I read “Hiring Secrets of the NFL” for the first time about a month ago and I’ve picked it up several times since to recapture the author’s unique perspective on top talent selection .   I recommend it as a must read for recruiters and everyone else interested in creating exceptional teams.
 

Recruiting Impact Book Review

Hiring Secrets of the NFL

How Your Company Can Select Talent Like a Champion

by Isaac Cheifetz
 

In each chapter of the book, Isaac Cheifetz uncovers a number of hiring, selection and utilization “secrets” discovered over the years in the highly competitive world of the NFL.  The “secrets” are then offered as guide posts to better decision making in the selection of key talent for business teams.  There are 40 “secrets” in all.

The book starts with a “KICKOFF” and then drills through nine chapters of talent selection recommendations (“secrets”) for hiring executives taken directly from (drafting, trading, selection) lessons learned by owners, executives and coaches in the NFL.  It ends, of course, with “THE END ZONE” (a full summary of all the “secrets” revealed throughout the book).  You don’t need to be a football fan to gain a lot from the book, but you’ll probably enjoy it more if you’re familiar with the game of football and some NFL history.

At only 115 pages, this is a richly packed, thought provoking and important book for anyone involved in recruiting, selection and hiring.  Isaac Cheifetz brings a uniquely powerful perspective to the exploration of the devastating costs of critical hiring mistakes and the destiny-changing impact of right-fit talent selection.

This isn’t just another book about building teams by hiring superstars with “team player” attitudes.  The author digs much deeper and challenges some of the boxed-set philosophies still held by many hiring managers struggling to break beyond mediocrity, or even failure, in building their organizations.

Buy the book.  Read it.  Keep it on a shelf close by.  You may find yourself going back to it frequently.

As a recruiter, I’m facinated by people with exceptional talent in the recruiting profession.  Troy Billings is one of those people. 

Troy Billings impressed me years ago as one of the brightest recruiters I had encountered in the Twin Cities.  It seemed to me that his knowledge, skill, creativity, personal skills and results focus destined him for an extraordinary career in the recruiting profession.  Troy has indeed enjoyed a rapidly advancing career and broadly expanding professional expertise.  I caught up with him recently (he now lives and works in the Chicago area) and asked him to share some of his thoughts for the blog. 

Troy Billings
General Manager
Fulcrum Consulting
Chicago, IL

Global market experience:          Europe, Latin America
Years of recruiting experience:   11+
Types of recruiting done:            Executive, Retained, Contingency, Corporate, Consulting

Troy is currently the General Manager of Fulcrum Consulting in Chicago.  Fulcrum Consulting provides Management Consulting Services to large companies in business and IT strategy, operational improvement, and IT/Financial staffing services.  Troy has responsibility for growing the presence and capabilities of Fulcrum Consulting and engages with large corporations as a management consultant in the areas of business and technology strategy, sales and recruiting management and operational improvement.

Prior to joining Fulcrum Consulting, Troy’s recruiting roles included: Sr. Manager of Recruiting Technology and Processes with Sara Lee Corporation, Strategic Human Capital Consultant with General Mills, Recruiting Manager of Tech Central, Inc. and Technical Recruiter with Computer Horizons Corporation.

Troy holds a Bachelors Degree from the University of Notre Dame and a Mini Masters in Software Design and Development from the University of St. Thomas.  He graduated Valedictorian of his high school class.   Troy speaks five languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese.  He has worked professional assignments in Italy, Spain and Bolivia.

Q & A with Troy Billings

1.      Troy, before we get started, please tell us what you do in your current position at Fulcrum Consulting.  I am General Manager for Fulcrum Consulting in Chicago, IL.  We are a full service national management consulting; IT professional services, financial staffing and managed services/outsourcing solutions firm.

2.      What was your first recruiting job?  How were things different than today’s market?    My first staffing position was pre-Y2K as a technical recruiter with the now defunct Computer Horizons Corp.  In those days, COBOL programmers were making hundreds of dollars an hour, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) were just taking hold, and recruiters cold-called off of paper mailing lists.  Like the industrial revolution which globally transformed socioeconomic and cultural conditions forever, I’ve enjoyed the unique opportunity of witnessing the world’s first ever e-revolution: the sequential bursting of the dichotomous mainframe (pre-Y2K) and dot-com (1998-2001) bubbles leading to a more homeostatic post-bubble e-commerce era where information, people, and nations are literally now only separated by a simple mouse click! 

3.      What do you like most about your recruiting work?  (1) The thrill of hunting for exceptional talent in a tight labor market; (2) delivering quality candidates who exceed hiring manager expectations; and (3) helping people - particularly the under or unemployed - attain rewarding work which fosters professional growth and financial prosperity.

4.      What do you think is the greatest challenge facing recruiters today?   The greatest challenge is a recruiter’s greatest opportunity: an ever tightening labor market wherein the demand for labor far exceeds and will continue to exceed supply.

5.      In your view, what skills and attributes make for a great recruiter?  First and foremost, impeccable integrity, values-driven ethics, and a desire to make the world a better place.  Next, in no particular order but with equal importance:  humble patience; nose-to-the-grindstone tenacity; gracious humility balanced with God-centered self-confidence; overflowing optimism offset by periodic splashes-in-the-face reality checks;  detail orientation; attentive listening; proactive cold calling; referral based sourcing; technology savvy; relationship building; mutual trust and respect; data mining; real-time contact management; win-win business approach; and results orientation.   

6.      What key skills could any recruiter hone to become better?  Master the art of referral based sourcing and creative Internet sourcing strategies such as: spidering, x-raying, flip search, harvesting, peelback, peer search, Boolean logic, keywords, and field search commands.  Refine the crafts of exploratory questioning and attentive listening.  Tap into target market virtual discussion forums, professional networks, and online communities.  Excel in contact data management and long term relationship building. Harness the power of productivity enhancing electronic applicant tracking.  Embrace the value of Key Performance Indicators to track measurable benchmarks through quantifiable reporting. 

7.      What books, blogs, educational and training resources do you recommend to recruiters?
Books:   Conceptual Selling (original book by Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman - latest version cited here);   SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham; Getting Things Done by David Allen and The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins  Blogs:   www.recruitingimpact.com (Yeh, right but thanks for that!)  Education/Training:  AIRS

8.      How has the proliferation of Web 2.O (social networking/media) affected your job and/or recruiting efforts?   In a nutshell, it provides a greater name generation source for leads and referrals.

9.      Any predictions for how Social Networking sites such as (FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, others) will factor in the long haul. They will compete and grow.  Some will become prominent and dominate their space while others will fade.

10.     What impact will Social Networking have on the future of recruiting?  Social Networking will always enhance lead-generation, but what you do with and how you manage those leads ultimately determines ROI.

11.     Do you have any insights or predictions regarding the future for recruiters and what we need to do to prepare?  I expect the field of recruiting to grow; but only the fittest will survive in the face of stiff competition.  A persevering work ethic, wellspring of enthusiasm, and the synergic nexus of relationship building and productivity enhancing technology will be the single most critical success factors.

That’s a wrap Troy.  Thank you.  I wish you the very best of continued success and I look forward to future conversations regarding the recruiting and staffing industry.

The Minnesota Recruiters Spring 2008 (un)Conference was held on Friday, May 9th in the theatre at the Best Buy corporate headquarters in Richfield, MN.  The free event was “sold out” with 220 pre-registered attendees and a waiting list.  Actual attendance will appear on the Minnesota Recruiters Network blog in a day or two. 

Plenty of post-event information will appear on the network blog over the next couple of days, so I won’t cover details of the event itself in this post other than to say it was well worth attending.  Instead, I’d like to bring some attention to the remarkable efforts of a rising star in the Twin Cities recruiting community and a group of people dedicated to supporting his efforts from the very beginning.

Paul Debettignies

Paul Debettignies (pronounced “de-bettingz”/aka MN Headhunter) is a recruiter, blogger, social media aficionado and social networking star.  With more than 10 years of experience as a technical (IT) recruiter, Paul is currently a one-man-band recruiter with Nerd Search, a firm he incorporated in 2006.  But that’s just his day job. 

In May of 2005 Paul started his blog MN Headhunter.  In December of 2007 MN Headhunter was nominated by Recruitingblogs.com for “Best Third Party Recruiting Blog of 2007” (for the third straight year).  Last summer, as his blog continued to grow in popularity within the local and national recruiting community, Paul and a couple of other local bloggers, Steven Rothberg and Josh Kahn first discussed the (un)Conference idea.  Their meeting took place over some enormous burritos at a Chipotle just around the corner from where the fourth (un)Conference event just took place. 

The Minnesota Recruiters Network was born.  Paul’s efforts in building the Minnesota Recruiters Network (including the development of a web presence on a social networking platform) combined with his planning and promoting of the (un)Conference events have produced extraordinary results in less than a year.  As of today, 372 members appear on the Minnesota Recruiters Network roster. 

The Minnesota Recruiters Network has three key elements that provide events, networking portals and content:

1. (un) Conferences – four have been held so far and more are planned

2. Topical Sessions – the first of these was held on April 4, 2008 with Jason Alba, founder of JibberJobber.com and author of “I’m on LinkedIn, Now What???”.

3. MinnesotaRecruiters.com – a social network and blogging platform for recruiters on Ning with 372 members as of this posting

The co-founders and volunteers directly supporting Paul’s efforts from the beginning include: Don Ramer, Steven Rothberg, Josh Kahn, Nicole St. Martin, and Toby Dayton.  Paul Debettignies is credited by this distinguished group of industry professionals as being the driving force behind the effort.  In Josh Kahn’s words, “He won’t admit to it or take credit, but he’s the guy”.

Local recruiting-related businesses have shown a strong interest in the rapid growth of the Minnesota Recruiters Network and the (un)Conferences.  Sponsors of the (un)Conferences providing the support necessary to produce high quality events at no cost to attendees have included:  Arbita, Job Dig, Oberon, Jobs2Web and LinkUp. 

Paul Debettignies’ impact in the Twin Cities has received national industry attention for some time now.  He has been featured or written about by some of the highest profile recruiting industry thought leaders in the country.   Jason Davis (founder of Recruiting.com and RecruitingBlogs.com) recently recognized Paul in his May 1, 2008 blog post.  Jason’s post about sums it.

And he’s just getting started.

I ordered a copy of I’m On Linked In Now What??? as soon as I learned from Paul DeBettignies that the Minnesota Recruiters Network and Job Dig were hosting the author, Jason Alba for a brief presentation on April 28th at Job Dig’s corporate headquarters.

I knew before ordering that the book wasn’t written specifically for recruiters.  Job seekers and networking enthusiasts looking to get the most out of LinkedIn were the author’s primary target audience.  As it turns out, the book has become a highly acclaimed resource for recruiters and everyone else wanting to build their LinkedIn network and leverage some of the less easily intuitive features of the site.

So far, I’ve read the book twice cover to cover.  Two reasons for that:  1. It’s concise enough for me to read twice   2. It’s full of very good information.  The book is logically ordered, easy to follow,  practical and useful for any LinkedIn user, including recruiters.  I spent a couple of hours applying some of Jason’s tips and exploring areas of functionality I had overlooked or felt were unimportant before I read the book. 

Every LinkedIn user should either read this book or already know everything in it (Table of Contents).  Jason accurately points out that LinkedIn is a good tool that can facilitate connections for business people, but makes a persuasive case against relying on LinkedIn as a singular or comprehensive networking tool. He also makes it clear that every user should be aware of LinkedIn’s limitations and pitfalls.

If you intend to become a better user of LinkedIn, this is a MUST read.

So, you’re on LinkedIn.  Now what???

Get on Facebook!!!

Jason Alba has written a second book titled  I’m on Facebook, Now What??? with co-author Jesse Stay.   I haven’t read it yet, but if you’re a Facebook enthusiast, and Jason’s second book is as well done as his first, read it!

In his not-so-politically-correct book TKO HIRING – Ten Knockout Strategies for Recruiting, Interviewing and Hiring Great People, Dave Anderson of Learn to Lead smacks some recruiting basics with simplicity and candor.  Dave comes from the retail auto dealership world and brings a refreshing, straight-line perspective to the recruiting subject.

Well written.  To the point.  Clear, basic, and confrontational.  Uniquely presented and unstuffed.   

The Knockout theme is expanded in ten “Rounds” (chapters), complete with “Right Hook Rules” and “Left Jab Laws”. 

The TOC:

Round One        Understand the Cost of Hiring Recklessly

Round Two        Become a Proactive Recruiter

Round Three      Create a Potent Interview Structure

Round Four        Ask Tough Interview Questions

Round Five         Effectively Check References

Round Six          How to Use Predictive Testing Hiring Profiles

Round Seven      How to Get New Hires Off to a Great Start

Round Eight       How to Retain Eagles Once You Find Them

Round Nine        Differentiate Your Employees for Development and Retention

Round Ten         Knockout Summary for Follow-Through

Don’t buy this book if you’re looking for the defining treatise on talent acquisition strategy and tactic.  The book is aimed at hiring managers stuck in a sloppy, bad-hire rut with the resulting poor performance and turnover.  It’s a basic slap (or punch, as the theme may suggest) in the face with inalterable hiring success basics. 

In summary, I think this is a good first level primer for executive leaders, hiring managers and recruiters alike.  Especially for those who hire salespeople. 

Bloggers, you’ll appreciate the writing style.

I’d love to read more by Dave Anderson on the subject!