I must admit, I am a Will Ferrell fan and viewing this YouTube clip made me realize just how important a “Pitch Man” is for most all professions involving sales, including executive search. Employing or using poor and/or inexperienced talent acquisition specialists (a.k.a. “HeadHunters” or “Recruiters”) is one of the worst decisions a company can make when seeking seasoned executives and professionals.
Professional and executive search is both science and art. Part of the art of recruiting often involves relocation of gainfully employed people to their competitors. Anyone can post an ad and “get lucky”, but there is no substitute for trained professionals combing your competition with an appropriate “pitch” that draws attention! As we say in our company, “busy people have little time to read help wanted ads.”
To lure professionals from its competition, a company needs a good image / brand and has to offer the prospective employee something that he / she is not getting today. What a candidate doesn’t have today is not always evident to him / her and is precisely why you need experienced search professionals, making the pitch, if you want to attract the largest possible pool of exceptional candidates and raise the bar on hiring for important positions.
Example? A regenerative medicine client of ours has a great story, overall. Still, recruiting people into a relatively immature industry has its own particular challenges as candidates have to be more comfortable with risk. How do we minimize “risk” in this case? By pointing out that regenerative medicine’s expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is around 20% annually for the next 5 years while PharmBio, overall, is in the single digits. The point being: Even if our client fails and goes out of business in the next 2-3 years, where will the candidate be better off in terms of future job prospects?
When you decide to hire a search firm, ask the professional(s) you are interviewing not only about their process, pricing and experience in a “precise skill set”, but also ask them about their overall knowledge of the market and examples of how they integrate this knowledge to lure candidates from your competition. If you do this, you will likely find yourself interviewing a larger number of outstanding candidates who can bring exceptional value to your company.