Guest: Craig Silverman, Hireability
Topic: Life in Splitsville
See below for details
Introduction: Don't Mess With Me
Hi everybody, this is The Recruiting Animal. And I want to start off by delivering a message to my guest for today, Craig Silverman of Hireability.com.
Now Craig, you called me yesterday and we were all buddy buddy on the phone. Weren't we? But I want you to know something. On this show, I don't have any friends. I may be an amateur journalist but I'm dedicated. You know what I'm saying? So I can't get too chummy with anybody. I have to hold myself aloof.
Because when it comes to interviewing recruiters, I'm the man. You just have to listen to some of my other broadcasts and you'll know that when I get somebody on the show, I penetrate him right to the core. And when they leave they say that guy, The Recruiting Animal, he could see right through me.
That's true friends, I'm that powerful. And I can't afford to contaminate that gift in any way at all. So if I seem a bit rough, Craig, I'm sorry. That's my calling. Just like you have yours.
And here's something else, Craig. Just in case you didn't know it. The Recruiting Animal is nobody's shill. I don't know if you came here thinking that I was going to lob you questions like Leeza Gibbons used to lob them to Tony Robbins on those late-night infomercials.
But listen, Craig, this show isn't on at midnight. It's on at high noon for a reason. Everything happens out in the open. Nobody gets tricked here, see? At least not by me.
And while I'm at it I'm going to address a few words to Chris Russell, CM Russell, The Recruiting Fly.com. Last week he interviewed JD Jason Davis. And he asked him: What's wrong with the Recruiting Animal? Why does that guy yell so much? Well, I want to answer that question once and for all.
Do you remember Peter Finch in Broadcast News, the movie? One day he just stuck his head out the window and yelled. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." Remember that? Well, Chris, I'm that guy. And if I'm shouting it's because there's a lot to shout about. And if you're not shouting, maybe there's something wrong with YOU!
I think I've made my point. So now I'm ready to introduce my guest for today Craig Silverman from Hireability.com. But in case you tuned in late -- and, unfortunately many people do -- I want to tell you that I'm the Recruiting Animal and this is the Recruiting Animal Showwww!
Introducing Craig
Animal: Now, Craig Silverman, are you there!
Craig: I'm here, Animal.
Animal: So come on down. We're happy to have you on the show today.
Craig: I'm happy to be here.
Animal: Now Craig, I know that you run a recruiting splits network of global proportions. It includes corporate, agency and independent recruiters and the vehicle for connecting them is HireAbility’s Talent Trader solution.
And you've also got the ALEX resume parsing process working for you. And we're going to talk about all of those things but we're going to talk about it later. Alright? First I'm going to do a few public announcements.
Craig: Sure thing, Animal.
Animal: Great. First I want to say that today is the first anniversary of AmyBethHale.com. That's the blog of AmyBeth Hale, the Internet Sourcer.
Now I noticed that Amy posted a whole slew of comments she's had about her blog. But I want her to know that she's not the only one who gets comments from her friends. Here's one from my good friend, Amitai Givertz. I quote:
If you tuned in to listen to The Animal promote his own shallow agenda at the expense of his so-called friends, enjoy the show!
I won't listen to it again. I don't have the time to waste.
How about that, eh? And trust me there's a lot more where that comes from, Amy. So, you're not the only one who gets appreciated. That's all I'm saying.
Now back to Craig. Craig, do you want me to ask you some warm up questions or do you think you're ready for the real thing?
Craig: I'm ready, Animal.
Animal: Then, let's go.
Do Salespeople Have A Conflict Orientation? (6.20 mark)
Animal: Now, Craig, yesterday when we were having our chummy conversation, you said, that when you teach adults you try to get them to remember what it was like to be a kid because kids refuse to take no for an answer.
What you're saying is that a real salesperson has a conflict-oriented view of the world. And I want you to know that I agree. After all, isn't one of the most profound maxims in selling: "The sale begins when the customer says no."?
That speaks volumes about what the sales person is thinking. She goes to work in the morning looking for a fight. Not a mean fight. But, all the same she's ready to rumble. Isn't that true, Craig?
Craig Silverman: Yeah, we could hire the Girl Scouts if we were just going to make calls and everybody is goes, "Yeah, send me three" and there's no sales talk involved. Good salespeople have to meet "No's" and objections and see them as potential buying signals and get excited by the thrill of the hunt.
Animal: The hunt. They go out to fight with people. They are different than the average guy. Isn't that true?
Craig: It really is. Top sales people are often the number one earning people in the company and it's because that job is really hard.
So what happens is, Animal, people want to be in a high earning sales role but the truth is that getting into the heat of the battle for most people is a nauseating experience. I have seen people get physically ill from getting into a sales chair and trying to either cold call or convince somebody to do something. So, it does take a special breed and part of that is baked into you. It's in the genes.
Animal: Yeah, but the point I'm trying to make is that sales people are people who like to fight. Now, Craig, you train recruiters don't you?
Craig: Yes, I've trained a lot of recruiters. On my own teams, I trained a thousand or so....
Animal: Just a yes or no, Craig. Please.
Craig: Okay, I won't steal your microphone.
Animal: You said that sales ability is, in large part, baked into your genes. So I have a question. Have you, in your training history, ever had a My Fair Lady type story or something like Pretty Woman in which you were able take someone who is totally out of her league in a sales situation and turn her into a stupendous success?
Craig: Yeah, it's happened quite a few times. There's a lot of people out there who really don't know about the tiger that they have inside. And it takes somebody to give them a little bit of training or a little bit of motivation. Not necessarily to tell them how to do it but to take them out into the field and show them. And then they can emulate you and roleplay that and practice, practice, practice and get better at it and learn that it is something that they love.
I've had people who went to school thinking that they wanted to be a dietitian in and old age home and they get into that job and they hate it. They're miserable. We've been able to take people like that who might be a little bit shy or meek when we first meet them and show them how to turn their ability to communicate and deal with people into a revenue generator for the company and a money-maker.
Animal: I don't get it then. If the person looks meek and we're saying that this sales attitude is born into you, how can you turn them around? How can you tell who is good material to hire if the meek guys can turn into super-sellers?
Craig: First what you have to do is know what your hiring profile looks like. So I have a very detailed hiring profile that I teach all of my managers and this year I've gone all across the country sharing that with hiring professionals in the staffing firms to help them determine who are the best people to bring on board. And it's not only one component. It's multi-variable. So when you understand the complexities of the individual, you can look for more than just this one thing. There's a lot more to the recruiter.
Animal: Are you on a speaker phone, Craig?
Craig: I am on a cell phone.
Animal: Okay. Sounds a bit distant. I hope that people can hear you in the recording. Let's move on.
Comment:
1. How canpeople who appear to be meek have the sales hunter mentality baked into their genes ready to be unleashed by the right guide? If they are hunters why would it not manifest itself spontaneously?
2. What are the differences in characteristics between people who are only apparently meek and those who are truly and fundamentally meek?
The Sales Genius of Craig Silverman (14.00 min mark)
Animal: On a scale of one to ten with ten being "can sell snow to Eskimos" how great of a salesperson are you?
Craig Silverman: Well, when I was an individual salesperson, I was top dog in a group of 150 or so. And when I was a kid on Long Island, I was the number one light bulbs salesman in the Cub Scouts when I was about ten or twelve years old. I was born and raised into a family of sales people. So, I've always enjoyed it, but I get a lot more out of teaching other people to be successful.
Animal: Now, Craig, you're allowed to dodge questions on this show but you have to tell me you're doing it. I asked you to rate yourself. Would you rather not?
Craig Silverman: You want me to pick a number?
Animal: Yeah.
Craig Silverman: Well, an 8.
Animal: That's pretty modest Craig. I'm just going to assume that you are a genius salesperson. I'll take that for granted.
Craig Silverman on Interviewing (17.00 min mark)
Animal: Now, Craig, have you ever heard of behavioural interviewing?
Craig: Yes I have.
Animal: Well, I want you to think back Craig and tell us: What was your biggest failure as a salesperson or as a recruiter? And what did you learn from that experience?
Craig: I'll be honest with you. I had a guy interview me, his name was Todd and he was the VP Sales and it was the single toughest interview that I had ever had. He was really drilling down. Most interviews are on the surface. They ask you a question and there is very little follow up.
This guy would ask me a question and he would follow up really well with "How's that?" and "Why is that?" and "How did it make you feel?" and "What did you do about it?"
And I learned an important lesson from him which is you can't really get to know somebody in an hour interview and you really have to dig deep to get to know people in an interview situation.
Because if you're going to go to work together you're going to be spending a lot of time together. But we tend to take the interviewing process a little too lightly. So my first lesson from Todd is that it's a real, real serious thing and its almost like a marriage.
So from that point on I got to be a real tough interviewer. And when I found red flags that I felt were deal breakers I would end the interview and say "Hey, it's not going to happen. Have a good life."
Animal: Really, you're that abrupt? You seem like a nice guy.
Craig: I try and be a nice guy but at the same time I don't have any time to waste and I don't think people have time to waste.
Animal: But to kick someone out of your office? Isn't that kind of rude?
Craig: Well I wouldn't do it in a rude way but I stop them and I just say "Hey, let me be really honest with you. I think you're great and I think you're going to find great things but this particular opportunity that we're talking about today, I can't see it happening. It doesn't really mesh for me and I think in all total honesty, I should introduce you to somebody else in one of the other divisions or see that we can find another thing because this particular thing here that we're talking about doesn't seem to be flying."
Animal: What's the shortest amount of time you've got into an interview before you've given someone the boot?
Craig: Five to ten minutes.
Animal: What are these red flags?
Craig: I look for things I consider to be deal breakers. For instance, if you're in a conversation with somebody who interrupts you four or five times in the first five minutes, I'm done.
Animal: And it happens?
Craig: It happens all the time. Or it might be that we're hiring for a hundred per cent commission only and I'll start asking people "Hey, before we get into this too much I need to start talking to you about how the compensation plan here works.
And they start telling me that they need a 70k salary a year and I tell them that "This job is 100% commission only. You could make twice as much as you ever made before but you're only get paid for you sell." And they say, "No, I couldn't do that." So, sometimes that is a deal-breaker and I say "Okay, take care."
Animal: I'm surprised that you got someone into the interview who wasn't looking for a straight commission job.
Craig: You know, my style, Animal, is to cast a wide net. I'd rather bring people in just to meet them and give them the benefit of the doubt and let them see the operation and what the opportunity is.
Because the truth is I've hired hundreds of people who are used to making only 40, 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year and and I've taught them how to make a 140, 150, 160 thousand and all of a sudden their lives change. And if it wasn't for that opportunity to meet, shake hands, have lunch together or share a cup of coffee, something like that we never would have had the opportunity to make that connection.
Animal: See, I'll just come back to what you said before. It's hard for me to understand how those two things fit together.
These sales abilities are baked into your genes and yet you keep taking these people who aren't earning big money in a sales role. But we can put that aside for now.
Craig: You can go out for people who are historically exceptional for doing exactly what you're looking for or you can look for a diamond in the rough. Somebody you can shape and teach and develop and a lot of my career is looking for those types of people and teaching them the business.
Animal: Yeah but recruiters don't work on that basis. No one wants to hire diamonds in the rough from us.
Craig: Well, I think that's true to a great extent. People tend to do those types of hires on their own through employee referrals, through their own websites and job postings.
Answer Alert: Craig gave us some interesting information here, didn't he? But do you remember the question? Tell us about a failure. And, in fact, he got that job with Todd.
Craig Silverman On Networking Events (24.00 min mark)
Animal: Now, Craig, imagine that you're by yourself at a networking event where you don't know anybody at all. What do you do?
Craig Silverman: I love going places where I don't know anybody. I moved three times in the second grade so I had to learn how to make friends. What most people do at networking events is they walk in and approach people and start going on and on about themselves and their business.
What I try to do in a situation in which I don't know anybody is get to know people. So, I'll go in and ask a lot of questions. And I'll listen and if there's a group of people talking about a conference that they went to, I'll ask them how did they like the conference. Who did they see there who was a great speaker. What do they feel they brought home from the conference. Would they go to the conference again. What did they think of the city that it was in. What activities did they do.
I'm genuinely interested. I'm kind of an archeologist at heart. I like to uncover information and learn from it.
Animal: But, Craig, a successful conversation is not a one-way street. That's more like an interrogation.
Craig: Well, obviously, I'm a talker too but I think there's got to be a balance. Conversation is a two-way street. So if you're talking about things I tend to look for common ground. I coach little league sports so if people have kids we have lots of things in common right there. We can talk about schools, fund-raising, events, sports. So you look for common ground. Places that you've been or other things that you might be able to share.
Animal: Okay. Once you get these guys talking to you, how do you break away from people once you've started a conversation with them?
Craig: I'll wait for a lull in the conversation and put my hand out and say, "Hey, it's been very nice to meet you. You know my goal here today is to meet a lot of people so I'm going to shuffle off and meet up with a few more. Here's my card. Drop me an email so we can share contact information. And thanks so much. Nice to meet you."
Big Changes At Hireability.com. (30 min mark)
Animal: Now, you're the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Hireability.com. Can you tell people what a splits network is?
Craig: We use the term recruiting exchange. We help recruiters who are trying to find people for their clients to network with other recruiters who might have those candidates.
Most recruiters only place one or two percent of the people they come in contact with. What do you do with all those other resumes? Well, a recruiting exchange enables you to work with other recruiters who can put those people to work.
Animal: Now the vehicle for communication between the members of your exchange is called Talent Trader. Yes or no?
Craig: Yes
Animal: But you've also got something called ALEX which is a resume parser. So when people join up to the exchange, do they dump a bunch of resumes into a common database that ALEX analyzes to make them easily searchable for everybody?
Craig: They have the option to do that if they like. ALEX is built into Talent Trader so you can just push a button and import resumes. ALEX will parse them which breaks them out and puts them into a Relational Database. We run nearly 30 million processes on our resumes in about a second. We aggregate data on the fly. It makes the information far more retrievable.
Animal: Alex is like a search engine.
Craig: ALEX is not a search engine. We licence this software into job boards and Applicant Tracking Systems. We read files in any format and convert them on the fly by auto-populating all the....
Animal: You're losing me, Craig. I've got to think about my listeners so let's dumb it down a bit. Someone signs up to Hireability and becomes part of a network of recruiters who want to exchange candidates. How do they negotiate that deal?
Craig: Typically recruiters will talk like we are on the telephone. And the first thing they want to decide is this a person I want to work with?
Animal: How do they identify another recruiter to talk to?
Craig: You can do a search on the system by niche or geography. For instance, you can look for all of the recruiters in Cleveland, Ohio who focus on filling sales positions. Or you can search for candidates and then see which recruiters have posted those resumes.
Animal: Is there a standard fifty-fifty split?
Craig: Most deals are fifty-fifty. But let's say all you focus on is IT and you get a job order for a CFO. That's not an area you work in. You need more help so you might want to provide a bigger incentive for specialists in that area to help you. So you might offer 75% to the person who supplies the winning candidate.
Animal: Now, you have a new payment system. You used to take a percentage of the deal. But now you don't. You just charge a subscription fee.
Craig: We've always had a subscription fee but we also had a transaction fee also called a brokerage fee. But we have eliminated that charge.
Animal: It seems like you guys are giving away a huge part of your income.
Craig: The way to profit the most from using our service is to do more deals. But people used to see the transaction fee as a barrier to doing deals on Talent Trader because they had to pay us every time. (Let's say six hundred dollars out of a ten thousand dollar fee). Now that we've removed that barrier we see an opportunity to build our membership on the subscription side substantially.
Animal: This is a big strategic decision for you. Who made the call?
Craig: Ultimately, it was agreed upon by the executive team which includes myself, our CEO and our SVP Operations. But, really, it started with our sales guys, our feet on the street, who talk to recruiters all day long. They came in and made this recommendation. Then we took the idea to a focus group of recruiters and got a lot of support there. We took our time to make sure that we were really doing the right thing. And we think we've come upon something that is going to be monumental in our space.
Animal: You've got a social network associated with this. Was that always a part of the system?
Craig: We made the decision a year ago to start incorporating social networking into our kit. What we've just released is an open platform version of Talent Trader. It's free of charge to create your own profile and become part of our recruiting community.
Animal: Can't people sidestep you then? If they come in for free and make contacts, they can do deals with them without paying you.
Craig: Yeah, you can but you could do that on LinkedIn too. We think that by bringing thousands of people into the social networking side of the open version of Talent Trader we will see lots of people who will say "What else are you guys offering?". We tested this out for the last six months on our ning.com site called The Recruiting Network and the response has been phenomenal in terms of traffic to our site and the amount of people making the decision to come on board.
Animal: Do you want to talk about prices?
Craig: Sure. To become a Professional Member is $40 per month and to become an Executive Member is $85 per month. That's not a huge fee so people are asking "Where are you going to generate your revenue, Craig?". Well, when you have ten thousand members at a thousand dollars a year, you run the numbers.
There is a functionality difference between the Professional and Executive membership. So they get are job postings and resume database access and discounts on special offers from our partners when they are in the Executive Membership. [Animal missed getting more details on this]
Animal: Are there any industry sectors or geographic areas where your business is concentrated?
Craig: We made a decision not to focus on any industry or geography. We are doing some interesting things in Canada and other countries but we are still very heavily focused in the USA. And we have a nice distribution in all of the major metro markets in all of the major staffing niche areas.
Animal: I mean, let's say someone is in Minnesota, are they going to find other people in Minnesota to do business with in your network?
Craig: Definitely but a lot of the people in Minnesota already know people in Minnesota. They want to know who we know in Phoenix, who we've got in Dallas and who we've got in Atlanta.
Animal: Someone just sent me a message. How many deals happen on the Hireability network every day?
Craig: Dozens of deals happen every single day. Now some are getting closed and other things are in process. Historically we had to keep track of all these things but now we're out of that. We don't have to deal with the transactions of the recruiter to recruiter thing any more.
Animal: [Missed follow-up: So you guys aren't tracking your stats anymore? No concrete record of success?] If people want more information where should they go?
Craig: They can go to Hireability.com; The Recruiter Network section does a really good job of really explaining. We have a Live Chat capability so they can ask a question and one of our people will jump on answer questions live for them. But it's not a huge decision to make. it's almost a no-brainer. Everybody in the recruiting industry should be on the open Talent Trader. Everybody.
Craig Silverman On Interviewing: Part 2 (50:00 min mark)
Animal: Craig, this past summer I had to look for an Executive Assistant for the Executive Vice President of a large, global firm. They wanted someone who was very sharp and would stand out.
Now, I don't usually work in that field and I had a hard time finding anybody like that. Most of the people I called didn't even have a university education.
Now, your wife was the Executive Assistant to Steve Jobs. And you've hired executive assistants, yourself. How do you find good people like that?
Craig: Well, you need someone who isn't just waiting for you to land things on your desk. They know how to be proactive. So, I look for signals of that in other things they've done in their career or in other areas of their life.
Animal: You've got to give me an example.
Craig: One of the people that I hired that I thought was great was involved in college in saving one of the buildings that was going to be torn down by having it designated as a historical landmark.
I started asking her, "How did you do that?" and she told me how she organized the project and put together events and documented everything and I said, "That's what I'm looking for. Someone who can organize and create events and document everything. But I've also made some mistakes in hiring executive assistants for myself.
Animal: Do you want to give us an example of a mistake?
Craig: Do I want to? Well, I hired a gal who interviewed really, really well but then somebody else showed up for the job.
Animal: How can that happen?
Craig: I think a lot of people interview really well. And, I was in a hurry and I didn't do things a couple of things that I really am a huge fan of. Number one, I think you have to interview people multiple times. I think it gives people the opportunity to screw up. So, you can't just bring them in, interview them, hire them.
And I think I did that in this case. You've got to say, "Come back on Tuesday," and "Call me at 3:00." Give yourself an opportunity to see some other sets of clothes that they have. Have them call you so you can hear them on the phone. Ask them to show up at a certain time and see if they are on time. That type of stuff.
The other thing is I believe in using a group of people to help you interview for positions. So maybe using somebody else's executive assistant, maybe the receptionist, maybe one of the sales people. Getting opinions from different people. Although I'm going to make the ultimate hiring decision, I think it's smart to say, "You focus on this skill and just talk to her for an hour about computers. And that's it." And you talk to her about work environment and managerial style. And that's it. And then you get deeper conversations and more information.
Animal: But what was it that made you think she was great that wasn't true? Can you tell me in one minute?
Craig: No.
Animal: Okay. So going back to that interview with Todd. You didn't get that job, did you?
Craig: I did, actually. I got that job although I didn't get it at the level I wanted. He made me take a notch back in my title and work myself up to where I really wanted to start.
But I learned some great things from him. His name is Todd Everett and here's one of the things he taught me. I'm really good at finding problems. I used to run into his office and say, "Aha, I've found it!" And, one day, he said, "Craig, do me a favour. You're hitting the nail on the head when you discover these things. But from now on when you're halfway here I want you to stop and figure out what the solution is and if you can fix it you don't even have to tell me about it. And, if you can't, let me know what you think some of the solution should be."
Animal: How did he talk you into taking a job you didn't go for?
Craig: First, we talked about a lot of things so he learned about where I was in my life. I was engaged at the time. He also learned that I had some entrepreneurial bones in my body. So, he made some concessions as did I.
I was able to negotiate some stock in the company which I didn't think I would be able to do, initially. So, although I started in an individual contributor role instead of a manager role I came in with a piece of equity and that was something that was very important to me. So there was a trade-off there.
Comments