it is imperative that you become a long-term thinker. Owners must look over the next three to five years and come up with a business plan that supports intelligent, aggressive and well thought out growth. How you can make another placement or two this month is nice but that will not take care of the future, and the future is coming hard and coming fast. Think long term and you will create the type of future you always wanted to have. Once again, the time for change is now.

Howard Adamsky
Consultant to Professional Business Builders
Charter Member, Society for Advancement of Consulting
www.hrinnovators.com

Howard’s book, Hiring and Retaining Top IT Professionals/The Guide for Savvy Hiring Managers and Job Hunters Alike is available at most bookstores and online.