We begin every Retained, Performance Payouts, and Exclusive Contingency search by having you (our client) complete a questionnaire designed to answer the vital questions every quality candidate will have about your opportunity. This is called the Search Kick-off Questionnaire. It consists of three parts: the Opportunity Value Proposition, Key Skills, and Performance Targets.

If we can't answers these questions it is impossible to recruit top-tier candidates.

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Opportunity Value Proposition

This questionnaire answers the question: "Why would a highly sought-after candidate want this job?"

The single greatest challenge we face as recruiters when attempting to interest elite talent in an opportunity is piquing their attention. Understandably, highly sought-after individuals have become desensitized by excessive recruiter inquiries and run-of-the-mill job descriptions.

Creating an opportunity value proposition for you gives us the best chance of overcoming this obstacle.  That’s because high potential individuals are always receptive to learning more about “compelling” new opportunities. The big caveat is that we must get their attention first!

Unfortunately, generic job descriptions don’t accomplish that; yet they are still the modus operandi for trying to attract individuals to an opportunity.  They are ineffective because they don't appeal to the career aspirations or interests of high potential individuals. That's a serious problem when you consider that: 1) these individuals always have multiple opportunities to choose from, and 2) they are typically not considering a career move at the time we approach them.

That’s why a compelling career-focused message is critical to successfully recruiting the best people. As your recruiter, we will do most of the work in creating your opportunity value proposition; but we do need your help because you know your organization best. Once we have created your value proposition, it will supplement your standard job description; it's the "mojo" we need to ensure every candidate that your opportunity represents the best career move for him or her.

Key Skills

This questionnaire answers the question: "What are the key skills needed to do this job?"

Whenever a thorough needs analysis has been conducted, a job requisition can always be narrowed down to three must-have hard skills and three must-have soft skills that are absolutely critical to achieving success in the role. If narrowing the requirements down is a difficult exercise, it might be prudent to spend more time analyzing your needs before proceeding with a precarious recruiting effort.

While additional skills are certainly desirable, we don't want to use them at this stage to start disqualifying candidates. Our goal is to speak with individuals who have the core skills needed and are highly motivated to do the work. As far as other desirable skills are concerned, we will use them later to rank our finalist candidates; just not in the beginning. We don't want to start ruling out individuals now before we've even had a chance to assess their potential by speaking with them.

Performance Targets

This questionnaire answers the vital question: "What must be accomplished to be considered a success doing this job?"

For top performers, a career move is not a tactical decision based on salary, title, or location. It is a strategic decision based on the opportunity for personal development and career growth. Therefore, to interest a quality candidate in your opportunity, we must clearly define what they will do and how their performance will be measured. Doing so does more than help a candidate understand the content of the job, it helps us screen and interview candidates more effectively by correlating their past achievements with your business goals.

Performance targets are represented by calendar day milestones. They delineate a logical progression of accomplishments toward first year goals. They serve as an expectations roadmap for both you (the manager) and the employee. The very best candidates will want to see some variation of this roadmap before even considering a position. Therefore, it makes complete sense for us to define our performance targets upfront so that we can use them to improve the quality of the screening and interviewing process for everybody involved.

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Ultimately, the search kick-off questionnaires provide the following benefits:

• Better job definition
• Better requirements understanding by recruiter and hiring team
• Better recruiting
• Better candidate screening
• Better candidate interviewing
• Better employer brand perception
• Better chance of offer acceptance
• Better onboarding experience
• Better employee retention rates
• Better performance management

What's not like to like about all of those benefits?! In another blog entry, I will explain each benefit in more detail. For now, you can learn more by contacting us.