Recruiting is the greatest professional service – and maybe even the greatest industry – in the modern economy. I believe it, more than technology or any other sector, is responsible for the largest percentage of the economic gains we’ve enjoyed over these decades since it was created in the late ‘60s. More, the value that client companies gain from independent 3rd party recruiters is the largest Return On Investment (ROI) that they’re able to procure. 

The math is simple. Employees that are good-to-great, in positive relationships to their firms, generate all profit. Employees that are poor-to-terrible not only suck profit, they destroy revenue, morale, lose customers, create destructive politics that drag morale down, and cost their firms more in losses than any other force. Independent 3rd party recruiters move the mix for their clients from poor-to-terrible employees, to good-to-great ones. I believe it to be the best value in the entire world of business.

How did I come to that position? Let me share a bit of my story.

Classically trained as an old school, cold call salesman in the early ‘80s, I commenced my coaching career in 1987 on the back of those skills. It wasn’t until 6 years later, at the tag end of 1993 that I discovered recruiters, recruiting and more specifically, the Management Recruiters International (MRI) network. A cold call led to a fantastic conversation with a vendor to the network, who in turn referred me to my first recruiting client. At the time, I knew precisely nothing about recruiting.

Over the following year, 1994, I won a growing number of franchisees as my clients and began to build a reputation for improving performance. No one was more shocked than me, that there was a strange and wonderful affinity between the methods I’d built my coaching practice upon and the needs of my recruiting clients. I was able to help franchisees lead.  My ever-evolving sales and conversation methods, not to mention goal setting and performance tracking and analysis, all led to wildly leveraged impact. 

I became a student of recruitment hiring, training, development, firing, replacing and team leadership and growth over time. And, now having served what may be the largest number million-dollar-plus performers, and countless desk-level doublings, I grew ever more passionate about recruiting excellence. Key account development was one of my special focuses – and remains so – as does the actual placement of new talent into your market, known as the MPC method. But I emphasize that we ACTUALLY place our MPCs!

But enough shop talk, let’s focus on you, the recruiting leader, and what you can do with the information I shared above. If recruiting is in fact the most important industry in the economic world, generating higher ROI than any other service provider, what does that mean to you?

There are three specific focus points to embrace. They are:

• The Bold Claim of Highest Possible ROI to Clients

• The Most Valuable Free Service in the World to Talent

• The Best Possible Career to Your Own Hires

ROI 

Client companies do NOT realize this. They tend – as most business people do – to think of ROI in general terms, or in the context of others and NOT over every single decision and action that they, themselves, engage. The easiest tactic is this. Ask a prospect about nightmare employees from the past or present, and what they cost. Ask about champions, true stars, that always deliver, that truly perform. Discuss outcomes from each and make guesses about ROI vs Cost. Boldly claim that together you will move the mix of talent toward the good and away from the bad. You’ll be amazed at the power of this true, business conversation if you just give it a try.

Talent

I know that as an industry, we always speak of our ‘product’ as ‘candidates’. It’s not that I oppose that, but I VASTLY prefer the term ‘talent’. Here’s why. Our people are not merely ‘applying for a job’ as do candidates. Our people are the finest talent in the world, and our clients need our people, the best people, to solve their most important problems and capitalize their most important opportunities. Well, the same mindset directly applies to our recruiting conversations. We offer both career direction and extraordinary opportunities to the very best talent. We help them decide when it’s time to move and serve them as no one else in their world does. And the best part for them…IT’S FREE! That’s actually kind of mind blowing, isn’t it?

Your Recruiters – The Team

Recruiting is hard work, and it takes a special kind of strength, combined with high intelligence and superior focus. I’ve seen many of the hardest soldiers, filled with battlefield courage, crack under the strain of life on the recruiting phone call. We underestimate the truly phenomenal strength and goodness recruiters bring to their daily discipline. With that high bar of personal force and courage, there needs to be a mission worthy, and a pride and honor to equal the investment our people make into excellence, even into simply performing well. The phrase good-to-great, made famous by the book of that title, is precisely the dream we must offer our people. Empowering them to master the clarity indicated above, about our industry and about their own work is a necessary component of your leadership mission.

I hope you agree about our industry and have the passionate pride in what we do that I’ve found as your coach. I promise that the perspective described above will impact your immediate tactics for the better, but more importantly, will help you face and conquer the strategic challenges your business demands of you, but also, so richly rewards you for.

And, I hope as well that you’ll consider heading over to my website to learn more about my guidance on leadership, at www.TheConsigliori.com.

Editor's Note: Editor's Note: Pasquale Scopelliti, The Consigliori, coach and mentor.