For many companies these days, the time has come to reengineer the hiring process. Those looking to onboard more outstanding candidates might want to benchmark this CEO’s method. She wrote an email to her recruiting team, offering a glimpse of how hiring should be done. It starts by converting jobs into career moves and using a consultative hiring process to ensure full disclosure.
The email, below, has been turned into an easy-to-use template for you.
Dear Recruiter: After you conduct a “clever” Boolean search on LinkedIn, please send this email under my name to the top prospects.
Email Subject:
A personal note from the CEO of (company name) regarding senior level and executive career opportunities in (function).
The Email Template:
Hot Prospect’s First Name,
One of our recruiters found your profile on LinkedIn and was quite impressed with your background. As part of a new company initiative for (describe high-level business objective), I asked our recruiters to identify and reach out to talented people like yourself with the purpose of changing how we hire.
If you’d be open to considering a position that clearly represents a career move, you’ll likely be interested in our new hiring process.
In my mind, a career move needs to offer at least a 30 percent increase, but this is not all compensation. Some of it is job stretch, meaning a bigger job with more impact. Another part is job growth, meaning we can offer more rapid upside growth. The other critical component of the 30 percent is an increase in job satisfaction, meaning doing more of the work you want to do in a more supportive environment. If we can’t get close to a 30 percent increase, whatever we pay you won’t matter — the job will not represent a career move.
It takes a long time (hours in meetings over a few weeks) to figure out if we can offer someone like yourself a 30 percent increase. It also takes an equal amount of time for you to fully understand what we have to offer. Our previous hiring processes precluded these types of discussions to even take place. As a result, we needed to reengineer how to offer talented people true career moves.
Here’s a quick summary of our new consultative hiring process. We think you’ll find it unique and we hope you agree to participate. Together we can build a great company. We can’t do it without you.
1. No more silly job descriptions.
We have discarded our skills-laden job descriptions and replaced them with performance profiles. These describe the top five to six performance objectives for the role during the first year. We want our hiring managers and new people to be fully aligned on the goals and challenges involved in every job before accepting an offer. Here’s a link to a few positions you might be interested in considering.
2. We describe why the job could be a career move for you.
As you’ll see, the employee value proposition is clearly described in these new-age job descriptions.
3. No more applications first.
We’re asking people who are interested in one of the roles to send us an email with a one or two paragraph summary of a major related accomplishment. If there’s a reasonable fit, we’ll set up a short discussion with one of our recruiters.
4. Have an exploratory discussion with one of our recruiters.
During this first conversation the recruiter will ask questions about your background and major accomplishments. If we have an open position that represents a potential career move, the recruiter will describe it to you and suggest areas where a 30 percent increase is possible. We’ll also get into some preliminary salary discussions at this point to ensure we’re at least in the ballpark.
5. Agree to participate in a 30-minute phone interview with the recruiter.
If the job offers the possibility of a true career move, our recruiters will want to spend 30 to 45 minutes with you digging into your background. You’ll be able to ask as many questions as you like at this point, too.
6. Have an exploratory call with the hiring manager.
If you and the recruiter are in agreement, we’ll arrange a 30-minute exploratory phone call with the hiring manager. During this open exchange you’ll be able to determine if the job represents a career move and if the hiring manager believes you’d be a strong candidate. If so, you’ll be invited to an onsite interview.
We have a new hiring goal — match great people with great jobs — and a new hiring process to make it happen. We’re growing fast and new opportunities are constantly being created. So even if the initial opening doesn’t seem like a perfect career move for you, I urge you to participate. We can often modify a job to meet a person’s career needs or something new might develop in the next month or two.
Check us out. I think you’ll discover that at (company), our people truly are our most important asset.
I look forward to working with you and having you on our team.
Your Next CEO