iSkout is Ready for Business!

Direct Sourcing based RPO on a fractional basis...

Many are projecting a possible burst in recruiting later in 2024 and into 2025, so it feels like it might be a good time to start thinking about recruiting.

We have been building out our processes, hiring a great team and delivering terrific results to a small group of valued and trusted clients. iSkout is now a refined and scalable RPO company much in the same vein as TalentFusion, our early entrant into the RPO industry.

It all starts and ends with great people.

If you want to hire great people you need to hire or be a great Recruiter.

Period.

Think of all the greatest Sports Teams you know and you will find somebody, often the Head Coach, who is a great Recruiter. The greatest sports franchises were recruited together. They did not just happen. Phone calls were made. Meetings were held. White Glove Candidate Experiences happened.

Same goes for Championship winning companies.

Now, to be honest, we are never returning from the current recruiting process filled with aggregated postings, job distribution, Bots, AI driven candidate interaction and Easy Applies. Cold as Ice. And for some rank and file openings, these experiences are fine. Not for the candidates, of course, but for the hiring company who may not place as much value on the Candidate Experience for those people, the digital process works and is highly cost effective and efficient.

For the Candidate? Less than ideal.

What I have noticed since all this ATS/CRM and single point tech came on the scene is a bifurcation of sorts between the high touch experience still offered to the C-Suite hire and, well, everyone else. The new CFO/CEO/CRO is still treated great. Korn Ferry or some other esteemed Executive Search firm was engaged and the Candidate Experience for all involved, including those not hired, was first rate.

Everyone else, pretty much from the VP and even SVP levels on down are often going through the same meat grinder as the line worker at the counter running the Starbucks latte machine.

LinkedIn changed everything. Back in the day, before LinkedIn, the industry was filled with Contingency Search Headhunters who thrived on mid management and strategic individual contributor roles. These firms delivered high touch services for jobs that are now going right out on LinkedIn and Indeed, just like every other position at the firm.

LinkedIn eliminated the Headhunter value prop around candidate identification and, in the process, eliminated a lot of Headhunters. Prior to LinkedIn, Headhunters had possession of the Golden Rolodex. The contact information or even phone directories of target companies from which to poach. The only way to get at that hidden talent supply was to go through Headhunters.

That is all gone.

Now, corporate Recruiters or Hiring Managers go directly to the job posting as the primary means to source. The automated approach that can yield hundreds of candidates for one position.

The current Candidate and Recruiter Experience, that we all agree sucks, is the result.

With the advent of AI-enabled resume preparation and spam-like job application services, Candidates now have the same tools that only hiring companies had previously possessed. That has now created even worse experiences for all parties. The noise is deafening and volume of transactions prevent any form of a positive experience for anyone involved.

I am sensing attitudes might be changing a bit. And it may happen pretty fast in late 2024.

My clients are telling me that they want their strategic hires to all go through a High Touch Executive Search process. To be greeted by a Search Ambassador who will guide them through the gnarly process of getting identified, pre-screened, vetted, interviewed, checked out, booked for internal interviews, and cared for all the way through either offer or rejection.

The ONLY way to create a great Candidate Experience is with High Human Touch. Period.

We can skip steps and streamline the recruiting process through automation, but is that really what you want for some of your most Strategic Hires that may currently fall below the level that would allow for Executive Search and are way above the level of a Craigslist Ad?

Those critical hires are in No Mans’s Land. And they may be only one or two clicks below the C-Level. And they aren’t treated much better than the line cook hire at Denny’s. No offense to line cooks.

We are in a year in which massive white collar layoffs happened into the face of continued low unemployment. The best of those people get jobs right away. As 2025 looms, we may enter a year in which a sold out labor market will make the best talent even harder to get to. We can deny it all we want, but in many, if not most cases, the best fit for a strategic role is currently employed and therefore, not responding to postings.

A recent LinkedIn Posting I wincingly launched, on behalf of a client, delivered 300+ applicants. 95% of them were currently unemployed. That makes perfect sense to me, but sets up the scenario in which, given the volume of Candidates to service, very little other sourcing can go on. Therefore, the candidate pool from that process does not included any that were Direct Sourced from their current job.

That means the hiring manager is not getting any of the Championship caliber candidates for these critical roles, that a Korn Ferry type firm would deliver for the Board or C-Suite roles.

It also means that none of the candidates from the posting will get the kind of White Glove service that used to be very appropriate for the role, but is no longer possible.

If your firm is trying to build a Championship Team, this very much worth considering.

Champions expect good treatment. The difference between being treated like gold by a professional Concierge and being greeted by a Bot and required to complete an automated screening tool, are quite stunning and often the tipping point as that Champion candidate makes their decision on who will get their services.

Services that may mean the difference between winning the Championship or not.

Many progressive firms I am talking to are rethinking all this and taking a fresh look at how to employ higher touch services for certain roles. Unfortunately, the contingency firms that use to be in such plentiful supply for that purpose, are now gone. Replaced by the LinkedIn posting process that gives the illusion of success but fails to tap into the best candidate supplies.

Shameless plug time.

Here at iSkout, we are excited about the prospects of 2025. We are old fashioned Headhunters who cut our teeth before LinkedIn. We do our own market research and build our own prospect lists, under the guidance of our clients. We love LinkedIn. We use LinkedIn as a research tool and outbound communications channel. Each and every candidate gets a human touch. Each and every person touching the process comes away with a favorable brand impression about the hiring company. Every rejected candidate, leaves the process with that same impression and remains in the Silver Medalist pipeline for future consideration.

Building great relationships is how we build great teams.

You cannot build any kind of relationship with a ChatGPT, AI-generated, Bot interface between you and your next SVP of Marketing or Finance.

And that person could be CEO of your company someday real soon.

Or CEO of your competitor…..who may have a better High Touch, Human Executive Search process than your company.

Something to think about over the Summer in prep for what could be a very busy fall and winter.

David Pollard, CEO, iSkout RPO and Executive Search

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpollard60/