Thursday, September 29, 2016

Strategies for Securing Top Talent


While employers often feel that it should be easy to attract great candidates it is not always the case. Top candidates always have options, and they can generally afford to be picky about which jobs they explore, let alone which offers they accept. This means that employers who truly care about attracting top talent need to put special thought into how they recruit candidates.

Since the best candidates have options, they’ll interview and evaluate employers right back. Employers who assume that the assessment process only goes one way and forget to care about how they’re coming across to candidates will generally turn off great candidates.
Over my years in recruiting within the insurance industry, I’ve found the below strategies particularly helpful in attracting and securing the best candidates:
  1. The hiring company needs to understand the difference between an active job seeker and a truly “recruited” candidate.  It is up to the recruiter to make certain the client company knows who is who, too. Not that the process should necessarily be any different between the two types of candidates, but it can be helpful to know the difference in how each is considered within a hiring process.
  2. I am presently working with a client that volunteered, during our initial discussion about the project, that the hiring manager would be very open to speaking with any prospective candidate prior to them officially allowing their credentials to be submitted as an actual candidate.  When recruiting on particularly difficult searches where the potential pool to draw from is very shallow, this can be a very effective strategy.
  3. If you, as a hiring company, have a good story to tell, then you should tell it! A recruiter certainly serves as a valued resource during searches, but no one can tell the story like the hiring manager.  I’d even suggest that a talent acquisition professional or human resources recruiter, while very knowledgeable certainly, still is not as equipped to talk to a potential candidate about the department culture and why it is great to work for that company and that department.
  4. Once you have identified a candidate you are truly interested in bringing on board, offer to bring them and their significant other (if they have one) out to your community for a couple days.  Set them up with a rental car, a non-aggressive real estate agent and someone on your team that can show them the highlights of the area.  I’ve seen this as a very effective way to seal the deal with the person you want to join your company.

The competition for talent is tough.  Why not utilize whatever advantages you can to help separate you from your competition?



Scot Dickerson, CPC | President | Capstone Search Group

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

The Hiring Manager’s Guide To Job Interviewing


We work with insurance organizations of all shapes and sizes...
  • Large nationally known organizations
  • Regional medium sized organizations
  • Very small organizations operating in just one to three states
  • Well-established organizations to true start-ups
  • Organizations with highly structured human resource, recruiting and/or talent acquisition departments
  • Organizations with no structured recruiting function


Our goal is to serve as a resource to all of these different organizations, to tailor our service to each client’s respective needs. We have had the opportunity to work with smaller insurance organizations that have sought out guidance in the actual interview process.  
Let’s face it, some of the industry's brightest and best readily admit that interviewing is simply not their forte. So with those industry professionals in mind, I’ve assembled some resources that you might find helpful as you prepare to interview candidates for your job opening. 
There are over 7,000 books about interviewing and recruiting. Here are a few top choices that I would recommend:

Title: Successful Interviewing and Recruitment
Author: Rob Yeung
Teaches managers how to structure the interview, spot exceptional candidates, and hire only those who will add value to the business

Title: Knock ‘em Dead, Hiring the Best
Author: Martin Yate
This book is directed towards hiring managers rather than recruiters. However, since recruiters must often coach hiring managers on how to make good decisions, this serves as a "train the trainer" manual.

Title:  Hire with your Head
Author: Lou Adler
Adler approaches hiring from the perspective of a long-time recruiter who has seen recruiting undergo massive change. His approach is thorough and straightforward.

Title: 96 Great Interview Questions
Author: Paul Falcone
What Falcone presents is an entire philosophy of interviewing that is the exact opposite of the canned question approach. It's full of examples and explains why these questions work and how to interpret the answers correctly.

Title: How to Spot a Liar
Authors: Gregory Hartley & Maryann Karinch
Many people—including some in law enforcement—swear by these techniques, so they're worth learning and trying. 

Title: Hiring for Attitude
Author: Mark Murphy
This book explains how the hiring and interview process must change so that companies can weed out candidates whose attitude will create failure.  

Another recommendation by way of a quicker read would be this guide created by Careerbuilder:
The Hiring Manager’s Complete Interviewing Guide


Scot Dickerson, CPC | President | Capstone Search Group