This week’s inquiry comes from Marc Stevens:

Hi Jeff,

I’ve been recruiting now for about 11 years and as you would imagine, I’ve seen a lot of different things happen in this sometimes crazy but very rewarding business. I’ve attended the Fordyce meetings and really have benefited from your presence there. In your articles, you always share unique solutions we can’t get anywhere else…thanks!

Recently, I’ve been exposed to a situation that one of my candidates is facing and because of it seems a bit unfair, I wanted to share it with you to see what ideas or thoughts you have.

I have a candidate who has accepted an offer from our client and learned on his exit interview from his current company they wanted him to reimburse ½ of his relocation costs. Apparently the agreement is that 100% of the relocation costs are refundable to the company if the candidate leaves in the first year and 50% if within the second year. To me this seems a bit harsh — think of it this way:

Let’s say the candidate left on the 23rd month, well technically the company is looking for 50% of the relocation costs reimbursed? Huh?! I know I’m going to be biased about this but I can’t see why the company wouldn’t be amenable to at least working out a prorated schedule, which brings me to my question.

Is this typically something a company will enforce? Have you found that they would be willing to work something out, i.e. prorated schedule &/or does the candidate need to get an attorney involved?

Thanks,

Marc

Hi Marc,

We’re pleased to hear from you, and are here to help recruiters close as many placements as possible. Your JOC inquiry will help us show how to handle the matter of candidate reimbursements. Or rather – unhandle them, since there’s no need for the candidate to pay anything – or for you to blow a placement — if you set up the countermove properly.

We call these pre-employment gems Employee Payback Agreements (EPA’s). Typically, they’re a “condition of employment,” and the candidate has no choice other than to decline the job. That makes them disfavored agreements legally. So a court will look for reasons not to enforce them. But bringing up those reasons are the candidate’s burden of proof. And your “burden of placement.”

That’s where good recruiting comes in. You can coach the candidate to:

1. Attack the agreement itself. Employer lawyers generally overwrite these agreements to impress their clients. That means ambiguous, inconsistent and overbearing terms. Things that would work in a business-to-business deal don’t work when a court construes a disfavored agreement.

My favorite way to break relo paybacks is to show there was no consideration (something given in exchange) for the payback. It’s usually missed – even by experienced lawyers — and is the ultimate legal challenge. Here’s why:

The employer agreed to reimburse the relo expenses so the candidate would accept. Most defense lawyers stop there. But where is the payment for the payback condition (upon the candidate leaving)?

None. No consideration ergo no contract.

2. Use the reasons for leaving to counterbalance the terms of the agreement. There are always misrepresentations in the hiring process. Candidates make them, and employers make them. Now’s the time to bring up the ones the employer made. It’s a safe bet that there were around a dozen.

Was the job exactly as represented? Is it ever? By whom? When? What was said? How about the work area? The reporting relationships? The experience of the supervisor? The product? The product line? New products being developed? The company culture?  Since it’s a relo, what about employer statements as to job opportunities for the spouse? The schools?

See what I mean? The whole process is replete with representations and they become misrepresentations. Some intentional, others unintentional. No matter. Just blame the employer for everything that went wrong!

Do a candidate debrief with a plunger in one hand and a pen in the other. As the sewer backs up, step aside and take copious notes. O-o-o-h what yuk spews out! Who, what, where, when, and how.  It won’t be a brief debrief, but it’s worth your fee to document.

3. Bring up the employer’s failure to orient, train, and supervise the candidate properly. Every working wounded has a story. Take notes on this too. Dates and places are critical. The candidate can be wrong on just about everything, as long as he’s exact. It’s just some biased person’s view of the world. That’s good enough for us.

Once you’ve documented these three items, prepare a letter for the candidate to give to his ex. Threats aren’t necessary – just laying out the “facts.” Employer lawyers cave, or they get nailed in court with a lot more than the relo expense. Even worse – their clients ask why they paid for an agreement that was wrapped around their neck in the public square.

As I stated in The Employee Termination Handbook (probably on the employer lawyer’s desk):

The public has the impression that a court is like a giant automated teller machine. Just plug in the right facts and law, and the cash will appear. Trial lawyers who think otherwise are disabused of this impression rather violently during their first court appearance. This is the difference between art and science in the practice of law. The proof and interpretation of the law are critical.

There you have it, Marc. Once you know how to break EPA’s, you can let candidates know they should never stand in the way of taking a job.

No placement should ever be blown over an EPA. Half back? I don’t think so! Get an attorney? I don’t know so! Just a good recruiter like yourself — and off he goes to pursue his dream.

Best wishes for success with this and many more placements!

Jeff

If you have a legal question you’d like to have Jeff answer here on The Fordyce Letter, check out Jeff’s On Call! and submit your question.

Today, Barb Bruno launched www.happycandidates.com, a site designed to provide career assistance to those “can’t help” candidates, with the idea that the resources in Happy Candidates will certainly be able to assist them.  “We have shifted once again to a more candidate-driven market,” says Bruno. “As such, many recruiters find themselves fielding an enormous number of calls from what would be classified as “can’t help” candidates. Imagine helping more people find fulfilling and rewarding jobs while saving your company time, money, and resources.  That’s the idea behind Happy Candidates.” 

Happy Candidates is designed to provide services to candidates to help them differentiate themselves from their competition and improve their reputation and word-of-mouth advertising as job-seekers. For recruiters, it is designed to be a place where you can send candidates for whom you have no opportunities that can put them in touch directly with other recruiters and offer them helpful career tips and 100% of the resources they need to find a job on their own. This resource in turn allows you to focus on the 5% of candidates that can be placed, which increases sales and profits.

Happy Candidates provides tools and resources your candidates need to find a job and since it is private labeled, they’ll think you’ve built this just for them.  It takes less than ten minutes to set up a customized career portal. Some of the free actions they take generate revenue which offsets the cost of the career portal.

A “soft launch” of Happy Candidates was done one year ago to test the market and get feedback. Currently, the service has 400 firms and over 45,000 job seekers who have enjoyed the resource. “Now we know it works,” says Bruno. “Owners are getting thank you notes and cookie bouquets from candidates they would have normally ‘ignored.’”

You can learn more about Happy Candidates by going to www.happycandidates.com as well as by listening to the podcast we recently did with Barb.

How many times have you heard one or more of your clients state:

“I will not settle for anything but the best.”

Or

“I want to hire the best candidate available.”

Although a worthy pursuit, for many clients, hiring the “best,” in most instances, may be an unobtainable goal. Actually, Herbert Simon may have said it most clearly in his reverse juxtaposition of an old saying:

“The best is the enemy of the good.”

In reality, many managers, working with a limited or distorted understanding of what they are attempting to accomplish through their open position, move ahead looking for the “best” candidate when they have no idea how to define “best.” In so doing, they miss out on many “good” candidates who could meet or surpass the performance outcomes necessary to be successful in the position. In holding out for a nondescript vision of “best,” they miss out on “good” — thereby ending up compromising with “average.”

As Peter Drucker so accurately stated in The Definitive Drucker:

“In order to hire excellent performers, you must first be clear in your mind what excellent performance will look like.”

Adding to the manager’s challenge is their general lack of training in job analysis and performance based selection techniques. With this shortcoming, it is little wonder they many times fail if they attempt to execute the hiring process utilizing internal resources only. Furthermore, these same shortcomings will compromise the results that could be achieved through most independent recruiting firms. Because of this inconsistency in results, many clients have adopted a quantity approach when utilizing outside resources. Obviously, this becomes self-defeating as the individual recruiting firms realize they cannot commit the necessary resources based on the level of competition.

Conversely, consider for a moment what it would be like to be a hiring manager who had total confidence in their outside recruiting firm. This confidence is the result of experiencing the benefits of a client centered hiring process. Inclusive in this process is a proper job analysis as well as the establishment of realistic, performance-based selection criteria and position outcomes. Additionally, under the direction of the outside recruiter, the process is always completed within an acceptable time line.

Which manager would you want to be?

The results of research we have been conducting for over twenty years strongly suggest that the vast majority of hiring managers actually do want to hire “good” candidates if the following two conditions are met:

1. The hiring manager feels confident that the process leading up to their decision has been thorough, exacting, and that it provided them with all the information they required to make a confident hiring decision.
2. That the process they followed was accomplished within a realistic time frame, which still allowed the new employee sufficient room to achieve the required outcomes through the position.

Summed up in one statement:

Managers will make their decision when they feel confident that the hiring process has been properly served within the time frame allotted for its completion, producing a good, qualified, and interested finalist.

However, keep in mind what Robert J. Ringer stated in his 1973 breakthrough book, Winning Through Intimidation,

“… Before a person closes any kind of deal … he always worries about the fact that there may be a better deal down the road. It’s an uncontrollable instinct: at the last moment, the thought has to at least occur to a person that he might be missing out on a better deal somewhere else.”

This is true for our clients as well. However, the client’s sense of urgency will determine the appropriate time line and, if this sense of urgency is strong, it could force the client into compromising his or her decision and hiring the wrong person. Therefore, the control factor in these situations, as it should be in all hiring situations, must be the process that is followed in attracting, evaluating, and hiring “good” candidates who are available given the time constraints created by the sense of urgency.

Remember

The differences between how a good and an average candidate conduct their respective job searches is substantial. Unfortunately, most clients do not take these differences into consideration and as a consequence rarely hire enough good candidates.

Hence, the importance of the hiring process. As explained in our previous articles, when properly executed, the client centered process is designed to attract good (and possibly the best) candidates while building confidence in both the client and the candidate, so that when the time arrives to make a decision, they both will have all the information they require to make the right decision.

Bottom line: when we control and execute with our clients and candidates a properly structured process, both parties will have confidence in their decisions. Their confidence grows and is nurtured because the process has been thorough, exacting, founded on realistic and mutually agreed upon performance outcomes and selection criteria, and also because you have been uncompromising in your commitment to the principle that “the process makes the placement.”

As always, if you have questions or comments about this article or wish to receive my input on any other topic related to this business, just let me know. Your calls and e-mails are most welcome.

I was reading a post recently that discussed the pros and cons of offering bribes or kickbacks to candidates to take jobs. In the post, the author stated:

“We can understand why a candidate would want to use a recruiting firm that gives them $10,000.00 or whatever it is when they place them. That’s a lot of money anywhere…When you get that $10,000.00 it’s almost like a justification for moving.”

As well:

“…I understand why recruiting firms would want to offer it. It is a great way to drum up business; especially if you advertise it. You can advertise that you pay money to people when they are placed. That’s something that certainly will draw in lots and lots and lots of candidates.”

However, the post continued on with some of the business and ethical reasons why this may not be the best route to take. Some discussed included:

• Paying out candidate kickbacks takes money out of your placement fee, and ultimately out of your operating budget.
• If you advertise this practice and your clients know about it, they may approach hiring any of your candidates with more extreme caution.
• Your clients may be led to believe that the candidate wouldn’t have taken the job if there were no kickback from you.
• There is the potential of attaching a stigma to your candidates if they are hired; their new co-workers may view them in a less than favorable light.
• Once a candidate is known to accept kickbacks, they may be suspected of being disloyal to any potential new employers.

So, there are certainly plusses and minuses to this practice. Paul Hawkinson covered this topic a couple years ago too in the Fordyce article Inducements, Kickbacks, Bribes, Sweeteners. What are your thoughts on this? Please share in the comments below!

In a recent discussion, an unemployed job-seeker shared that she had been on five interviews and was certain that she wasn’t offered a few positions because the salaries they were offering were lower than what she was making at her previous job. She had concluded that the companies were most likely wary of hiring her at a lower wage, for fear that she might leave for a higher paying position once the economy improved. Frustrated, she asked for help on how to approach the delicate topic of compensation for future opportunities.

There were responses coming from all kinds of perspectives for this inquiry:

• “Remember that salary requirements should never be spoken about in first interviews (provided you know that there will be a 2nd or 3rd round of interviews). Unless the employer brings it up in the first interview, don’t bring it up.”
• “Start by being honest with yourself, why are you taking a step back? Are you going to bolt when something better comes along. You need to research the position you are applying for and tell them that you are aware of the difference in salary. You need to look at the role and state honestly why you want it and what you could do for them.”
• “Generally candidates try to deflect discussions about salary and benefits until they have been offered the job and persuaded the interviewers that they are ideal candidate for the job. Smart candidates will do everything to avoid answering direct questions about salary and benefits. Try to bring him back to the parameters which he is looking for and put emphasis on your your suitability for this job.”

This is a tricky topic these days with lots of job-seekers putting themselves up for positions that are a level or two below them simply because they need to make ends meet. There is always the possibility that these candidates will cut and run once things improve, but this is also a very real situation that doesn’t seem to have any one agreed-upon answer.

There are really two issues here: interviewing for positions that are a notch or two below one’s current level, and discussing salary during the interview process. Would you send a candidate to interview for a position that was below his or her current level? How do you advise your candidates on when to discuss salary? Weigh in with your thoughts below.

As in any business, the world of Recruiters, “Headhunters”, “Executive Search Professionals”, etc. includes the good, the bad, and the ugly. There are those in it for some good cash for now, and those in it to build a great long-term sustainable business. Which are you?

This industry is characterized by a glut of new recruiters when times are good, and dramatic reductions when times get tough. It’s an easy business to get into, but it’s a tough business to stay in during economic downturns. I often tell people… “This is a business that, when times are good, there’s almost nothing better. There’s a lot of relatively easy money to be made. However, when times are bad, there’s almost nothing worse. The ‘gravy train’ dries up very quickly and companies recruiting budgets disappear.”

There are a number of factors that go into making someone successful in this industry over the long run. However, I believe one differentiator is being willing to add value for people whether you’re likely to make an immediate buck or not. Especially in a down economy, when many good prospective candidates, and perhaps some former (and potentially future) clients are out of work, finding ways to be of help to them pays great long-term dividends. Do you invest significant time and energy into people that can’t be of immediate value to you? Do you view people as people, or simply evaluate them by whether they are worth money to you or not? Are you willing to find ways to assist people that don’t even seem to be of potential value to you down the road?

Many recruiters do, and many, many recruiters don’t.

I see so many recruiters that are so unwilling to share information with others that they create the impression that they are only in it for a buck. Whether it’s a lack of trust, lack of caring, or lack of long-term vision, they sacrifice valuable long-term relationships (and revenue) for a quick hit.

I’ve been recruiting for the past 24 years. Just as any other recruiter, I am only able to place a tiny percentage of all the people I talk to. However, I have tried to find some way to be a valuable resource to virtually every new person I connect with. I may not be able to place them directly, however, I generally offer to help them in a variety of ways:

• Coach them on improvements to their resume, or approach, or interview skills
• Help them prepare for interviews with “inside information” even though it’s not my placement
• Give them suggestions of good networking groups or resources in their area of focus
• Connect them with other people that may be a source of leads
• Refer other good recruiters that may be able to help when I can’t
• …and even provide them contact names at companies they are targeting to pursue on their own!

As recruiters, we have a unique perspective on what makes a good candidate or what job search practices work best. After an interview, we get to debrief with our candidates as well as with the hiring manager. We get to hear what resonated, and what didn’t. We see how people get jobs. We hear why a hiring manager selected one candidate over another. We see these things so often and, for us, it becomes “common sense” to do certain things and not others. To many job seekers though, who aren’t exposed to the job search process as we are year in and year out, that “common sense” can be quite uncommon!

When they find a recruiter who sincerely wants to help, they are very often very willing to reciprocate that help now, or down the road. People I’ve helped have often become future hiring managers somewhere, and many even become clients. They often become great ongoing resources for referrals. They often become great resources of job leads and hiring manager names. They often become a viable candidate years later after they’ve gained more experience and/or become more professional in their presentation. And some of the most valuable long-term relationships originally were people I thought would never be of help to me at all.

Some of my best relationships are people I’ve placed multiple times in their careers. They were initially early or mid-level in their career, became hiring managers and clients, candidates again, and clients again somewhere else. I have many people I’ve never placed, but talk to often throughout the year because they are great connectors for me with referrals, information, and leads.

Have I ever gotten burned because I gave a contact name to someone who somehow used it to hurt a potential placement for me? Yes, a couple of times. Have I gotten more business because of my willingness to share valuable information when they need it for their own benefit and not mine? Yes, many times. Do I get calls back more quickly from clients and candidates when I’m seeking referrals because I’ve helped them in the past? Absolutely! Has my job gotten easier because I have people calling me proactively with information, job orders, and leads, because they know I will help them again in the future? Yes!

Keeping everything you know close to the vest may benefit you in the short-run. However, sharing information freely and helping people whether they can help you in return or not will enable you to build a successful practice over the long haul! Try it! You may not see the results this month, or this year, but results will come and make your life much more rewarding in the process!

When I started in search in 1998, conventional wisdom said that if you were not on the phone, you were not working. In fact, two of the firms for whom I have worked had call tracking software built into the phone system. Every night, the head of the office would send out a report to the entire company detailing how many calls each recruiter made and how much time they spent on the phone. It was implied that recruiters who spent time sending e-mails and performing internet research did so because they lacked the spine to make cold calls. This attitude became deeply ingrained in me.

However, times change and technology changes behavior. Many people today are not likely to answer the phone if they do not recognize the number on the caller ID and even less likely if the caller ID is blocked. A few candidates in their twenties and thirties who work at big companies have confessed to me that they frequently go a week without checking voicemail. They feel that if information is important, it will arrive via e-mail. 

To adjust to the changes in how people communicate, I have had to change the way I initiate contact. I could still make eighty cold calls in a day, but seventy of them will go right to voicemail and of the ten people who answer, most will not be interested in speaking. Instead, my first candidate contact is nearly exclusively via e-mail. I send a brief, personal e-mail that tells the candidate who I am and the nature of my search. I’ll then ask if they would like to speak.

I receive significantly more responses than I do with voicemails—some days one-third of the people I e-mail will respond. Now, a number of candidates will respond to say “no”, but many more will respond with follow-up questions or a request to set up a time to speak. In a good day, I’ll send out forty emails that will generate four or five e-mail conversations and eight or nine phone conversations. These phone conversations are usually far more productive than the old “catching them at their desk” conversations because the candidate has agreed in advance to discuss your search (or his career, or potential referrals) and is likely taking the call at a place and time where he or she is able to focus completely on the conversation. I’ve also received numerous e-mails from candidates interested in discussing a search who were made aware of the opportunity because friends or colleagues forwarded my original note to them (frequently without responding to me).

The advantages of making initial contact with e-mail instead of a phone call are many. You get a higher response rate because e-mail is silent—candidates need not worry about who can hear them speaking. You do not have to worry about gatekeepers deflecting your call or about reaching out to too many people in the same department in a short period of time. And candidates can respond when it is convenient—you’re not calling somebody who is battling a deadline.

Obviously, the real “work” still has to be done on the phone or in person.  If you are presenting a job, interviewing a candidate, preparing for or debriefing after an interview or hopefully extending an offer and closing a placement, you still need real-time interaction. You need to listen to what a person says (and does not say), establish a personal connection and help him or her make a major life decision. That is not something I would recommend attempting via e-mail.  However, I have found that by cutting out the inefficient process of leaving seventy voicemails in a day, I can drastically increase the amount of time I spend on productive tasks.

Given how I grew up in the business, this was not an easy transformation for me to make. It was only when I saw the success that other people in my office were having that I decided to give it a try. And based on my personal results, I think that the cold e-mail will eventually replace the cold call as the standard method of initial candidate contact. There is so much information available today that uncovering candidate identities and e-mail addresses is pretty easy. What will be interesting to see is what will happen to our profession once a major barrier for entry, the willingness and ability to make cold calls, is removed from an industry with an already-low barrier for entry.

Recently, we celebrated Independence Day, so I feel inspired to write about American Heroes. But not the kind of heroes you might be thinking of. If you are currently employed as an Executive Recruiter, Executive Search Consultant, Headhunter, or whatever you prefer calling yourself, I am writing about you.

Instantly, I can conjure up three reasons to support the claim of heroism for third party recruiters.

First of all, you have overcome being one of the 5 million or so Americans to continue to file for unemployment reimbursement after the recession ravaged approximately 8 million jobs.

Secondly, you most likely earn your income through pure performance.

That’s right. According to results from the Survey of Search Firms owners I conducted at Fordyce Forums 2007-2010 as well as RMAR.org owner/operators, more than 2/3 of the headhunters in the United States of America with more than 2 years of experience do not get paid a base salary; at all. So, you are probably a straight-commission “sales” professional that has learned how to execute in an extremely challenging economy to pay your bills. If you make placements often against rigorous odds and multiple obstacles, you survive. Fail to find a client company willing to engage your services and then identify the ideal candidate for them, and you perish.

As a “solo” operator of a search firm myself, I like to keep it simple so that my audience gets the message. No one is paying me except myself. If you are on your own, I am sure you feel the same way. Either way, your boss’ payroll is only as good as your last successfully orchestrated deal and invoice…once paid. In other words, in a society laden with excess baggage, executive recruiters carry their own weight!

Thirdly, and I believe most importantly, independent recruiters create jobs for Americans and help put people to work every day.  Sure, some companies rely upon us to “fill openings”; which in and of itself is a noble task. But what rarely, if ever, gets reported are the calls we make to prospective employers to create a sense of urgency for them to hire by exposing them to a gem of a candidate that is highly qualified to benefit their company. The bottom line is that “we”, the executive search and placement industry, significantly impact the economic efficiencies of our paying customer.

We survive because the candidates we uncover, recruit, and persuade to accept employment with our clients perform at the top ranks of corporate America. But due to the confidential nature of the relationships headhunters share with their hiring authorities and candidates, most executive recruitment activity never gets reported in the press or mentioned at the Monday morning meeting introducing the new, highly acclaimed employee. Add to it the fact that no one ever really thinks they need “us” until they do, and our industry lives on in virtual anonymity.

Despite over a decade of zero employment growth in this great country of ours, we move ahead. Our mere existence in an industry that has no growth and an increasing number of efficient, internet-based tools designed to couple job seekers and hirers at lesser costs is proof positive of our value and power. So, in honor of the freedom and independence we celebrated earlier this month, celebrate yourself, your role, and your contribution.

Profitable specialties come and go, and most people who have been in the business awhile have switched specialties from time to time – usually due to a combination of factors, but most often for economic reasons. The industry or functional area they worked, for whatever reason, tanked. In an industry where two non productive months in a row can drive you out of business, flexibility is a necessity.

Desks are specialized by industry, function, geography, or combinations of these, but it’s generally accepted that geographically specialized desks run the highest risk of eventually failing, simply because geography, by its very nature, is something fixed, inflexible, and subject to nature, man made disasters, or being too closely tied to one industry (please search: “hurricanes” “oil spill” “Detroit automotive”). However, there’s something to be said for firms which dominate their local markets. I know several owners who will not work outside their office’s immediate geographic location, and over the years they have become the “go to” guys in the industry for their locations. Most of these firms have desks specialized by function, but they generate all their business from the local marketplace. I admire these firms for how they have become dominant locally.

It’s also always better to look into the eyes of someone who cuts you a five figure fee; something local desk specialists can and should do. But I’ve found that I would rather have a few people in a lot of places cutting those checks than a lot of people in one place paying me, despite all the benefits of deep relationships with “clients” (note: quotation marks because I believe there is no such thing as a “client” in this industry). To my way of thinking, there will always be the need to spread out the risks so that one dumb oil company, or hurricane, or some other geo specific thing knocks me out of business. That said, my firm places by geography, but we do it in a different way: we take great candidates, find out where they want to go, then place them within 30 miles of exactly where they want to live, and usually within just 30 days [“30/30 Placement Program™”].

I’ve often wondered why anyone would perform “searches” anymore, which I did for my first eight years in the business. Why not simply “place”? Searches and job orders are means to an end…placement. The quickest way to make placements, good economy or bad, is to find a great candidate and place him/her exactly where they want to live and work. After 26 years in the business, I know that most people will accept a less than ideal position in their most ideal location before they will accept an ideal position in their less than ideal location. Also, solid placements result when you put someone into the city or town where they most desire to live and work. We recently placed a Navy lieutenant for 50k in his top location when he had an offer of 63k in his second favorite location. The other recruiter could not believe it. That is the norm, not the exception.

There are several recruiting lessons to be learned from the bomb that LeBron James dropped on Cleveland late last night about his departure to the Miami Heat. Before we get into those lessons, let’s take a quick look at some of the highlights of LeBron’s NBA career with the Cavs:

• 2003: selected by the Cleveland Cavaliers as the first overall pick in the NBA Draft; signed a three-year, $12.9 million contract
• 2004: named 2003–04 NBA Rookie of the Year
• 2004-2005: selected to his first NBA All-Star Game
• 2005-2006: named as one of the candidates for the NBA Most Valuable Player Award
• 2006: negotiated a three-year, $60 million contract extension, with a player option for a fourth year, to begin in the 2007-2008 season
• 2007-2008: won the 2008 All-Star Game MVP
• 2008-2009: wins NBA Most Valuable Player award
• 2009-2010: wins 2nd NBA Most Valuable Player award
• July 2010: contract with Cleveland expires; becomes a free agent, meets formally with the New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls, and New Jersey Nets

Make no mistake about it; this guy is Talented. With a capital “T”. But it takes more than one guy to make a team, as Cleveland has surely learned. Just a couple of lessons to glean from this entire situation:

Don’t build your kingdom around one person. Whether you are hiring people for your office or assisting clients in their hiring needs, it’s important not to rely solely on one individual. For example: if you have a superstar candidate lined up to interview with a client, make sure you have others to present as well who are also excellent players. Remember – clients’ needs will vary and someone who might not seem to be the best candidate could turn out to be exactly what they’re looking for. Think of it this way – ever heard of a guy named Shaquille O’Neal? Yeah – he was also a Cleveland Cavalier last season (this is bound to change).

The best players aren’t always the right players. Think of the quote from Herb Brooks in the movie Miracle: “I’m not looking for the best players, Craig. I’m looking for the right ones.” In the seven years that James has been with the Cavs, he still has yet to win an NBA Championship. Sure, they’ve made it to the Playoffs five times, but as any winner will tell you, the ultimate prize is winning it all. When placing or hiring “A” players, it is important to take this into consideration. They may be a superstar, but is their working style going to mesh with your client’s company? When you’re hiring for yourself, these are also things to consider. For the Cavs, perhaps losing LeBron will be the best thing for the team as a whole. Only time will tell.

Money isn’t the only motivator. There is a billboard near Quicken Loans Arena that says, “Born Here. Raised Here. Plays Here. Stays Here.” Cleveland has been reminding James of his roots for quite some time now to encourage him to stay. He makes a lot of money, but as with most people who play at his level, sometimes the biggest motivators don’t have a dollar sign attached to them. In a Bloomberg Businessweek article written in June, Arizona State University president Michael M. Crow is quoted saying, “A world-class athlete is fundamentally no different than a world-class scientist…They are interested in finding a way to express everything that they have without limit so that they can gain recognition.” Recognition, proximity to family/friends, recreation, creative freedom, and so forth are all motivators that don’t necessarily have pricetags attached to them but can be huge deciding factors when working with candidates.

There will always be new (and better?) talent coming up. When your superstar candidate decides to take an offer elsewhere, it is disappointing for sure. But keep in mind the old cliche that there are always other fish in the sea. James is not the only talented player in the NBA. He’s also not the last of the talent available out there – just look at the guys coming up from this year’s draft. Superstars come into their own all the time, which is why it’s always a good idea to track careers of promising individuals and take an interest in them early on. They will remember your interest as they become successful which could mean placements, referrals, and/or new clients for you.

What other recruiting lessons do you think can be learned from LeBron’s departure? Share your thoughts in the comments below!