Refreshing article on recruitment

I just received my monthly newsletter from Louise at UK Recruiter and just had to post this article that was published about an interview Louise did with a Recruiter for EA. It is one of the most refreshing articles I have read in a long time and wanted to share it with you.

Article One: The Secret of My Success – An Interview with Matthew Jeffery

Matthew Jeffery, is currently the Head of European Studio Recruitment for Electronic Arts (EA) http://jobs.ea.com, the leading publisher and developer of computer games, including Harry Potter, FIFA, Burnout, The Sims and The Simpsons. Matthew has been in this role for approaching 5 years. Previous to EA, Matthew worked agency side as a recruiter for TMP and Pricejamieson. Matthew started his career in PR & marketing and worked for, amongst others, NatWest. He holds a degree and a Masters from the London School of Economics, in Politics & Government.

What do you wish you'd known at the start of your career?
Everybody in a business claims they can recruit. Boy that’s a lie. Recruitment is an art. Just because you are ‘on the Board’ or an ‘Executive’, does not mean you have the people skills to recruit and convey your company’s employment brand. Throughout my experience I have often heard HR leaders and professionals believe that they are great recruiters and claimed that recruitment is one of many skills an HR professional uses. Also I hear how HR is a career and has the professional qualifications, eg IPD, and that recruitment does not. Let’s be clear, successful recruitment can make or break a business. Attracting the highest quality staff affects the bottom line. Most HR professionals just don’t get recruitment. That’s a plain and simple fact. Thankfully, EA’s HR leaders do, hence we have the support and freedom to innovate with our HR Partners. Recruitment is not just about ‘post and pray’ web / trade press adverts and briefing recruitment agencies. Boy oh boy, no. The best candidate for a job, is not always the one looking at job adverts or on a recruitment agency’s books. They need to be directly approached and relationships formed. Recruitment is all about relationships and trust.

Which person within the industry has influenced you the most?
That’s easy. Cindy Nicola, EA’s Director of Talent Acquisition. Cindy is a rock star in the world of recruitment. She quickly identified the Global War for Talent and set about a fundamental reorganisation of the recruitment business model. How many businesses can truly say that they are building predictable talent pipelines ahead of demand? How many businesses can truly claim to network and keep in touch with star candidates, even when they are not recruiting? How many businesses can truly claim to embrace web 2.0 for recruitment purposes and be recruiting using podcasts, blogs and a host of web networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook? Very few. Cindy introduced all this into the EA recruitment model, which must be seen as cutting edge. Due to this vision EA won the www.ere.net Award for use of Recruiting Technology last year.

Is there a person in recruitment you’d most like to emulate?
Firstly, there are very few innovative/great recruiters in the UK. Of course, there are heads of recruitment agencies but very few people I would wish to emulate. However, in the US, Jeff Hunter is a legend in the world of recruitment, particularly his understanding of recruiting technology. Take a look at his recruiting blog, www.talentism.com. I recommend any recruiter to look at his views, which often challenge the status quo of recruitment norms. He just gets recruitment full stop. Thanks to his drive, EA introduced a CRM (candidate relationship management) database, (salesforce), well ahead of the curve and modified it to an extent that EA’s recruiters can manage ongoing relationships with both present and future EA candidates. That’s awesome.

Which lesson has taken the longest to learn?
That jobs specs are not needed in recruitment. Think about it. How many job descriptions accurately convey what a person actually does in a role, or the skills they bring to it. Job specs are the security baby blanket for recruiters to use to post and pray on web sites and send to candidates. The best candidates, who can make a difference to a business, may not get in because of the job description that has been put in place, and sometimes the stringent experience and qualifications may preselect the best out because they don’t fit certain criteria. Wow, would a company knock back an Alan Sugar or Richard Branson because they lacked a University Degree? Yes, many would because they cannot see outside the blinkers of ‘easy’ recruitment. Recruitment may mean looking at the best people in a function / the up and coming stars and then making space for their skills into the business and harnessing their potential, rather than straight-jacketing a candidate into a role to fulfil a job spec. Recruitment is often about being creative and taking risks. Few do it.

What is the biggest mistake a recruiter can make?
Let’s look at this from both agency side and in-house. If you work in a recruitment agency, don’t get mesmerised by targets. The key goal is to make your overall billing target. How you get there needs to be driven by you. Live and die by your own actions. But agencies complicate matters by adding in other targets like the number of interviews per week, number of cv send outs per week, number of business development calls etc. I can remember making my billing target but getting told off because I did not interview enough candidates in a week or send enough speculative cv’s out. That’s just rubbish. Building successful relationships with clients is about building trust and showing that you can qualify candidates successfully and only send through the best people. That means sending fewer but higher quality candidates. Why send candidates to clients speculatively in the age old ‘hit and hope’ that one will stick. It just hacks clients off. Pure and simple. Same with interviewing. Why waste time interviewing candidates that you cannot do anything with just to meet targets? Spend that time sourcing new candidates for roles that you can exclusively win over and place. For in-house recruiters, I recommend just get off your backside and realise that you can ‘sell’ your company better than recruitment agencies and you should directly source yourself. Web 2.0 puts the recruitment power back in your hands.

What cliché do you think is true?
Expect the unexpected. Recruitment is about dealing with the most irrational of all things: humans. No placement or hire is a given. Things can go wrong, even on the day of joining.

What Cliché do you think is false?
Recruitment is not a rocket science. I have heard this so many times, often stated by moronic people who just see recruitment as something as simple as advertising and briefing agencies. Let’s look at the current market. We are operating in a market where there is a global war for talent. Candidates are mobile and will go to where a company offers them the best opportunities. Companies now have to be savvy and focus more than ever on their employment brand and how they retain their employees. Recruitment is not easy. A great recruiter now also needs to be great at marketing, PR & sales…..oh and recruitment!!!!!!

What words of advice would you give to someone starting out in recruitment?
I strongly recommend that recruiters have to believe in themselves. Look at the best billers in your agency or the most successful in-house recruiters and identify what makes them successful. Then look at how you can build on their skills and differentiate yourself. The strongest recruiters are those who are natural and who can build up their own networks. It really is true, ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’. Recruiters should never just fall into the sheep syndrome and follow what others tell them to do. If you do, you will fade into being one grey face in a crowd of mediocrity. If you go down the route of hard sales, you may get some short term hits, but ultimately people will lose faith in you, see you as pig ignorant and pull their business away. Hard sales should be left to the east end market stalls. Lastly, know your product. Knowing your product gives you credibility and wins confidence in you. We all go to the shops at a weekend. It’s the major time for shopping. But think how many shops just have dedicated weekend staff, who have no clue of their products. I was in Currys at the weekend buying a new LCD TV. The shop assistant was all over me, but when I asked a question, they just looked blank, read what was on the label describing the product and asked if I would like to buy the product now at discount or spread over easy payments. Wow. You guessed it, I walked out.

What is your favourite interview technique?
My advice here is be natural. I have seen many recruiters fall into the trap of preparing lists of questions or full blown competency interviews, that are so robotic that the candidate just maintains their ‘interview face’. Lets face it candidates come to interviews, having rehearsed in their mind what they want to tell you. Those interviewers who focus on following a cv in backward chronological order often fall into this trap of moving from job to job and then the candidate controls their answers. By getting a candidate to relax, in an informal meeting setting, means that the candidate often lets down their guard and offers across information that they otherwise would not do. Recruitment is about relationships. Win over trust and get a candidate comfortable in what they tell you, and you move away from the pre-rehearsed theatre interview rubbish.

What do you think it is that has made you so successful?
Recognising that to be a leading recruiter means that you learn from other disciplines like sales, PR and Marketing. Self belief and self motivation have been huge drivers in my career and constantly challenging existing norms and the status quo, results in innovation and differentiates recruitment style and employment brand from others. Lastly, enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy you job, others will see right through you.