Rockstar Recruiting

I was fortunate to spend a couple days this week working with a world class talent acquisition team. The group at CDW is lead by Melissa McMahon, SMA Chicago’s 2010 Staffing Professional of the Year.  This team knows talent.  The business recognizes that talent will be the disruptive competitive advantage. They need to achieve growth goals and this group is going to deliver the people that deliver on the business plan.  These are People Who Get IT! I can tell you the focus of our training and time together wasn’t spent on tactics like Boolean Search, Recruiter ready Linked In profiles or source effectiveness reporting.  Nope.  We actually spent our time on Recruiter Effectiveness. What constitutes Recruiter Effectiveness on a world class talent acquisition team?  Have a look at the Rock Star Recruiting skill and competency list as defined by CDW in session (picture enclosed).  A pretty good self assessment for anyone concentrating on the practice of people. Our training emphasized the competitive decision cycle – from Recruiter point of contact to conversion.  Where the real recruiting happens.

The session content resonated because they buy into a fundamental principle – Recruiting is Sales (and Marketing).  That is a conversation we’ll continue next month at the SHRM Talent & Staffing Management Conference & Exposition in my Tuesday morning keynote. If you completely disagree with what I have to say know that Dan Pink is keynoting Monday and Susan Packard is on Wednesday.  That alone is worth the price of admission and the all star sessions and networking in San Diego is never a bad thing!  Hope to see you there.