Piggybacking off of Episodes 37 and 38, Stephanie digs into how much you should be investing in terms of time and effort into certain searches, how to make that determination, how to find out if a client is as committed to you as you are to them, and why ThinkingAhead is a bit like a luxury car.

Discover what sets ThinkingAhead apart, hear stories from recruiters, and browse opportunities by clicking here.

Welcome to the Talent Trade.

This is your host, Stephanie Maas, partner with Thinking Ahead Search.

I am hyped to talk about today's topic, which is.

Qualifying a search for the purposes of our time together.

I'm gonna keep this super simple.

When we get to a point where we have identified a prospect or a potential client, we wanna hop on the phone with them and usually all the decision makers or what I like to call decision influencers to really get some details of the search.

And this is twofold.

The details of this search are to help us know who they want, but it's also to help us.

Determine our level of effort in helping them fill this search.

Now that might sound kind of weird because you go, Hey, if you tell 'em you're gonna fill the search, shouldn't you give it 110%?

And generally the answer is yes.

However, we all know different potential clients demand different levels of effort.

This is where we start to get advanced in our desk and really start learning the difference between, you know, what's a great search, what's a good search, and what's a, Hey, I'll keep you in mind.

Search, I'm gonna share some verbiage along the way to help us, but let me set the stage.

Couple things we should know is, number one, we are gonna qualify searches as again, for thinking ahead purposes A, B, or C. As I was preparing for this topic, I of course had the Jackson Fives song in my head.

Now I can't shake it A, B, C 1, 2, 3.

Anyway, we are gonna qualify all searches as A, B, or C. Let me also say, depending on where you are in your tenure and where you are to date on your desk, it may be a willingness to take and work different levels of searches at different times.

So for example, if I don't have much going on and I get a B level search.

I'm probably gonna work it like it's an A. At the same time, if my desk is incredibly full and I get a B search, I may treat it like a C until I have more bandwidth.

But here are the parameters and, and how we kind of define it.

And then we'll talk about how do we qualify it an A search.

And our world typically has a couple of things that make it a quote unquote.

A search.

Now, when I ask folks, Hey, how do you define an A search?

People love to tell me, oh, it's engaged or retained.

And my answer to that is often, but not always.

Or sometimes, but sometimes, no.

What I think is more important for an A, because quite frankly anybody, you talk to, any experienced recruiter and they've taken engaged searches that really.

B's or C's, meaning they send us a little bit of money, but it was a crap search and it was a big fat waste of our time.

Glad we got paid for some of our effort, but it ended up being a horrific use of our time.

So for me and us here at Thinking Ahead, we like to define an A search as probably engaged or contingent and exclusive and high urgency, and most likely in our wheelhouse.

Meaning this is our bread and butter search.

Those are our qualifications.

Now, if it's not engaged, but it's a contingent search and I have all the other factors, to me that's just as good as being engaged to retain.

'cause I'm gonna fill that.

That's an A search, a B search is one of those is missing.

Again, a B search could be engaged, but you don't have exclusivity, which sounds ridiculous, right?

Like why would they pay?

So if they're gonna partner with other firms, but sometimes it's partner with other firms, sometimes it's, they're still, you know, you're competing with their talent and their internal talent acquisition team.

You are competing with internal referrals.

It may be.

Hey, they'll look at resumes from other firms, but their intention is you're the only one proactively calling on it.

It could be any number of factors.

A b search could still be engaged or retained, but it's missing exclusivity.

Or it's missing urgency, or it's missing wheelhouse, meaning it's not our bread and butter search.

I will absolutely take on searches outside my main five to seven positions that I fill, if it's set up with urgency, exclusivity, et cetera.

But if I don't have any of those three, then it goes from being an A to a B. Now what takes it down from a B to a C?

This is what I call the vendor relationship.

And by the way, I absolutely keep these folks in mind and I will absolutely send them folks as I find them.

I just don't put in the same level of effort that I do in A or B search.

So a C search is no exclusivity.

Again, whether it's engaged or not is.

Irrelevant, but there's no urgency, there's no exclusivity, and it may or may not be in my wheelhouse.

This is what I call the, Hey, I'll keep you in mind.

This is also too, where they may say, Hey, we've already got three or other, three or four other firms working on it, but it's in my wheelhouse, but it's highly competitive.

Okay?

You know what?

I talk to these folks all the time.

I can't proactively call and dedicate a lot of effort to this because I don't know.

And maybe also too, they're not playing ball.

They're not giving you a do not call list.

I'll just keep 'em in mind.

And that's, by the way, that's the verbiage that I share with them is, Hey, it sounds like you are already putting a lot of effort into this search, both with your internal team, other recruiters.

I know you haven't seen anybody yet that you are in love with.

But we do our best work when we aren't in that type of a situation.

But here's my commitment.

I make 50 to 60 calls into this market most days of most weeks throughout the year.

I understand what you need and what's important to you.

Let me absolutely keep you in mind as I'm talking to folks, and if I come across somebody that I think might be worth your time, I will absolutely let you know.

Are we cool going forward with that?

Then what I'll do is no matter what, I'll rally back in about three weeks and see how things are going.

If you're getting candidates and things are ho humming along, great, that's the right plan.

If you find that these other firms aren't delivering, it may be.

Time to change your strategy a little bit and then we can talk through how we might be able to really jump in and be more effective.

Cool.

Awesome.

So that's how I handle a C. That's the verbiage.

It's super, I always leave the door open to follow up in three weeks, but I also leave the door open if I happen to stu my toe on somebody.

It makes for a great MPC client.

By the way, I have clients like this, that we understand the rules of the game.

They're not exclusive to me.

I'm not exclusive to them, and I still bill anywhere.

You know, I'll make one to three placements with them every year, and they're great because I can always talk about them, you know, out in the market, Hey, are you working on, well, I'm always keeping X, Y, Z organization in mind.

I know they need a blah, blah, blah, blah.

But again, I'm not proactively putting in the same amount of effort if it was an A or B. So what do we do if it's a B?

So a B, again, just to reiterate a B here is whether or not we have an engagement is irrelevant, but it has urgency or exclusivity or it's in our wheelhouse, and we can have any combination of those.

So if it is urgent and in our wheel.

But maybe we don't have the exclusivity.

Chances are, I know folks that'll probably be interested that I could make 20, 30, 40, 50 calls and churn up some pretty good candidates pretty quick.

And I know because my client has urgency and or I have the exclusivity, I have a pretty high chance of filling this with the candidates that I know.

That's a B search.

The difference between an A and a B is going to be the difference between putting in 30 and 50 calls.

That would be on a B search, an A search.

I'm gonna probably put in closer to a hundred calls.

I'm gonna be incredibly communicative with my efforts.

Feedback from the market.

Letting them know, I'm gonna call everybody three, four times.

I'm gonna text 'em, I'm gonna email 'em.

I'm gonna try to get to 'em on LinkedIn.

It's a much different level of effort.

This effort often looks like that effort of an engaged search.

My cautionary tale here is when people get into an engaged search and it's engaged, but really a b search.

We don't get the bang for our buck.

We're less likely to fill that.

And now we've shown our clients that, hey, even if it's not a great search, it's a good search, but not great, we're gonna give you top shelf service.

Now that may say, Hey Stephanie, we're in the search business.

We're in the service business.

Shouldn't we be giving everybody top shelf?

And the answer to that is, unfortunately no.

Because our most valuable asset as a recruiter is our time.

And if we're going to give somebody a tremendous amount of our time and our effort, the odds have to be significantly in our favor that we can be successful.

And by the way, when we are successful, that's.

Serving our clients.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't add value when we don't fill positions, because we absolutely do, but at the end of the day, if you go and spend 60 or $70,000 on a car.

You expect a different level of service than if you go and buy a $20,000 car.

At the end of the day, they're both cars.

They both add value.

They, if they're working, they get you where you're going, but the level of service is different.

Again, I'm a huge believer here at Thinking Ahead.

Service is our differentiator, but we also have to be smart with our time and making sure that if we put in our time and effort.

The odds are we are going to be able to service our clients in the way that they need us.

The other thing too, quite frankly, is sometime in our, sometimes in our enthusiasm to get a search, we don't often hear what our clients are saying.

We like to think that they are telling us that they need us more than they do, and that that's just a shame on us.

And then we get bitter and sour when we put in all this effort and they don't hire our person.

And we go, well, that was a waste of time.

And we get mad at them when in reality we should be mad at us.

So again, qualifying the search.

Is critical.

Is it an A, a B, or a C?

Now, with just a few minutes left, let me share a couple other things that really help us qualify what they tell us because anybody that's been in the search business knows you can't always take everything at face value.

If you ask a hiring manager, what's your urgency, they're always gonna tell you it's super important.

It's super urgent.

So a great way to qualify that.

Say, okay, so let me ask you this.

Today's Tuesday, if I had three candidates that were qualified, interested, and you could afford by Friday, what are three days next week, you could interview them.

If those interviews went well, when would the follow-ups happen?

So what I'm saying is if I could show up on Friday, not saying I could, but if I could, are you gonna be in a position to pull a trigger and make a decision by the end of the month and you just pick a time that's three weeks out, middle of the month, end of the month, first of the month, whatever the case may be.

And that means my fee would also be due then.

So, you know, is that in the budget for whatever month you're working with?

Listen to their answer, but also listen to how they answer.

If their response is, oh my gosh, that would be awesome.

Yes, let me give you three times next week.

That could work great.

They're sincere in their urgency.

If they go, well, I mean, next week's kind of crazy.

Yes, we, we definitely need this person.

But I mean, if it doesn't happen next month, I mean Q1 would be fine.

Or you know, we're really trying to, okay, again, doesn't mean it's not important, but the urgency is different and therefore we're gonna act accordingly.

You just kind of test their things.

By the way, if you're trying to test exclusivity, hey, let me give you some language.

'cause as soon as I start making calls in the market on this role, I'm gonna kick up a lot of dust.

So while our contract will ask for exclusivity, what I'm actually gonna need you to do is as you get calls from other recruiters over the course of the next 30 days, I'm gonna send you an email template that I'm gonna need you to send to them.

Copy me on it and the email is gonna say, Hey, another search firm.

Thanks so much for reaching out.

During this time, we are engaged exclusively, or we are an exclusive partnership with Stephanie Moss at Thinking Ahead.

If you have any candidates that you deem worthy of this search, please reach out to her and I'll include my contact information.

And usually, by the way, this email has to start with thanks for reaching out.

At this time, we do not accept this unsolicited referral.

Thanks for giving us a call.

We are not taking any other calls from recruiters right now, and you give 'em a couple templates and then listen to how they respond.

By the way, also journey exclusivity.

If you have anybody applying to your position, you gotta kick 'em over to me so I can vet them in the same way we're vetting everybody else.

If they're like, yeah, sounds great.

Yep, yep, send me that email, dah, dah, dah.

But if they go, well, I mean, you have the exclusive, but if somebody goes online and applies, I mean, that's ours.

Hmm.

Okay.

Again, let's stop.

Let's pause.

Let's talk about that for a minute, because if I have the exclusive, that means you want everybody going through the same process.

And what we're looking for here is are they committed to us?

Are they as committed to us as we are committed to them?

Now, again, if they go, Hey, I'm happy not to take a resume from another firm, but I'm not sending you people that naturally apply.

We have a posting for a reason.

Okay, good to know.

And then you can decide how to act accordingly.

Again, it's just about information gathering to qualify the qualifying.