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Recruiting Tip: "It ain't over 'til it's over."

DENVER, CO - Here's a sweet little executive recruiting tip for all you hiring managers + corporate and third-party marketing recruiters who read this blog:

An executive search isn't over until the winning candidate quits his current job and leaves the building!

Some cynical executive search pros would say that a search ain't over 'til the winning candidate starts in the new position -- but that's a little too paranoid even for a glass-is-half-empty optimist like me.  I'm not going to manage my desk by exception.

But the cynics have a point.

Currently, I have a Denver executive search where the offer has been verbally accepted by the winning candidate, and he and the hiring manager are haggling over a start date.  This has been going on for a week.

Naturally, the candidate has not given notice at his current job on the grounds that he needs the paycheck.  That's fair.  I don't like it, but there's not much I can do about it -- other than politely threaten to submit additional A-player candidates to my client.

Meanwhile, the hiring manager wants me to release all of my other candidates, one of whom was a very close second in this executive search.  I have strongly advised the hiring manager against dumping the field.  Frankly, until the winning candidate quits his job and leaves the building -- there's always the ugly possibility of his taking a counter offer.

Seriously.  Until he resigns and leaves, he is less committed to either company than he was before he had a firm promise of employment from both.  He has "two birds in the hand and none in the bush," so to speak.

So take a tip from the Hairman:  Don't release a single candidate until you are 110% sure that the winning candidate has resigned his current job and left the building.  It ain't over 'til it's over.
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SEM Set to Triple by 2012

BOSTON, MA - Forrester Research forecasts heady growth in search engine marketing ("SEM") through 2012.  See below.  One can only imagine what this growth means for companies' hiring plans ...

clipped from www.marketingvox.com Search marketing spend is expected to triple in five years, growing at a CAGR of 26 percent to $25 billion by 2012: Paid search is expected to account for the bulk of that spending, growing from $4.5 billion to $10.1 billion during the forecast period. Organic search engine optimization (SEO) is expected to grow from $1.9 billion to $8.9 billion.

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The Long, Hard Job Search

ATLANTA, GA - I'm probably going to lose half my readers with this post, but whatever.  Life's about choices.

I'm in the process of having my document "97 Job Search Tips" distributed by a prestigious publisher.  At the end of the document, there's a final note about humility.  My views on humility are distinctly religious, or more correctly mono-theistic.  Monotheism means a belief in one God.  Jews are monotheistic.  So are Muslims.  As are we Christians.  All due respect to Hindus.

The editor wants me to water it down a bit.  I say okay, but if you want to get drunk, the best way is to drink your whiskey straight.  My point in stumping for humility isn't to convert.  Humility is a survival mechanism, and that's of deadly importance for job seekers.  Click here and scroll to the end of the document to read the passage.  I don't mess around, baby.

Keeping it Real

Every day I make it a point to spend a half hour or so with anyone who calls me for career advice.  Call me and I'm very likely to put aside what I'm doing right then and give you 30 minutes of my time.  Try me.

None of my (totally unqualified) "coaching" is religious.  However, I might really resent it on your behalf if I sense that you are being bullied by someone, and you just might hang up the phone equally pissed off and very fired up to make some changes in your life.

Many of my callers are down on their luck.  They are getting their teeth kicked in by a long, hard job search.  Right now I can name half a dozen very solid executives who have been laid off and are staring straight down the barrel of personal bankruptcy.  I can relate.  In 2002, I was in their shoes.  Truly terrifying.  I'll never forget it.

But during those trying times I learned that faith will get you through times with no money better than money will get you through times with no faith.

Why secular advice won't cut it.

The response of most self-help gurus towards anyone who's down-and-out is what you'd expect:  Help yourself.  I have listened to Tony Robbins' Personal Power like 40 times and I know what's in it.  And the self-help mentality has seeped into just about every corner of our culture.

Tonight I saw Billy Crystal on Inside the Actor's Studio, and a student asked Mr. Crystal "What's the role of suffering in pursuit of one's craft?"  Mr. Crystal responded, "You gotta really believe in yourself more than anything -- and you have to make every sacrifice for your craft."

Impotence vs. Omnipotence

"Believe in yourself more than anything??"  That's rotten advice!  Nobody's gonna effect serious personal change with that advice.  It's completely impotent.

Here's why:  When you are getting beaten up in your career, it's easy to hate yourself -- to think that somehow you don't "deserve" any better than what our zero-sum, culture-of-death society is allowing you to have.  When the "self" in self-help is your greatest tormentor, you lie to yourself about your true potential -- which in reality is significantly greater than you can possibly imagine.

When you are your own worst bully

At times like this, if you are an atheist or an agnostic -- you're in trouble:  There are no absolute Truths.  Everything's relative.  Your rudderlessness allows you to get tossed around like a cork on the ocean, drifting pointlessly to where ever the fickle current takes you.  You feel helpless and out of control.  So much for Personal Power.

Again, my point in saying this is not to convert you.  It's merely to get you to see the practical value of believing in something greater than yourself.  Victor Frankl (who's Jewish, btw) wrote about this after his internment in a Nazi concentration camp during world war two.

Sure, it's great to say "I believe in myself."  But you are small and finite and you know it.  God, on the other hand, is infinite.  It is 10,000x easier to show up to work (or your job search) every day ready to glorify God with the gifts He has loaned you.  There's nothing more noble than giving your best efforts for God's sake.

"The talent you have is God's gift to you.  What you do with that talent is your gift to God." -- Red Skelton

Look, I'm a self-employed father of five.  I do my job with five fingers and a damned telephone.  No real assets whatsoever.  Every day is another all-or-nothing tight-rope walk.  Do you honestly think I could do that if all I had to rely on is my miserable self?  Please.

Who on earth is Anthony T. Kronman?

Last Thursday I read a book review in the WSJ about Anthony Kronman's latest book Education's End.  A former dean of Yale's law school, Dr. Kronman writes ...

"One cannot live a meaningful life unless there is something one is prepared to give it up for.  Peoples' lives are therefore meaningful in proportion to their acknowledgment that there is something more important than the lives they are leading: something worth caring about in an ultimate way."

Or to paraphrase St. Teresa of Avila, "From the vantage point of Heaven, even the most miserable earthly job search can be seen as nothing more than one night in an inconvenient hotel."

Life's hard knocks become sanctifying when ...

... one realizes that this earthly existence is simply a means to an end (Heaven) rather than an end unto itself ("He who dies with the most toys wins.").  In this way, in good times and bad, your life has an ultimate meaning.  You become a channel for God's grace for yourself and for everyone else.  And your harsh experience becomes the best teacher -- a light you can share with others, now and in the future.

What on earth could be more empowering than that?
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Recruiting for Online Retail

One of the best things about specializing in direct-to-consumer multichannel retail is that I get to deal with some of the smartest people on earth.  Honestly, they're amazing.  There's just so much happening in the multichannel marketing arena, what with all of the changes in the way consumers can discover, buy, and return products: catalog, internet, mobile phone, TV, inbound call centers, retail stores, you name it.  The candidates who deal with these ever-changing marketing and integration challenges are freaking brilliant.

But they're clever, too -- and there's a difference.

Example:  Three weeks ago I put a candidate in play for a VP of Marketing role with a large multichannel retailer.  His first phone interview with the VP of HR was in six days, so I sent the candidate a massive pile of market research on the industry, the company, and its competitors.  I even offered to set him up on phone calls with industry analysts and vendors who know things about the company -- which he gratefully accepted.

But then he took it a step farther:  That night, my candidate Googled several of the company's products  to see how they placed in the organic search rankings.  Satisfied that all of the queried products appeared on page one of the Google rankings, he proceeded to enter my client's site through their Adwords landing page in the paid search area of the Google results.

For the next 90 minutes, my candidate used a number of Firefox extentions to analyze the site's source code, merchandise selection, and layout.  Finally, he ordered eight items from the company's website -- after having built and abandoned two shopping carts during his user session.

Minutes later, a confirmation email arrived stating that all online orders must be changed within two hours.  Three hours later, he logged back on to the site to make changes to the order.  When he started to have problems, he phoned the call center to complain.  The customer service person was as nice as she could be and helped my candidate make the changes.  He tried to be a jerk to her, but she managed the conflict with cordial professionalism.  The order shipped out the very next day.

Three days later, the order arrived and my candidate ripped open the box and all of its contents.  The product was in fine shape, so my candidate used two of the items.  He then marched right down to my client's store and abrasively demanded a full refund for the order -- just to see what the retailer would do.  Again, he tried to be unreasonable, but the store clerk complied happily with all of his demands.

During the check-out process, my candidate noticed a neat stack of my client's Spring catalogs next to the cash register and he began to reconcile the product numbers in the catalog against those for identical products on his order.  They all matched ...

In a last ditch effort to crash my client's customer service system, my candidate elected to make a substitution to his order -- accepting a refund for seven of the eight items he bought online, and asking to have the final out-of-stock item in a different color shipped to his house via overnight express.

The very next afternoon, the final item arrived at my candidate's house in excellent shape -- just in time for his phone interview with the VP of Human Resources.

Questions:  How much do you think this candidate knew about my client after having gone to such great lengths to crash their multichannel fulfillment system?  Do you think this candidate wanted to work for a company that goes to such great lengths to keep its customers happy?

If you answered "A bunch" and "Yes" to the above questions, then you got the point of this post.
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Internet Marketing News

CHICAGO, IL - Here's what's going on in the world of internet marketing:

• What's the Hindi Word for Dot-Com? - Good news for anyone in need of a marketing job just about anywhere:  Soon Web surfers will be able to test Internet addresses in 11 languages that don't use the Roman alphabet, which means that a domain-name suffix -- such as "com" or "org" -- could now be in a language like Japanese or Hindi.   Turns out that there are a billion people on the Internet, which means there are five billion not on it.  The new names are not for the current users, but for the next billion ...
• Astounding email newsletters - Damn, I wish I'd thought of this, too.  See also "The ACLU, CRM, and CRAP."
• Should your recruiting videos take inspiration from infomercials?  IBM's Mike Moran seems to think so.
• Ten Questions with Mark Batterson - Great advice on leadership, not just for ecommerce companies -- but for all companies:  "Love people when they least expect it and least deserve it."

One of the most striking things I read in the aftermath of 9/11 was that the war on terror cannot be fought and won like a traditional war because "you cannot kill an idea with a gun."  I don't even remember who said it.  I think it was actress Carrie Fisher, who said in the same article "It's amazing how a few guys with box cutters can change the world."  Her point was that with a big enough why, the hows will take care of themselves.  Tony Robbins has said this for years.

If you read "Built to Last" by Jim Collins, then you understand the critical importance of having a core ideology for your business [pg. 70].  Visionary companies are always "about" something greater than themselves.  And the thing they are "about" is the emotional fuel that makes them run.  I blogged about this on an individual level last week -- but it's even truer on a corporate level.

If you are a fan of leadership and what it takes to infuse your company with meaning, please subscribe to Kent Shaffer's Church Relevance blog.  My advice isn't some thinly veiled attempt to convert you.  Mr. Shaffer's blog is very handy for learning what it takes to spread high ideals through any organization.  Like yours.

"Customers return the place where they have been proactively made to feel special." - Marshall Field

You can't hire people who are "values confluent" with your organization's ideals until you know what your ideals are.  And your employees cannot infuse their jobs with those ideals until you spread those ideals throughout the organization.

Ideals spawn meaning.  Meaning spawns passion.  And passion is what allows your employees and customers to discover what is life-affirming about your business.
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Thoughts on Personal Branding

BOSTON, MA -- A subscriber to my blog writes,

"Harry, I'm writing a book on personal branding, and I think a quote from you would be perfect for it.   If you could please send a 3-5 sentence quote on how the role of human resources has changed and how applicants are being judged differently, I would greatly appreciate it.

I enjoy your work and can't wait to hear what you think.

Thanks.
D.S.

My thoughts:

Document searching technology has radically changed how HR professionals source, screen and acquire marketing talent.  Until roughly five years ago, finding great talent was like finding a needle in a haystack.  No problem, given Google's capability.

Today it's like finding a needle in a stack of needles:  Monster contains 44 million resumes.  CareerBuilder has 17 million.  HotJobs has 5 million.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Facebook, LinkedIn, Spoke, and numerous other online networks add to the clutter.  Plus whatever resumes are posted on the worldwide web.  The amount of noise in the employment marketplace is unbelievable.

Now more than ever, it's far better for candidates to have a small circle of competence that's sharply defined around the edges than one that's big and fuzzy.  Specialize and keyword load your resume to reflect your successes in your niche.  Stake your claim in a small, growing market -- and work like hell to dominate that niche.  As a modern marketing executive, that's your only hope of survival.

Thanks for reading.
- Harry

PS - For more tips like this, see 97 Job Search Tips.
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$500 for the Chance to Buy Domain

MIAMI, FL - The TRAFFIC East domain auction is this week, and there's a domain I want to buy.  Naturally, I won't tell you what it is.  But even if I did, you'd have to pay through the nose just to bid against me.

Until today, I had never tried to buy a domain at auction.  All of my best domains have been purchased though resellers like Fabulous and BuyDomains.  It's expensive, but worth it.  Given the nature of my business, I'm not about about to quibble over a few bucks.  Better to just pay the price and get the right real estate.

Location, location, location.

But some domains aren't offered at a fixed price though resellers.  Sometimes they are auctioned off in electronic environments like Sedo, eBay, and TRAFFIC.

This morning I tried to enter TRAFFIC's silent domain auction through Moniker, and I was informed by Moniker's sales rep that the cost to enter the auction is $500.  The $500 fee is nonrefundable and is deducted from the final purchase price of the domain only if I win.  If I lose the auction, I also lose my $500.  WTF!  If just 20 bidders enter the auction, the auctioneers gross $10K before their percentage of the domain's selling price is added.

Can you say "ATM machine?"

According to Moniker, this policy prevents shill bidding -- a practice whereby a domain's owner anonymously bids up the price of his own domain in order to drive a higher price for it.  Yeah, right.  The rep added that the policy also "separates the serious from the curious."

Whatever.  I'm seriously not going to enter an auction where every bidder is trying to win a domain simply to keep from losing 500 bucks.  If the domain is still around next week, I'll contact the seller directly.
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