IT Manager's Handbook: Getting Your New Job Done (21 page)

If a headhunter's less-than-stellar reputation is deserved, the way in which they are compensated may be one of the reasons. Agents generally receive up to 25 percent of the annual starting salary of the person they place. With high commissions, coupled with weeks or months between placing a candidate successfully, a headhunter has high incentives to do his best to succeed at every opportunity. However, his definition of success may vary from yours. You want the
best
candidate, he wants you to hire
any
candidate—as long as it is his.

You should also talk to your HR department. There may be specific policies against using headhunters unless all other avenues have been exhausted or they may have negotiated rates with specific recruiters that you can use. Many companies now have a short list of approved recruiters that every hiring manager within the company
must
use.

What Recruiters Do These Days Ideas for Managing in Tough Times

Some companies have adopted policies that forbid the use of recruiters. The reason for this policy is that senior executives imagine that the high fees that recruiters charge can be avoided by doing the work without them.

In some cases, that is certainly true. There are many candidates looking for jobs in challenging economic times. However, as discussed several times in this chapter, making a good hire is a series of steps in an often complex process, not just a matter of finding the right person.

However, like all other middlemen in a business process, the Internet has radically altered their business model. A recruiter whose value was based solely on “secret information” (which person was looking, what company was hiring) is probably out of business by now. Recruiters not only have to find the right candidate, they often have to vet that person (sometimes doing several prescreening interviews), coach the candidate before and after the interview process, negotiate with the company regarding short- and long-term compensation, and manage the candidate's progress for a period of time.

Finding the Right Recruiter

Finding good recruiters is more of an art than a science, but probably not terribly different from how you found your accountant or dentist. You probably took a recommendation from a friend or relative the first time you needed an accountant. Later, you may have changed accountants, perhaps based on another recommendation, because you weren't 100 percent comfortable with the first one. You may have gone through a few options before finding one you're comfortable with. In essence, you networked. Finding a good agent to help you find a job or to help fill an open position is the same process.

You can start by asking people you know which headhunters they've used. Ask who they liked, disliked, and why. Your company's HR department can probably offer you some references of agents they've worked with in the past, as well as those they've had bad experiences with. You can also ask others in your department about agents they've used. If you really don't know where to turn, you can always look on the Web for local agencies; there are several large international recruiting agencies that have offices in most major cities. Regardless of how you find them, be sure and check out their references before you start using them.

You want to find agents you like working with. You may prefer agents who are fast paced or those who are more laid back. Because they often conduct their business over the phone or via e-mail, it is entirely possible that you may never meet some of the agents you work with. As such, you'll have to rely on your instincts to judge them as you work with them and speak to them on the phone. As complicated as the world gets, and as competitive as recruiters are, it's somewhat surprising to know that many agreements with recruiters are done verbally. And, if you don't meet them in person, you won't even have the proverbial handshake.

You may not even have to find recruiters, because they'll often be looking for you. Headhunters earn their keep by establishing contacts with hiring managers, companies, and candidates. Sooner or later (probably sooner) they'll learn that you're a manager and that you have responsibility for staffing. They may hear this from existing contacts they have (such as others at your company) or simple cold calls to your switchboard (“Can you transfer me to the IT Manager?”). Once they establish a beachhead, some resort to time-worn techniques such as bringing donuts to meetings to further cement their hold in your department.

Technical Abilities

Many recruiters don't have the technical depth required to adequately help you with your search. Recruiters are no different than the rest of the population in this regard: There are many people who are very ignorant about technical matters, there are those who know enough “to be dangerous,” and there are truly knowledgeable people. Your concern should be twofold: how much do they understand and how honest are they about their abilities.

Remember that sometimes you will be trying to fill positions that require skill sets that are still being developed. IT is a constantly changing industry. If you want to hire someone with word-processing skills, those metrics are well defined. But you might be trying to find a .Net programmer or Flex programmer. Those technologies are only a few years old.

This means you may only find a few recruiters who understand your requirements. What you will be looking for is a recruiter who is honest enough to admit what they don't know and willing enough to listen to you tell them what they need to know.

Things to Keep in Mind

Some important things to remember when dealing with recruiters:

•
Fees generally run up to 25 percent of the annual salary that is offered and are almost always negotiable—in tough economic times, everything is negotiable. Agree on the fee up front and preferably in writing. Include terms about when the fee is paid and what happens if the employee is fired or quits soon after being hired.

•
Often a recruiter will ask what your company normally pays as a finder's fee. If they do, this is a great time to offer a lower number. Recruiters know that if you use them once, you may use them again so they may be willing to give up a few percentage points in exchange for a potentially lucrative long-term relationship.

•
Headhunters’ fees are usually paid after a certain period of time. This is to ensure that the candidate doesn't quit or isn't discovered to be a disaster immediately after being hired. Agents often request their fees after 30 days. You can usually push that out to 60 or 90 days. Don't pay the fee early based on the promise that you'll be credited with a refund if the new hire doesn't work out before the agreed-upon period.

Using Multiple Recruiters

It's quite common, and not considered unethical, to give the same assignment to multiple recruiters. As long as you can deal with working with several agents, it will increase your odds of finding exactly the right person. On the off chance that two recruiters send you the same candidate, the professional thing to do is work with the recruiter who sent you the candidate first. (If there are two identical résumés in your e-mail in-box, use the time stamp to tell you who sent it first.)

3.4 Selecting Candidates

Whether candidates come to you via your own network, ads, recruiters, or Human Resources, now that you have some possibilities, the next step is to evaluate them.

Reviewing Résumés

Résumés come in all shapes and sizes, and there is no science to reviewing them well. What one manager may consider a great résumé, another may dismiss immediately. A résumé that's great for a programmer may not be great for a programmer/analyst. When candidates write résumés, they may agonize over every word, phrase, and formatting choice. There are volumes on the subject of writing résumés. This section, though, addresses the issue of
reading
résumés. Things to look out for when you read a résumé include:

•
Be on the lookout for spelling and grammatical errors. Most people spend an enormous amount of time getting their résumé just right (and having others review it), so any mistakes should have been filtered out. If it contains a typo, it could mean the candidate isn't focused on detail, or is cavalier about things that most others take very seriously. These are traits you probably wouldn't want in a member of your team.

•
Take note of the overall appearance. Does it seem well formatted or thrown together haphazardly? This could be a reflection of the fact that the candidate thinks that things like appearance are superficial. There are many résumé services and lots of easy-to-use résumé templates available on the Web; no candidate these days should have an ugly resume.

•
Look at the job history. Is the candidate a job hopper? Are there gaps that you want to ask about? Some gaps are common—the dot-com bubble of 1999–2001, and the economic downturn of the late 2000s put many IT workers out of work. Also, many IT professionals have short or long stints as contractors and work in brief, six-month assignments and then move on to the next company. However, while many managers will reject a job hopper, they may also be concerned about those who have been in a job for an extended period of time. They may fear that a candidate with 15 years at his current job has only one view of the world and may have difficulty adapting to a new job environment.

•
Does the level of detail in the résumé match what you're looking for? For example, if the résumé highlights that the candidate upgraded the operating system on a server, it may indicate he's coming from a much smaller environment compared to yours; you may have so many servers that an OS upgrade is such a common practice that the task is barely mentioned among technicians, much less seen as a résumé-worthy accomplishment.

•
Does the résumé have a laundry list of technologies? For example, does it list every model of every brand of workstation and server they ever worked with (e.g., IBM PC, XT, AT, Compaq Proliant 5000, 5000R, 5500, 5500R, 6000, 6500, 7000R) along with every version of every software package (e.g., Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 2008, Vista, 7)? You may see lists like this and think, “Is this candidate really proficient in all these technologies?” You may also ask, “Why does he think I care that he knows about technologies that were discontinued over 10 years ago?”

•
Notice factual claims. Résumé padding is very dangerous. (A CEO of Radio Shack resigned years ago after it was discovered that he misrepresented his educational credentials.) Don't be afraid to ask direct questions about a candidate's claims: Were there other people working on these websites you designed or was it all your doing? Did you write most of the code for that billing system or were you a member of a team?

Résumés are rarely read from top to bottom. Typically, they are glanced over quickly (various studies show that the average résumé gets well under a minute's attention). This glancing process allows the manager to hunt for things that he's looking for, as well as to see what else jumps out at him. These are reasons why a well-formatted and carefully crafted résumé is so key.

Telephone Screening

After screening résumés, but prior to face-to-face interviews, some managers like to do telephone interviews to narrow down the list of candidates. A quick 5- to 10-minute telephone conversation can reveal quite a bit. For the more hands-on and technical positions, you can use a few technical questions to gauge a candidate's level of expertise. Telephone screening is ideally suited for customer service representatives such as Help Desk analysts, since it gives you some insight into their telephone manner, their communication skills, and how their style is when interacting with customers and users.

For the less technical and more supervisory positions, you still might be able to use a brief telephone interview as a gauge to their interpersonal skills, especially if these skills are a critical part of the job requirement. Of course, telephone screening just helps you narrow down the field, since you still need to meet with those candidates that do well on the phone.

Often the Human Resources department will do the initial screening of candidates, pass 20 résumés to the hiring manager, the manager will cut that number to 10, and then the résumés will be
sent back
to HR. They will then conduct a brief phone interview to further narrow down the candidates to a manageable number of in-person interviews. This relatively convoluted process is justified when there are many well-qualified applicants for an important position.

At What Level Should I Interview?

If the position reports to one of your managers, consider having that manager do the first rounds of interviewing. This saves your time and empowers your manager. If you have several levels of staff reporting to you, you may not feel the need to be involved in the interviews for every position in your organization. However, you should be involved in interviewing for:

•
Positions that report directly to you

•
Positions that report to your direct reports

•
Positions in your organization that are highly visible or very critical

Even if you feel you don't need to be involved in interviewing for a lower-level position, you may want to at least meet briefly with finalists before offers are extended.

Narrowing Down the List

Like many information-based activities the Internet has streamlined, searching for a job has been radically simplified. For just a few dollars, a job seeker can send out thousands of résumés. As such, hiring managers like you are deluged with résumés. The pendulum swings back and forth from not enough candidates to too many candidates. Having too many options may seem like a desirable problem to have, but it's a difficult issue in its own right.