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!

I know many of you enjoy occasionally sidling up to the poker table to play a little Texas Hold’Em. There’s something about bluffing your opponents with a crappy hand and still managing to win the pot that is thrilling to anyone. The best poker players in the world know how to mask their ‘tells’ and read other people like a book. It’s this in-person interaction that makes the game enjoyable, challenging, and rewarding.

The World Series of Poker began in 1970, but poker has been around for much longer. Some trace its roots back to a 15th century German game called Pochspiel. Others liken it to a Persian game called Nas, recorded around the turn of the 20th century. One of the more commonly accepted stories is that the game of poker originated in the mid-1700s and was played widely throughout the Mississippi River region by 1800. Games were played by groups of men sitting around small tables, trying to convince each other that they had the best hand through bluffing and betting. Social skills were an important aspect of playing the game successfully – one had to know how to read his opponents in order to, as Kenny Rogers puts so eloquently, “know when to hold ‘em, and know when to fold ‘em.”

In 1998, the game changed with the launch of Planet Poker, the first internet poker room. People no longer had to play face-to-face and could challenge virtual opponents. The ‘tell’ factor was all but eliminated since players no longer had to worry about wearing a poker face when playing online. In 2004, a man named Chris Moneymaker (yes, that is his real name!) turned the world of poker upside down when he won the World Series of Poker. Moneymaker was the first person to become a world champion by qualifying at an online poker site. This ignited the world of online poker and produced what the industry called “the Moneymaker Effect”.

However, traditional poker players say that those who play mostly online never get very far in live tournaments because playing live poker allows players to interact with each other, whereas online poker has very little social interaction. You’re limited to faceless chatting with those who choose to engage you. Not exactly the nice social experience that many players enjoy in live casinos. 42-year poker veteran and award-winning author Ashley Adams writes:

“There’s often a negative impact on one’s bottom line because of this loss of personal interaction. Getting to know people is one effective way of learning about and manipulating their behavior. If you make friends with the player to your left, I’ve found, he’s less likely to play aggressively against me. This in turn is very useful when it comes to getting a read on them when they are playing – as you try to figure out the hands they have and how you can play against them. Since this information is not available to you when you play on line, if you are good at building relationships with players in the card room, you’ll be depriving yourself of this profitable and, for many, pleasurable activity.”

Online poker has brought a lot to the game. But it cannot replace the live experience. It has involved more and more people by making it easily accessible, but the true test of skill is when one is placed face to face with other players staring across the table, trying to read tells and predict moves.

This same thought process is true with the boom of online recruiting. Sure, information on people is readily available on a multitude of websites. Sure, it’s easy to reach out to someone on Twitter, through Facebook, or via a LinkedIn Inmail. Sure, you can make ‘friends’ easily by making social network connections. Sure, you can take someone virtually through almost the entire hiring process. But how fleeting are those ‘relationships’ really? Do your new online connections really know you? Or more importantly, do you really know them?

Let’s face it – in the grand scheme of things, we never achieve anything of significance without other people being involved. And arguably, true relationships, both business and in person, become solidified when offline interaction is established. Even if this interaction is only over the phone – it humanizes us to our clients, candidates, and colleagues. How many times have you won business because of an existing relationship you had with someone, even though your competitor may have charged a lower fee? By sitting at the table with our hand and learning the tells of our colleagues and clients, we develop personal relationships with them. We understand their personalities and learn to predict their moves. When ‘relationships’ are strictly virtual, it’s much harder, if not impossible, to determine these things.

No matter how many ‘poker sites’, i.e. social networks, job boards, and other online resources, continue to pop up, there is nothing that will replace the time-tested phone call or handshake. These online social technologies are merely communication portals, not to be mistaken for replacements of basic human interaction skills. Those who will win and be prosperous at the game of recruiting are those who acknowledge the usefulness of these tools as time progresses, but who will never forget the importance of sitting down at the table and getting dealt in.

Why should a recruiting firm start, develop, and maintain relationships with hiring managers as a key activity? We have found that over the years the largest contribution to our ability to survive in an ever more competitive environment has been our desire to establish and maintain strong rapport with hiring managers. It didn’t start as a planned activity – it just happened over time. The benefits have been many. It’s much easier to understand “the secret sauce” of openings when you have known the hiring managers over a long period of time. Having worked with them as candidates in the past adds to a level of credibility the competition cannot easily match. And being able to get their opinions about their ex-co-workers is priceless.

With the benefit of hindsight, the formula for successful networking with hiring managers is rather simple. You start by concentrating your attention on the best people in your industry. You get to know them professionally and, quite often, personally. You learn what they do and don’t do that makes them rising stars. You try to get opinions from people who know them about what makes them special and then discuss it with them.  In this way, you are developing relationships with both current and future hiring managers.

If you can create a connection when these people are happily employed and are not looking to change jobs, you build a relationship that could weather a storm for many years. Sooner or later, when they decide to look for new opportunities, you are there to help and advise. You build your rapport over a long period of time – someone with less than 10-15 years of experience in the industry is seldom senior enough to have influence in the hiring process.

So where do you begin?  Whom do you connect with? Be very careful in selecting members of your network. Concentrate on rising stars with whom you “click”. There has to be a connection at the personal level. Look for similarities such as attending the same high school or college, coming from similar small towns, an interest in sports and the like.   Then, over the years, you keep in touch by emailing them once a quarter or so, and make an attempt to meet them in person a couple of times per year (if possible). If you show genuine interest in what they do, the conversations tend to be rather easy and pleasant. The catch – it’s difficult to have a meaningful conversation with a rising star in any complex field if you are not an expert. So make yourself an expert. If not in the nitty-gritty technical details, then in learning who are the stars in your fields, where they work, what they do and what makes them special.

Information is key. Read all the industry publications you can get your hands on and every time you see an interesting story or article, share it with the people you are cultivating.  By being an expert in the people and companies in your field, you will be able to add valuable information to the exchanges you have with your rising stars. Very few professionals have the time or interest in doing the work it takes to really master this subject. As a rule, if you have an in-depth conversation with ten or more people working for a given mid-sized firm and you get them to tell you anything about the people around them, you will become an expert on that firm. This further encourages their belief that you are the only one capable of helping them.

There are challenges in maintaining these activities productively. You must work very hard at distinguishing the difference between Data and Metadata.

Data is resumes with their collections of education, firm names, project descriptions, technical skills, other keywords, visible progression of responsibilities and the like. Data is when a candidate describes to you their projects – what they did and what the results were. Data is when you collect lots of resumes or LinkedIn profiles and determine which candidates are open to the opportunities you have. Data is facts.

Metadata is the collection of opinions about all of these. You need to be as well informed about these as possible, and that gives you an edge and allows you to enhance your relationships with your rising star hiring managers. Metadata is knowledge of what are the best schools in your field at the Bachelor level and at Master level?  They may not be the same. What firms are the hardest hires? Who do they tend to select? Who can share with you internal opinions about various potential candidates? To what degree can you rely on those opinions? What do you do when you have multiple opinions that disagree? What are the hottest technical skills? To what degree do different firms have proficiency in deploying the latest technology that calls for these skills? What kinds of questions do you ask to ascertain if the candidates have these skills, and to what degree?

As your mid-level hiring stars progress in the field, you will be called upon to help them build their careers, teams, and eventually, their companies. By this point you should have a good idea of who the key firms are in your field, who are winning in the market place and who are losing. As your contacts’ levels of seniority rise they will become more and more interested in discussing their industry and where the various firms are in the competitive market place. Here again your research will pay off.

As you get more involved with your hiring clients you should become more aware of the organizational issues they are dealing with. What are the conflicts the organization is dealing with today? What problems had the organization dealt with in the past and how did they deal with these? What worked and what did not? In other words, to the degree possible, become an expert on your hiring manager’s companies.

How will this benefit you in the long run? In today’s ultra competitive recruiting environment, unless you have a sustainable edge you will be out of business soon enough. Lowering your fees is NOT a competitive edge – your competition from low labor cost countries has you beat on that one. Having a strong relationship with hiring managers where your integrity, your expertise in a competitive labor marketplace, knowledge of technological competitiveness, in-depth knowledge of what makes your clients’ firms and your clients individually tick – all of these constitute a high barrier the competition will have a hard time overcoming.