In Tuesday’s article, I began a discussion about what it takes to be great at recruiting.

I quoted an article in Forbes written by Meghan Biro entitled, “5 Recruiting Habits of Successful Leaders.” I found all of the precepts relevant, but there were 3 habits that really seemed to define what is needed to be successful in the area of recruiting. Habit 1 was discussed in the previous blog. Today’s article will present habits 2 and 3.

To refresh your memory of the concept, here is the first paragraph of Meghan’s article.

“The simple fact is that recruiting is often a company’s first impression, and a reflection of its culture and workforce brand personality. It’s a spectacular — and too underexploited — opportunity to wow, woo, seduce and excite talent. Top talent doesn’t want to work in Dullsville. They want to work in a company that understands, challenges, excites, surprises and delights them. They want to work hard, play hard, and feel appreciated.  Recruiting should be where the courtship starts. Your organization doesn’t have to be a Zappos or Google — to attract “the right fit” and talent skill set you need to soar.”

Below are excerpts from the remaining two habits that are specific for recruiting:

Make The Necessary Leadership Changes

Your weaknesses should be pretty obvious when your inventory is finished. Whatever you decide, consider hiring outside talent to help you develop a holistic, integrated recruiting process. Of every choice, ask the following two questions:

    Is this going to help us attract stellar talent?

    Is it a true reflection of our company?  Remember: Recruitment is a major branding opportunity.

Keep It Real

As I touched on above, your recruiting process must be a genuine reflection of your company’s leadership and workplace culture. Whether your organization is way zany, slightly playful, or downright dour, you want to attract talent that feels comfortable in your culture.

HR and Recruiting are an untapped gold mine for too many organizations. Work hard to make them a reflection of your mission and methods, appealing and user-friendly, and able to identify and communicate with the right talent. This is an exciting exercise in leadership excellence.

Without exceptions, those who follow the above advice not only recruit well, but they recruit the best talent.

Remember who your real recruiting competitors are. They aren’t other Real Estate companies, although they do matter. Your real competitors are other industries, also seeking the best talent in your community.   And most of them understand the above principles.

Do you?

Editor’s Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.

Over the last 10 years, we have had the experience of partnering with companies who are dedicated and thriving at recruiting and also those who have not found the same success.

Why? I have two questions I always ask myself when considering the recruiting process of a particular client:

"Would talented people I know want to work here?"

"Which of these managers would be effective in inspiring talented people to work here?"

Those simple but powerful questions get at the heart of what we all must ask ourselves when it comes to examining and improving the recruiting process in our respective companies.

In my quest to gather information on how to best assess your process, I came upon a Forbes Magazine article; 5 Recruiting Habits of Successful Leaders by Meghan Biro.

Although all of them were relevant, there were three that I felt were critical to establishing a well developed recruiting process. Today I will present and examine the first critical habit and my next blog will cover the last two.

Ms. Biro begins the article with the following:

“The signs start early in the hiring process: a dry, lifeless job posting or stale employer branding that does not feel inspired….. I can remember walking out of a few select interviews earlier in my career and saying to myself, “There is no way I’m working at that mausoleum.” Or better yet – I’ve enjoyed being part of a world class organization recruiting top talent – where every day of interviewing seems to feel like a rush of adrenaline. You see – I’ve been on all sides of this equation in my own career – The best of the best, the good, the ugly.

The simple fact is that recruiting is often a company’s first impression, and a reflection of its culture and workforce brand personality. It’s a spectacular — and too underexploited — opportunity to wow, woo, seduce and excite talent. Top talent doesn’t want to work in Dullsville. They want to work in a company that understands, challenges, excites, surprises and delights them. They want to work hard, play hard, and feel appreciated.  Recruiting should be where the courtship starts. Your organization doesn’t have to be a Zappos or Google — to attract “the right fit” and talent skill set you need to soar.”

"Habit #1: Take A Workplace Culture Inventory. Take a good hard look at your current HR and recruiting practices. Put yourself in the shoes of a talented person who has never heard of your company.

• How are you trying to reach that person?
• Are you using filtering tools to target the right kind of talent you need?
• How is the language in your employer branding and follow-up information? Stodgy branding can be a real turn-off.
• What about your career site design? Is it fresh and appealing to to all generations? 
  
• How are your initial and follow-up contacts conducted? Deconstruct the whole recruiting process from initial posting to final hire.
• Where do you need to make changes to catch the eye and imagination of the talent you need?
• Do you solicit feedback from recent hires and even those who decided to take another career opportunity – yes, at another brand."

The consistent theme among the Real Estate companies best at attracting and landing top talent (who have never considered Real Estate as a career) is that they never cease tweaking the recruiting process to make their company more appealing.

Take some time to ponder how your most talented friends would experience your recruiting process. Is it designed to attract or repel them?

More next edition.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. 

While driving in my car, I have been listening again to Selling the Invisible, a book by Harry Beckwith.

You might think that I picked this title as a means of improving our sales within Tidemark, but you’d be mistaken.   I did read this book a few years ago for that purpose, but this time I wanted to think through how proven marketing ideas could help you improve the recruiting process. 

It’s been my observation that most well-run real estate companies understand that they are not only in the real estate transaction business, but also in the agent recruiting business. Gaining market share means performing both functions well.

I’ve also noticed that top recruiting companies share a common defining characteristic—their management teams tend to seek out any and all information that might lead them to increased results. There is a solid correlation between openness to assessment/feedback and steady improvement.

Those who are not willing to track, examine, metric, compare, and seek improvement (including challenging long-held beliefs) will invariably underperform their competitors and peers.  

As I was listening to Selling the Invisible from this perspective, I wrote down several principles that differentiate the best recruiting companies behavior from those who struggle.  Here are some of the standout differentiators and my comments beside each one:

Assume your service is bad. It can't hurt, and it will force you to improve. It is so uncanny how the best leaders I have ever met in my entire life have always made this assumption. Conversely the worst have an arrogant stance of "we've figured it out." I have learned a great deal through the humility of these fine leaders. 

Ignore your industry's benchmarks, and copy Disney's.  The point here is to surprise the candidate. Remember the blog we did on the offices that display a welcome sign with each candidate’s name before every interview? 

Big mistakes are big opportunities. If you aren't' performing well, see it as a time to examine, learn and improve.  If you make a mistake with a candidate, follow it with an apology, a gift card, and a promise to improve.  This will typically work wonders to reversing the course of the hiring process for most people. 

Don't just think better. Think different. Be open to out of the box ways of understanding a dilemma. Don't get so locked into old belief systems that you aren't willing to entertain other ways of seeing realty. You just might discover something revolutionary. 

Don't just create what the market needs or wants. Create what it would love. For recruiting, the market is the candidates you’re interviewing. The thing that all candidates love is to be understood thoroughly before making any bold statements about how you can solve their pain.

Every act is a marketing act. Make every employee a marketing employee. From the first contact with a candidate until he hands you his license, every touch with him is a marketing message.

What does each step in your recruiting process suggest to a candidate?  The candidates who will turn into top producing agents will be intuitively sensitive to how they are being treated (this is part of what will make them great agents).

If anyone on your team is not treating them with the upmost amount of respect, they WILL go elsewhere. If you’re waiting for agents to prove themselves before treating them with this respect, you ARE losing the best candidates. 

In most professional services, you are not really selling expertise – because your expertise is assumed, and because your prospect cannot intelligently evaluate your expertise anyway. Instead you are selling a relationship. Hopefully this speaks for itself. 

Which of the above principles can you improve upon? Which are strengths? Which are weaknesses?  Know that it is easier to see the weaknesses in others rather than yourself, so you might want to re-read the list a couple of times and make it a point of discussion with some of your peers.

Make sure you don’t miss the first point as you process this information– we all must entertain a need for improvement if we want to grow. 

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.