Authenticity: A Pillar of Recruiting Success

Regrettably, it's been a while since my last post. My wife and I have been busy expecting the arrival of our our first child. She is due any day now. The culmination of the entire process has left me very emotionally introspective. My yin and yang are in perfect balance. Call it the Libra in me. Business is growing and the company is on pace for our strongest year on record. I've hired new staff, expanded our line of services and we continue to march on. I have especially enjoyed expanding the staff the last few months as it has allowed me to again be in the role of coach and mentor, spreading the gospel of the art and science of human capital.

The irony in my inspiration for this article and what I'm actually writing about eerily go hand in hand. You see, I've been accused of not writing enough in the past and I've always said that honest content can't be fabricated by necessity. If I was only worried about getting content out there I would not "believe" in the content I was writing. I wouldn't "feel" anything about the content and it wouldn't feel authentic to my readers. I always wait to be inspired before I take to covering a topic or writing an article. The same goes with recruiting. In recruiting you are dealing with people, emotional beings with thoughts and feelings. My customers don't get dog and pony shows from myself or my staff. There are no sales pitches involved in the company's training manuals. We humanize the recruitment process, because if it's not believable, enjoyable and beneficial what is the point in saying or doing it?

Early in my career I didn't understand the key component of emotion, personally as well as professionally. I was so focused on the "sale" and nothing else. It was never about the journey, it was about the destination. It was all about sealing the deal. Because of this focus I probably lost a lot of business. I was so focused on myself and winning or closing a deal that even though the things I said made business sense, I probably didn't seem authentic when I was presenting them.

I had the opportunity recently to talk to one of my recruiters about his ongoing conversations with a few potential clients and realized he was being too inwardly focused. I challenged him to think about who he was as a person, a husband, father, son and a loyal friend to many I'm sure. He looked at me and realized at that moment what I was getting at. I told him to be the same executive recruiter as he is person at home if his son came to him with a bloody knee, crying, and said dad help me. I told him that person should be the same person that picks up the phone everyday and get's to know company's hiring strategies and how he can help those companies get the critical hires they need in order to sustain their own success and growth. That same compassionate and caring father should also be the one giving strategic career advice to those who seek out his help. It's compelling, natural, believable and honest. In a word, it's authentic. 

Sometimes it's easy to lose sight of this. We morph into super focused work beings tasked by management to accomplish goals and gain instant gratification and financial success. We all have a job to do, but I've seen the power of human authenticity in our business. There is a different way to do it. I built a company around it and I emphasize it on a daily basis. It's one of the pillars of my success. In recruiting, we are in the business of people and people need to believe and trust in you. In order for them to believe they need to get the authentic you.

When it comes to working with myself and my staff, my customers know they are getting the real us. Brothers, husbands, fathers and weekend soccer coaches who are experts in executive recruiting, care deeply about doing the right thing and look forward to building up the trust of their customers while watching their business' grow and succeed. In a word, it's authentic.