The New Rules of Recruiting, a book by Zachary Misko and Todd Wheatland

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

I just finished reading Zachary Misko's and Todd Wheatland's The new rules of recruiting. It's a short, valuable and effective book. Its purpose is to advise recruiters to catch up with the new world of recruiting, urgent them to "rethink how they work each day — and take new responsibilities outside their comfort zone ... and ride the crest of the rising wave."

If you want to ride the crest of rising wave, you have to ask yourself a few simple questions:

1— Do you primarily rely on resumes to evaluate candidates? If so, look further! While it's true that some careers may still rely on the traditional resume, resumes are only part of the story: "For better or worse, everyone’s personal and professional self is documented through their online content and behavior." Will you really hire someone who claims he/she's passionate about design if the candidate's accomplishments are nowhere in sight on the Internet?

2—Do you have what it takes to attract the fast-evolving breed of knowledge workers? Stop looking for the one-dimensional candidate that will fit a one-dimensional job and be a mere cog in your corporate machine. Talented people look for projects and employers that help them grow and expand their skills. So look for them where they are and address them the way they want to be addressed: "First and foremost, the knowledge workers— the top talent everyone really wants— will increasingly be found through social media and other online engagement techniques."  

3— Has your company developed the vision and corporate culture capable of attracting millennials? We are not talking of crazy kids, but of the generation that will soon be in control of your workplace (40% of the U.S. workforce by 2020, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, far outnumbering any other generation). "A recruiter— once a gatekeeper between a job candidate and a particular job— must adapt to a world where information is much more freely available." End result: if you want to attract the always connected and BYOD generation, forget your fax machine and the "seasoned" employees you identified through traditional methods.

4—How ready are to explain to your organization what it really means for recruiting that things come to us through technology? We do not need to leave our home to find a soul mate or buy a car. "Employees have largely embraced digital recruitment for many of the same reasons people have flocked to online real estate, auto listings and dating— it’s easier."  The brick and mortar mentality wants people to come to their store. Internet marketing means proactively getting in front of them. If they don't see you, they can't be interested in joining your company.

5—Are you wary about social media? You had better not to be and, instead, keep in mind, that "social networking is a natural behavior. It wasn’t invented— it has just been channeled into ever more specific and measurable spaces. Now, recruiters and HR people must flex their own social networks to find candidates, but also understand more about how people connect and interact with each other online."

Ultimately, the "new rules of recruiting" are all about living with our time. They  are:

1— About building a positive candidate experience. While you may see your immediate task as filling positions, your real mission is to build authentic relationships with "passive" candidates at all times, and offer every candidate a positive experience. Misko and Wheatland like to quote their colleague at Kelly-OCG, Jillyan French-Vitet in this very good chapter: “From the moment the first connection is made, be it a click on a job site, an email or a telephone call, the candidate experience begins. So, as we begin to see each ‘click’, ‘email’ or ‘call’ as part of a deliverable, targeted experience, we can begin to make it worthwhile for both parties. Instead of a cost that nets often only a single filled vacancy, it becomes an investment and a measurable way to build talent networks for the future.”

2— Leveraging the power of social media. "Social platforms are like relationship engines, allowing you to meet and communicate with a network many times larger than what could be accessed using traditional means." Social platforms enable you to scale your Rolodex, or cast a much larger net. Again, don't wait people to come to you. Proactively go to them and engage them into your network.

3— Telling a good story that you believe in and to which candidates can relate. Key to your brand is what you say and what people can share. Online content marketing is now a mainstream genre that has reached all demographic segments. Produce a lot of content: it's cost-effective; it drives traffic to your site and sculpts the sentiment of potential candidates. In short, successful companies are effective publishers. Recruiters must become part of the process, even more than marketers, because in the end, recruiters must walk it like they talk it in order to attract top talent.

A very good book written by real practitioners who believe in what they write.