In my over 30 years as a technical and engineering recruiter I have encountered more than my share of staffing problems. However, one technology search assignment stands out as an instructive recruitment lesson on both: a) what to do? And b) what not to do?
The principles of this recruiting assignment apply not only to technical, scientific, IT (information technology), manufacturing, engineering or R&D (research and development) jobs, that my recruitment firm specializes in, but also any type of professional position.
This case study has been derived from a recent technical recruiting assignment for a food technology company near Cincinnati, Ohio. I offered it to you in two previous installments. This is the third and final part, which focuses on the benefits to the client.
Part One: The Client’s Prior Recruiting Mistakes
In part one I shared the recruitment mistakes this client made prior to retaining my search firm. This included their human resources department employing 12 other technical recruiting firms during a six-month period prior to our search engagement.
Part Two: Steps I Took To Overcome Recruiting Obstacles
Part two detailed all the obstacles I needed to quickly overcome to swiftly and successfully complete this technical recruiting assignment for our food technology client.
They included: a) three major recommendations to the client b) selling the client on the viability of each recommendation and c) being willing to walk away from this technical recruiting assignment if the client did not agree with my recruiting recommendations.
The key is our search firm had polled numerous technical recruitment and engineering recruitment teams in the six months prior to being contacted for this technical recruiting assignment. As part of my sales pitch to the client, I shared the results of those findings including a war for key R&D (Research and Development), scientific, engineering, technical, IT (Information Technology) and manufacturing talent. The result was (and continues to be) demand for key technical talent (like what the client desires) far exceeding the supply! This lent credibility to my three client recommendations. As a result, they were more willing to accept what I had to offer.
Company Success And Product Breakthroughs.
As a result of my fact finding, interviews of key company executives and visit to this client’s facility, I was able to uncover a lot of important information which I later used to entice key technical talent to consider this unique technology job opportunity.
For example, the finalist, who my client eventually hired, already had his own business. Therefore, he was not actively considering other technical jobs. In fact, after my first two approaches, the candidate was not even interested.
However, armed with all the key information I was able to surface, I was able to over time convince this scientist to at least talk to the client via a video chat. The more he learned, the more he became enamored with the job opportunity. Eventually, he became a viable job candidate and was eventually hired a year ago.
Since being hired, the candidate has launched several major technical and scientific breakthroughs for the client. The cumulative benefit of which was many millions of dollars!
I recently spoke to this Scientist/Lab Director and he said, “Hi Scott, thanks for touching base. So far so good. Being kept very busy. I am out here on the west coast on a business trip.” He also went on to say he was happy I was so persistent in approaching him because he really likes his job.
