Recruiters and Staffing 1 of 2

Jeff Snyder, the author of this blog is the President of SecurityRecruiter.com; an executive search firm specialized in the recruitment of cyber security, corporate security, risk management, global compliance and global privacy professionals.  Jeff is a Certified MasterMind Executive Coach through Executive Coaching University and he holds a Stakeholder Centered Coaching certification from the Marshall Goldsmith Group.

The Weekly Staffing Meeting Begins

Okay team, we have a highly strategic Chief Information Security Officer Job to fill.  If we don’t fill this one correctly, the mistake could cost the company its brand and reputation not to mention millions of dollars and customer loyalty.  Who has ideas as to how we should go about filling this position?

The Staffing Team Contemplates

Everyone at the table brings up a name of a different local recruiter or search firm.  The group is excited because they’ve come up with the names of a dozen search firms in the local market.  These dozen firms have anywhere from 1 to 10 recruiters so the team is ecstatic when they figure out that there could be 40 or more recruiters working on this mission critical search.

With 40 or more recruiters, their search will be posted to every job board in the known universe.  They’re sure to see lots of candidates and by bringing a representative from each firm to a conference call with the hiring authority, there is no doubt in the staffing team’s mind that they’ll create healthy competition from all the hungry recruiters on the call.

Wait There’s More

The staffing team continues their discussion.  With all the coverage these recruiters will have on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and with their accounts on Monster, Dice, CareerBuilder and all the other social media outlets they have, the team is sure that the group of recruiters they’ve compiled will surely find top of the Bell Curve candidates for the company to interview.

This plan has success written all over it!

 

Where the Staffing Team Went Wrong

The first thing to not do when attempting to fill a highly specialized security job is to call every IT recruiter in town.  Information Security Jobs or Cyber Security Jobs are not traditional IT jobs.  It takes a recruiter who specializes in Security Recruiting to fill these types of positions.

A Paradigm Shift for the Staffing Team

When the staffing team thought they would be increasing competition and thereby increasing their chances of seeing outstanding talent by bringing multiple search firms in on their CISO search, they were wrong.  They should have found a CISO Recruiter.  When filling security jobs, it most definitely is not a discussion about quantity.  This is definitely a discussion where quality rules.

How Highly Specialized Recruiters Operate

Highly specialized recruiters have invested many years of time to become experts in their skill domains.  They not only have networks of people to tap into when they’re asked to recruit highly specialized talent, they know how to ask stakeholder decision makers questions that generalized recruiters don’t know how to ask.  They know when they’ve heard the right answers or the wrong answers to their highly specialized questions and they know how to probe deeply to determine exactly what a hiring decision maker really needs in a new hire.  They understand how to probe to uncover the business problems and/or opportunities a prospective candidate needs to understand.

Highly specialized recruiters generally don’t use their client’s job descriptions to attract talent.  They rewrite their client’s job descriptions in order to appeal to talent that sits at the top of the Bell Curve. 

Highly specialized recruiters shy away from crowds.  If other recruiters are working on their searches, they will give these searches very low priority on their desks.  These recruiters typically don’t care about being on vendor lists.  They are relationship builders and problem solvers and they are thought provoking professionals who frequently lead their clients to a different paradigm of thought that the client has never before considered. 

If specialized recruiters can’t get to key stakeholder decision makers when asked to work on a search, they tend to walk away.

Highly Specialized Recruiters are Sales Professionals

Highly specialized recruiters who have recruited for 10, 15, 20+ years understand they are sales professionals.  They understand that regardless of the industry specialization they possess, they are working with people and people come with psychological puzzles to solve.  These successful recruiters live to close deals and they seldom miss a close when they’re sure that the candidate they’ve recruited for their client is making the right decision by going to work for their client. 

Highly Specialized Recruiters Don’t Live on Job Boards

Highly specialized recruiters have many strategies for reaching the most talented candidates in their domain of specialization.  Generally, these recruiting experts don’t rely exclusively on job boards.  In order to get to the most talented security professionals who are generally gainfully employed, they engage in direct recruiting.  Because of their level of domain recruiting expertise, highly specialized recruiters are generally very talented at generating referrals.  These referrals are often directed to talented individuals who are not actively looking for a job.

Highly Specialized Recruiters Don’t Work for Free

Most highly specialized recruiters don’t work for free.  In other words, because they’re bringing a unique level of expertise to the table, they’ll end up doing a significant amount of consulting with their clients.  Therefore, their time is worthy of an engagement fee.   An engagement fee causes the employer to put skin into the recruiter’s game.  

It is a method of sharing risk.  These highly specialized and highly talented recruiters shy away from contingency searches where they’ll be taking on 100% of the risk available in the business transaction.   Not only do they shy away because they’re being asked to take on too much of the risk, specialized recruiters need to know that they’re working on searches that are mission critical to their clients and therefore, their clients are serious about acquiring the industry’s top talent.

From Michael Salisbury with the Human Resource Alliance (HRA) at www.hralliance.biz