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Talent Trade Tidbit - Realistic Hiring
If you're looking for a candidate, you'd better keep your expectations...realistic. Stephanie shares a story of how she had to give it straight to one client, and why ultimately, they appreciated the candor.
Transcript
Hi, this is Stephanie Maas.
Speaker:Today I wanna share with you the most common conversation I am having with clients and potential clients, and it is about the quality of candidates, the market is varying.
Speaker:Just in the last couple weeks I was on the call.
Speaker:With a potential client, and I was very appreciative.
Speaker:They had been referred to me by another client and they called me up and they were very excited.
Speaker:They said, Hey, we typically don't use search firms, but we've heard great things about you and we really need help on filling this position.
Speaker:So of course I was very excited.
Speaker:Tell me all about it.
Speaker:What are you looking for?
Speaker:And as we started to get into some of the specifics, I started to understand why they were gonna have a hard time filling the role.
Speaker:In summary, their expectations were incongruent with the compensation that they were offering.
Speaker:And so when it became appropriate, I shared with them.
Speaker:Hey, I really appreciate the call.
Speaker:And, and before we take it too much further, I probably need to give you some education from the marketplace.
Speaker:And we talked through a recent search or two that I had done that was very similar to what they were looking for.
Speaker:In the same market, and I explained the compensation that the market was bearing.
Speaker:They realized that quite frankly, they were pretty far off the mark.
Speaker:We talked through a couple possible solutions and at the end of the day they said, well, gosh, if we make those changes, I'm not really sure we're gonna need you.
Speaker:And while it was difficult to hear that, no one likes to hear that, I said, yeah, you may not.
Speaker:And sincerely, you should probably try it on your own.
Speaker:Save yourself my fee for a month and see what you can find.
Speaker:Of course, if you get stuck and you can't find what you need at that point, please call me back.
Speaker:I just did similar searches there.
Speaker:They were so appreciative.
Speaker:Here's what's interesting and what happened.
Speaker:They called me a week later and they said, you know what?
Speaker:We actually don't know if we're gonna be able to find what we want without you.
Speaker:We really appreciated the approach that you took.
Speaker:We're gonna give you the search anyway with the new criteria.
Speaker:Of course, I was super thankful, but what it reminded me of was the conversations of right now in the marketplace, because competition for talent is so high.
Speaker:What the market is bearing in passive candidates, and that's usually what I get called to go find.
Speaker:The active ones are pretty easy to locate are let's go to the passive candidate pool.
Speaker:Unfortunately though, what happens is when they go to call me, what they're thinking is, Hey.
Speaker:I will take a six or seven without a recruiter fee, but if I'm gonna pay you, they've gotta be a 10 or a 10, or my favorite FA phrase right now is they need to be a purple spotted unicorn.
Speaker:My response is always the same.
Speaker:I'm not even sure unicorns exist for me to go find a purple spotted one.
Speaker:While I think I'm pretty good at what I do, I don't know that I'm.
Speaker:That good, but here's what I can tell you about with the market's spar.
Speaker:I can go to the passive candidate pool and I will bring back for you three to four to five folks that are somewhere between a six and a half or an eight outta 10.
Speaker:That's what the market's bearing.
Speaker:It may not be a purple spotted unicorn.
Speaker:It's still gonna probably be a four-legged furry animal that maybe has a tail, and I'm not saying it's a unicorn, but probably pretty close.
