Frank Mulligan

Some people have all the luck.

They find the right candidates for their companies, at the right time, and at the right salary. They seem to do it with ease and imply that it is not a difficult thing to do, if you have what they have. Even in a market as difficult as China they tell us that hiring is ‘going very well’.

But what do they have?. And are they really as successful as they seem?.

My experience tells me a good analogy for successful Recruiters is the duck in the water. Ducks look very calm above water but underneath their feet are working hard. In the Recruiter case, working hard to identify and close candidates. The surface calm and confident belies a huge volume of work behind the scenes to identify, assess and onboard professional staff.

So how do the successful ones do it?

Very briefly, a professional attitude is necessary to have but not enough. Strong effort is also necessary but also not enough. The thing that I think differentiates good Recruiters is that they have developed a good hiring process which they stick to, but not rigidly. Changes are evaluated and introduced only when they are proven i.e. measured.

Underlying the process is a set of attitudes or values that guide the Recruiter’s behaviour in different situations. This could be respect for candidates combined with a focus on client success, but these values could vary from person to person. The key issue is that the Recruiter sticks to these issues because they are part of the Recruiter’s makeup, having come from many years of experience.

You don’t need to have some form of online hiring process to deliver on this, but it certainly helps. My questions would be:

[i]How many Recruiters can achieve high levels of success using paper and a pen?. An Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) is not a perfect solution but it brings benefits that the pen ‘n paper set could never even imagine.

How can you focus on high level processess and values when all you are doing is screening hundreds and hundreds of unsuitable Resumes sent to you by email?. Zhaopin, China HR and 51 Job are great recruitment sites for China but everyone knows this, especially those candidates motivated to look for a new job.

How can you really add value if your work is bureaucratic and not strategic?.

How can you even know that you add value if you don’t measure what you do?

How can Recruiters in China not be on LinkedIn when it has finally become a useful source of Chinese candidates. And when they join how can they manage to have a half-filled profile and only 2 contacts? The same thing applies to Xing

It’s been a China-day.


[First posted on [url=http://www.talentinchina.com]Talent in China[/url]]

[Frank Mulligan• Entrepreneur-Recruiter-Speaker • Talent Software • english.talent-software.com • frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com]