Ten Reasons Why I Love Recruiting

More than thirty years ago, when I told my friends that I was going to be an advertising recruiter, there was a universally positive response.  People said it was a natural evolution of my career in advertising.  And they were right.  

This month marks a full year since I was hit by a taxi.

During the many months I was in the hospital, I had the opportunity to take stock and think about the business and my role in it.  It was a perfect time to determine if I wanted to stay or go. Now, a year later, I thought It a great time to let people know how I feel about the business and what I do.

My decision was easy.  Indeed, I love both advertising and recruiting.

Here are my ten reasons.

        I love helping people

I have always been interested in careers and helping people develop their careers. That is one of the great joys of what I do.  Over 30 years, I have personally placed well over 1,000 executives. There are literally dozens of people who I have placed as juniors or gave advice to when they were young, who are now successful senior executives (Many of them at the very same places I put them in years ago).  There are hundreds of others who I helped along their way; their success is thrilling to me.

I love the chase

I love solving puzzles.  And, when clients give me complete information about their issues and problems, finding the right people for them is like solving a puzzle.  It makes me feel great to know that I have helped a client solve a problem.. There are many recruiters who I call "placers" – they just want to earn money and don’t give a damn about truly finding the right person. For me, finding the right person is a challenge and a joy.

I love partnering with clients

When I was in advertising, I was a very good account person.  I still am.  When clients work with me, I can be a very effective partner.  When clients take me into their confidence and allow me to be a part of their organization, I am not only turned on, but I also become a more effective recruiter.  The more information I have, the better I can do for them.

I love meeting people

I am gregarious and outgoing by nature.  An effective recruiter must have these attributes.  I am pleased that I can call so many people friends, both candidates and clients.  I am still in touch with many people I met over the past 30 years.  Some I have actually neve placed, but they have become friends.

I love the advertising business

I grew up in an advertising family.  It is in my blood.  Recruiting has allowed me to step back but still remain in the business.  I am a yenta at heart.  I revel in following the business and knowing what is going on.

I am a student of advertising

I love hearing advertising people tell their stories.  For those who read this blog regularly, you know I collect them.  Despite all the changes in the last few years, it is still an exciting and interesting business.  I love following it, reading the trade press and talking “shop” with friends.  I pretty much know what is happening at most agencies. Through interviewing, I have learned what works and what fails and I relish knowledge. 

I love the people in advertising

Advertising people are inherently creative and interesting.  The best of them enjoy life and discovery. It is true that people are an ad agency’s only asset. Over the years I have heard stories about everyone; I know who is liked and who is disliked, I know who is successful and why.  And even the one’s with negative reputations, I like them, too.  Often they can be successfully placed – it is a matter of matching personalities and attributes with an agencies goals and needs.

I love finding people who are out of the box

Too many companies insist on putting square pegs in square holes.  And while I am very good at doing that, I take great pride in finding successful executives with unusual backgrounds. (e.g. the number of non-package goods people who I have placed in highly strategic CPG accounts)  Of course it requires that I have a client willing to trust and listen to me.  Many of these people have gone on to build wonderful advertising careers. That pleases me to no end..

I would have made a good shrink

A great deal of what a good recruiter does is to listen to candidates and understand what motivates them and what underlies their successes and failures.  Sometimes hearing their stories is heart breaking, while other times it ca be exhilirating. In either case, I am a good listener and a very good dispenser of advice.  And by listening carefully, I can also make creative placements, as stated.above.

Recruiting is fun

I love meeting people, helping them to grow and develop, I love dispensing valuable advice.

I look forward to getting up in the morning and getting on the computer.  In the days before cell phones, I still remember calling clients and candidates from outdoor pay phones (remember them?) during blizzards and rainstorms.  It was exhilarating and despite that I can now do it from my mobile indoors, it still is highly satisfying and a lot dryer.

Why HR Should Not Be Conducting First Interviews For Actual Jobs

The function of human resources should be to help agency management maximize every employee’s experience at their company.  They should be responsible for morale, for administration of the employee experience (benefits, attendance, performance reviews, succession planning, promotions and rotations, conflict resolution, handling complaints impartially, etc.)  I have dealt with some wonderful HR people; the best of them understand their function within the scheme of things and will admit that they should probably not be doing the preliminary screening to fill jobs.  

Unfortunately, ad agencies define HR largely as recruiting, which is a shame because well trained human resources people can make an important contribution to their company. Even though they have been at a company for many years, few HR people have enough knowledge of each individual job and function within the company to know exactly who is right for each situation.  Because HR lacks all the necessary information they need to find the right candidate(s), having them be the first gatekeeper is often a mistake because they could miss the exact right person.

On the other hand HR should do screening of general candidates who either approach the agency or are referred by employees.  By screening these people they maintain an inventory of candidates should a job opening occur; and in that case the hiring manager should see the candidates who are in the HR inventory..

This is not a criticism of HR. 

Most executives have no idea how to interview. Hiring managers should be trained (by HR) to do their own preliminary screening when a specific opening occurs.  Every recruiter who has been in the business long enough to remember when the function of HR was not screening, knows that working directly with hiring managers was far more expeditious and effective. Under that system, recruiters got to know the hiring managers and who they wanted to hire, which made finding appropriate candidates quick and efficient.

As things stand now at most companies in and out of advertising, hiring managers often ask HR to write the specs for their jobs which need filling.  And even when the manager creates the specs, they are more often than not generic descriptions based on title and what the hiring manger may have said for the current or previous jobs. But, as I have previously written, they rarely write specific job specs each time there is a job opening.  And, while HR may spend time with the individual hiring managers on each open job, most job managers do not articulate exactly who they want to hire.  They do describe personality (“upbeat, gets along well with others”) and job function (“able to work with clients”), but hiring managers generally have a “picture “ in their head of whom they want to hire which is rarely communicated or articulated.  I wrote years ago about the best specs I ever had.  That post is worth reading in this context.

In fact, rarely do hiring managers describe problems that need to be solved or other un-articulated needs.  Without this information, HR cannot accurately assess candidates (or their résumés) and should not be the preliminary gatekeeper. That is why HR should not do the initial screening; they could easily pass on someone who is perfect for the job. Over time I have met many such candidates.

That is the reason why, for most very senior jobs (directors, group heads, etc.), HR is rarely involved.  Management does its own screening, sometimes in conjunction with HR, but HR is not tasked with eliminating candidates. They may be the collectors of résumés, but rarely do initial screening.  In ad agencies, HR rarely gets involved with creative hires (other than administratively).  Creative people tend to want to do their own evaluation of candidates and their portfolios.  Account and media people should do the same.

That is not to say that HR should not have an important role in hiring.  Indeed, they should train managers to screen and interview and they should see candidates at some point during the process in order to determine their “fit” within the culture and to insure that those candidates will be able function within the organization. If candidates do not fit within the culture, HR should have veto power, no matter how well candidates are liked, including seniors.  They should also be responsible for references.

Unfortunately, in advertising HR is all too often defined only as recruiting.  I can think of one wonderful ad agency head of HR who came from the corporate side because the agency wanted to improve its human resources function.  On his first day, the CEO loaded him down with dozens of jobs; it never let up.  He managed to last a couple of years, but left because he did not think that the main function of his job should have been to spend 6 hours a day screening executives; he was hired for all his other considerable skills but rarely, if ever, had the time to practice or teach those skills.  It is a shame, because he was fabulous.

Regrettably, I have seen this same scenario repeated all too often at many companies.

This post should not be misinterpreted.  HR has a necessary function to perform, but screening should not be their first function.