As employers continue to struggle to find the talent they need, it is fascinating to see talent acquisition teams forensically picking their recruiting processes apart and reimagining them to reflect the reality of 2022. While talent intelligence, AI, and automation play a part, some human fundamentals sit at the heart of an effective TA strategy.
So what should recruiters be focusing on, and how different is the talent market of 2022 from those in the past. My guest this week is somewhat of a recruiting legend and has strong opinions based on his decades in the industry. Lou Adler, CEO of Performance-based Hiring Learning Systems, is a prolific author, speaker and trainer. Keep listening to hear his thoughts on how best to deal with the challenges employers are currently facing.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Is the current market really unprecedented?
• What should recruiters be focusing on?
• Designing recruiting processes
• Go to market positioning.
• Results versus competencies and experience
• Predictive indicators and confirming indicators
• Hiring manager
• The role of technology
• The future
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Interview transcript:
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Matt Alder (Intro) (1m 11s):
Hi there, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 410 of The Recruiting Future Podcast. As employers continue to struggle to find the talent they need, it is fascinating to see talent acquisition teams forensically picking their recruiting processes apart and reimagining them to reflect the reality of 2022. While talent intelligence, AI, and automation play a part, some human fundamentals sit at the heart of an effective TA strategy. So, what should recruiters be focusing on, and how different is the talent market of 2022 from those in the past?
Matt Alder (Intro) (1m 52s):
My guest this week is somewhat of a recruiting legend and has strong opinions based on his decades in the industry. Lou Adler, CEO of Performance-based Hiring Learning Systems, is a prolific author, speaker and trainer. Keep listening to hear his thoughts on how best to deal with the challenges employers are currently facing.
Matt Alder (2m 11s):
Hi Lou, and welcome to the podcast.
Lou Adler (2m 14s):
Hey man. Great to be here with you.
Matt Alder (2m 16s):
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Lou Adler (2m 23s):
Yeah, well, I’m actually, I don’t know what I do, but I will introduce myself. I’m Lou Adler. I’ve been a recruiter for the last 40, 45 years. I have always been a recruiter. I’ve been in manufacturing engineering, financial planning, and I’ve written a number of books about recruiting. But in my recruiting life, it was generally senior staff and mid-manager and some level, general management type position. So, I’ve been recruiting a lot, but I’ve also studied the art and science of recruiting in depth and written many books about that.
Matt Alder (2m 54s):
So, we’re going through what seems a very unprecedented time in terms of talent and talent markets, and talent acquisition at the moment. How are you seeing things? What’s your sort of interpretation of what’s going on, and then the market that everyone’s dealing with?
Lou Adler (3m 8s):
Well, there’s no question about it that it appears to be unprecedented. But I don’t know that it’s any different than it’s ever been. In my career as a recruiter, I never worked for a big company. I always worked for small to medium sized businesses and in US dollars, probably 5 million to $500 million. So, I was always dealing with the executive level. Nobody was going to pay me a fee, and I never reduced my fee, but I always produced “A” level talent. So to find that “A” level talent was always difficult, always a challenge. The demand for that talent was always far in excess of the supply.
Lou Adler (3m 48s):
And now that just seems to be common for more positions. So, from my personal perspective, this is the way it’s always been. You got to work very hard to hire great people. Now, you, Matt, work very hard to hire just slightly better than great people. So, it seems to me some of those techniques, those high touch techniques that I advocate. Now, people realize, “Hey, we actually have to go out and attract people and work hard to get the people we want.” So, my perspective is, now more people because of turnover churn, high demand for good people, things have gotten a bit chaotic. But it’s always seemed to be that way from my personal perspective.
Matt Alder (4m 25s):
Picking up on that, you sort of mentioned A great talent there, and you write a lot about hiring leaders. What do you mean by A great talent? What’s your sort of definition of a leader?
Lou Adler (4m 38s):
Yeah, a leader in my mind can actually be an entry level person. You might not know it at the time. But a leader is generally the top 25%, more likely two to three years in the professional range. Where it could be accountant engineer, marketing sales rep. Where they’ve demonstrated that, “Hey, they are really in the best in their field.” But being the best means that they don’t only make their numbers, they make their results. Also means they help other people. They have a vision of how they’re going to get there. They put the plan together, and the execute the plan. They see the world differently. They’re highly motivated to get that done. I mean you break those ideas down of doing more, doing it better, doing with more people, collaborating, helping others become better, that’s my definition of a leader.
Lou Adler (5m 24s):
You’re not, it’s a little bit hard to find in an entry-level job, but within six months to a year, these people pop out. Their boss knows this is a good person. This is a high potential person. So, I guess I’d say that. Somebody who has the ability to grow and develop and become better, and will rapidly learn and grow it to a new, and big broader positions.
Matt Alder (5m 46s):
One of the things that I’m seeing at the moment is many, many employers are having to really look very carefully at the way they recruit people, at the way their recruitment process works, the various stages that they go through and elements that make it up in order to get the people they need for their business. Now, I know that this is a real sort of core area of your expertise. So, talk us through some of the elements of the recruiting process, and what you think needs to change or employers need to really focus on if they’re going to bring leaders into their business, particularly in the current environment?
Lou Adler (6m 23s):
Well, I think it’s not current. I think it’s always. So, I’ve been advocating the idea of this always. So, I’ll go back to my first search assignment 44 years ago, which is hard for me to believe, but it is true. And I already had 10 years of industry background. I’m working with manufacturing companies, electronics, automotive, high-tech, low-tech, retail. And my first assignment was replant manager for a company making hot rod accessories in Southern California with the beach boys and all. And that was where the hotbed was it. So, I knew the president of the company. I knew he was looking for a plant manager. He gave me a job description that listed skills experience and competencies. And I told him, “Hey, Mike, this is not a job description, this is a person description.
Lou Adler (7m 7s):
A person doesn’t have skills. A person doesn’t have competencies. You want a good person. What does this person need to do?” And he said, “They’ve got to have a person turned around the plant.” I said, “Okay, let’s walk out of the plant and figure out what it was. What did he turned around?” Well, everything, it was bad labor, bad logistics, bad manufacturing processes, poor warehouse, layout. I mean the whole thing needed to be — but we identified what it took to turn that plant around. Then I found candidates who saw that job as a challenge and an excitement. That this was a career defining moment for them. It didn’t need 10 years’ experience. I had enough experience to turn the plan around. But they would need this list of educational requirements, had enough education that turned the plant around. So, I think when people focus on what they need to have rather than what they need to do, they start going down a path that precludes the best people from even being considered.
Lou Adler (7m 55s):
And that was 44 years ago. And I’ve been advocating that same idea today. And I did it even yesterday with a very well-known company, looking for a principal engineer. And I just asked the director of engineering, “What do you want this person to accomplish?” And he said, “No one single recruiter ever asked me that.” I said, “We want to attract the top 25% person that recruiters got to tell the person why this is a career move. And that candidate you’re going to hire is going to tell his family, friends, why this was a career move. Otherwise, all your selling was on what they get to the start date package and the name of your company and the brand that has. And none of those are drivers of long-term success.” Man, that was a long answer to a very important question. You might want to tear it apart, but that’s the theme of everything I talked about.
Matt Alder (8m 38s):
Yeah, absolutely. No, that makes perfect sense to… That makes absolute perfect sense. I suppose, just building on that in terms of the elements of how that’s kind of reflected through the recruitment process. What should people be thinking of in terms of the way they run that process and the way they sort of measure the success of their process?
Lou Adler (8m 59s):
Well, let me see. When I train our recruiters, and we do, that’s what I still do. I don’t do recruiting, but I help companies design their recruiting systems and we train recruiters and hiring managers to do it right. And I basically tell as the core metric. And I even told this director of engineering yesterday, said, “Henry, I’m not going to do the search project. But if I was doing it, I would say, you’re only going to see three candidates from me, only three, and you’re going to hire one of them.” That’s what I started first. I said, “On the other hand, I’m going to send you two candidates right away. And if you don’t think either of those two candidates are finalists, we have a problem, either it’s me or it’s you, or we don’t know the job or the market is different than we think it is. But we’re not going to keep on sending candidates in the hope one sticks.” He’s met 17 candidates already for this principal engineering job.
Matt Alder (9m 46s):
Wow.
Lou Adler (9m 47s):
I mean, it’s just ridiculous. And he says, “I’m just weeding people out.” I said, “Let’s look at your posting.” Posting was boring. His recruiters aren’t attracting the right level of candidates. It’s a big job. A 250K job in the US. Big job. And it looks, it reads like a boring lateral transfer for a two-year engineer. So, the point being is that, in my mind the metric of success is, I call it Win-Win Hiring. The long-term metric of success is after a year on the job, the candidate says, “I’m so glad I took this job and I’m glad I’m still here.” And the hiring manager says, “I’m so glad I had that person. I’m so glad that the person is still here, they’re still getting all my big projects.” That’s the metric of long-term success.
Lou Adler (10m 27s):
Metric of short-term successes of a recruiter is, “Hey, the first two candidates aren’t any good.” Hiring manager, always going to say this one thing. “Hey, how many more candidates?” Don’t say that. Stop the process. And this was where my manufacturing background comes into play, Matt. Nobody would say, if you have a bad product, let’s say, “Hey, let’s make some more bad products till we find a good one.” No, you stop the production line and figure out what’s wrong, and get it fixed before you make more products. Recruiting somehow loses that whole thing. And I think when I go back to this conversation, I literally was yesterday. I think recruiters are afraid of dealing with hiring managers. Even the director of engineering. Now, I’m older than him by 25 years, but that immaterial.
Lou Adler (11m 8s):
He said, “No recruiter talks to me like this. They don’t give me any advice. They just listened to me and like little lapdogs hoping that I give them the jobs back and it’s easy to fill.” So, I think it’s that relationship with the hiring manager, which starts the process. And then it’s not understanding that job itself. The best recruiters sit in the staff meetings with hiring managers. They know the job, they know the environment, they know the culture, and they have some credibility with good candidates. Otherwise you’re just filling jobs based on skills, experience, and competencies.
Matt Alder (11m 42s):
So, many things I’d like to dig into, in terms of what you just said there.
Lou Adler (11m 46s):
Alright. Once I get started, Matt, I can’t stop. So, I’m like
Matt Alder (11m 48s):
You know, that’s absolutely fine. But just in sort of terms the interest of time, the one thing that I’ll just pick up on is what you sort of talked about the bit at the beginning, which was boring job postings, in terms of how people are describing the roles and all those kinds of things. And I think that it’s certainly something that I’ve seen hasn’t really changed despite the pressures that companies are under. You talk there about the role of the recruiter and their relationships to the hiring manager. How should companies be going out to the market to attract the best talent? How should they be positioning themselves?
Lou Adler (12m 24s):
Well, again, so I asked this director, I said, “I’m going to help you only in writing your messages and your job posting.” But I said to him, I said, “Why would a top person want this job? I mean, I defined the candidate.” They said, “If a candidate had done A, B and C, would you see him?” He said, “Absolutely. I probably want to hire him.” I just, I said, “What do you want the person to do?” I said, “Now we’ve got to attract the person.” He said, “What?” And I call it the employee value proposition. Why would a top person want this job? What you have written here, they’re going to mentor other people.” “Everybody does that.” I said, “Well, they’re gonna help architect the system.” “But everybody does that.” I said, “What’s the big thing? If this person is truly successful, what will happen?” And he said, “The company, his going to change this personal architect on
Lou Adler (13m 20s):
And I can sell that as a recruiter.
Matt Alder (13m 23s):
Mm-hmm.
Lou Adler (13m 23s):
I can sell that. So even if I’m paying — and the research shows that once you hit a threshold of compensation, it’s gotta be fair. Whether it’s too – let’s say for this job, whether it’s X or X plus 20% or X plus 10%, as long as you hit that threshold, you’re in the game. Then it’s other things that become important and that’s what the candidates are going to sell, and get inspired by, and tell other people, “I’m going to take job A offer instead of job B or C because this is the work I’m doing, and this is important work. And if you can capture that work as important in your messaging, it’s a game changer. And I don’t think, and I see most postings are boring.
Lou Adler (14m 5s):
I’ll-defined lateral transfers surrounded by a bunch of BS in hyperbole.
Matt Alder (14m 7s):
Mm-hmm.
Lou Adler (14m 8s):
Nobody cares about the employer brand. Top 25%. So, they care about, what kind of impact can I make on this company? “If it’s a terrible employer brand and I’m going to make it better, Hey, I want to do that.” And I think it’s, this is pure marketing, Matt. And I don’t understand why your HR and recruiters don’t get it. You want to attract the best, not weed out the weak. We’re going after the best people. It’s a marketing now. Let’s just chat. So, it’s a different kind of a process that I advocate. Let’s spend more time with fewer people, make sure that the right people get lots of referrals, convince people this is a Win-Win Hiring situation. Hired for the long-term not the start date.
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Matt Alder (14m 46s):
Picking up on that spending, you know, making sure that they’re the right people. There’s a lot of focus at the moment round, interview and assessment in terms of how it should be done, how it can be done at that speed or in an efficient way to make sure that companies are picking the people with the best potential for the job. What’s your view on that in terms of, how interviews and assessments should be taking place?
Lou Adler (15m 13s):
That’s a great question. I guess how much time do we have here, Matt? Here’s the idea. As a recruiter, and had been in business, just to get — I was running a manufacturing company when I was 32 years old, I quit, because I hated the group president. He and I clashed every time I saw. So, I became a recruiter, I knew the good person was, and they achieve lots of results very quickly. So the issue is, so as I interview candidates, I always say, “Tell me the biggest thing you’ve accomplished, biggest leadership thing you did biggest team accomplishment, biggest challenge you face.” And it was always related to the job. Hey, we got to turn around the plant, tell me the biggest thing you’ve done related. He could design a new circuit to put on the new Apple iPhone. “Tell me about the biggest circuit you’ve done.” Whatever it was biggest chronic you’ve launched, I always would get at that.
Lou Adler (15m 57s):
And it turned out, these are all leadership things. These are things that people handle, they don’t have the right competencies, so they couldn’t have done that work. So, the idea is I focus on the results and I find that leaders tend to have in comparisons. You haven’t always had the right competencies. Having the right competencies doesn’t mean you’ll be the leader. And I think people just, it’s they’ve got this, they hold it backwards. If you want to hire leaders look for leadership results compared to a job you want and you’ll find exactly the competencies you need, and will probably be a different mix. I don’t know if someone’s got to be results oriented all the time. Well, they gotta be results oriented. That maybe they can do be results from it and be quiet. So, I think the focus is on the competencies and the skills and the experience as opposed to the results the person have.
Lou Adler (16m 42s):
And if you find the right results, you’ll find leaders. And I remember one company. Its huge, it was fortune 100 company. They were so convinced of using predictive index. And it turns out the people they hired were 50% good, 50% not. A hundred percent of the candidates they hired from us, which was about 20 to 30, and a two-year period. All passed a predictive index, and they couldn’t believe it. I said, because we look for results that you want. And of course, I’ve got it. You just got to kind of start with the results you want and they’ll have the right skills. So, then I really believe — I came to the conclusion that all of these predict so called predictive are confirming indicators, not predictive indicators.
Lou Adler (17m 24s):
And they only predict preferences, not competencies. They ignore the fact that somebody who’s quiet can be very aggressive in a very difficult situation. They ignore the fact that somebody who’s dominant can actually be very quiet and supportive of people, given that requirement needs. So, they ignore flexibility it’s too digital, not analog enough. That’s my engineering background. I have electromechanical background. Sorry about that. I don’t know. But on the other hand, Matt, I have no true clue of what I just said about the analog digital part was correct. I believe it was, but not positive.
Matt Alder (17m 56s):
Yeah, absolutely. No. So again, it mate. It made great sense. We focus a lot in this conversation on the role of the recruiter, and what recruiters should be thinking, and what they should be doing, and how they should be relating to the hiring manager. What about the hiring managers themselves? It’s because, you know, very often I know that a lot of people that I speak to have a lot of work to do in terms of helping their hiring managers to understand, you know, what the markets like? Or what good might look like for that role? What’s your sort of view on the hiring manager’s role in all of this?
Lou Adler (18m 34s):
It’s, let’s be real frank. Candidates don’t accept jobs from the recruiter, a good candidate from the recruiter and the company name. Good candidates worked with a hiring manager and the hiring manager is the person who will help that person be successful and where he or she wants to go. So, to me, the role of the hiring manager is number one in hiring great people. The hiring manager can hire great people. The recruiters just pushing up to you, push on the cloud. Any going to happen. And I told this guy yesterday, I said, “I’m going to help you become a better hiring manager.” And he really appreciated it. So, the rule in my mind, the role of a recruiter is not only a career advisor to candidates, but also a consultant in a consultative person to the hiring manager.
Lou Adler (19m 16s):
And it’s hard. And like this guy yesterday he was 45. Really good guy. But he said, “Wow, nobody’s ever talked to me like that.” Well, that’s because I talk differently than most and I’ve been doing it for so many years. Just recently I’ve worked with companies in the agricultural industry, one making egg bites, and other one selling hay around the world, literally. And now the one producing almond milk because that’s the hot food. I just somehow gotten that group and then deal with the board of directors. And I say the same thing. You got to define the jobs a series of performance objectives are surrounded by an EVP. You got to get candidates to describe that, and the hiring manager is the one who’s got to clarify all this. And the recruiters can’t go out in the field unless they know the job, and the company culture, and the leadership style, the hiring manager.
Lou Adler (20m 4s):
But bottom line, the hiring manager is the one who will get the candidate to say, “Yes, I want to work at your company.” The credibility of that hiring manager, knowing the job, and having a track record of hiring other people and supporting and developing other people will be critical. And you can look at a lot of different studies from Gallup Q12 from 1997 to Google’s project, Doxygen, 10 years ago, to populous.orgs the American workforce index, all of those rules, really, all of those aspects of job performance, and job success, and job satisfaction are directly attributed to the quality of the hiring manager.
Matt Alder (20m 42s):
What role does recruiting technology play in all of this? You know, we’ve seen a real kind of acceleration and speed of adoption of various recruiting tools and systems. What role do they play as far as you’re concerned in hiring the best people?
Lou Adler (20m 59s):
Let’s say this. I don’t, I think people assume it’s going to be the solution. And it’s not. When LinkedIn recruiter came out, it was a greatest tool in the world, still the greatest tool in the world. But I look at LinkedIn, as a database of 800 million people, not a… No excuse me, a network of 800 people, not a database. So, if you’re just looking for strangers on LinkedIn, you’re gonna have average results, because everybody’s doing that. But if you can get referrals to your first-degree connections, that’s a game changer. I mean, so to me, that’s a game. So that piece of technology strategically used for the right recruiters, for the right reasons is great. I can find anybody at four hours for any job, any job. It’s just simple.
Lou Adler (21m 40s):
Now, I’ve got to work very hard to get them on the phone but I can find them and I can get referrals. SeekOut is another tremendous tool. Seek unbelievable tool. It gives you the search capabilities of SeekOut when you use properly, we’ll give you 10 to 15 people for any job. I did not that was really this project that I’m working on the other day is working with SeekOut to demonstrate that we can find anybody, but now it’s the messaging, the contact, the support. So, I think use properly high tech in combination with high touch, and good recruiting strategy is a game changer. But it’s not the overall solution. And I think that’s where people think. Oh, this is going to be the next great thing. I’ve been around 30 years; job boards are going to be the next great thing. It never was. ATS has been there a great thing, never was.
Lou Adler (22m 21s):
LinkedIn, the next great thing. I think it is in the right hands. All of these tools and right hands are the next great thing. SeekOut next great thing. It actually is in the right hands. It’s higher to eliminate is the nest great thing. Faena, they’re all great tools, but they’re not implemented properly. It’s not as that simple solution. It gets you in the game and it is table stakes, but it’s not the complete solution. And I think that’s where I think people believe it to be the end game. And it’s only the beginning game.
Matt Alder (22m 55s):
So as a final question. What does the future look like? What do you think we can look forward to seeing in the next two years? If we were having this conversation again, in a couple of years’ time, what will we be talking about?
Lou Adler (23m 7s):
Okay, now I’m going to give a plug, but I’ll give you a good… hope and maybe is not a good answer. 10 year, 20 years ago, maybe 25 years ago, McKinsey came out with a study called The War for Talent. At that time, people said The War for Talent is going to be one because we have ATS job boards, and we’ve got companies are building in house recruiting teams. It is 1not been one. We still have boring postings. We haven’t measured quality of hiring, we still spend more time, we spend millions, billions, and billions, and billions of dollars on HR, tools and systems, and nothing’s changed. 12 years ago, I got kicked out of VRE, big conference. I was there with a bunch of people. They asked me the same question you asked, what’s the future?
Lou Adler (23m 48s):
I said, not any different. People running around thinking technology is a solution. We can solve this. We can’t solve it. So, if you ask me, and then yesterday, somebody asked me, I said, “Lou, you have, what you’re talking about sounds pretty cool. I believe it. What do you think it’s going to be?” I said, “It’s not going to change. People aren’t going to do it. Even though it seems so logical people aren’t going to do it.” Now, I have one company in the UK. It’s now got 1000 people but I met them, we had 20 people. Met the president when I was 22 years old. He says he wants to implement performance-based hiring. We did implement it. He now raised, I think it was last summer $200 million. He said, “Lou, I can’t do it. I got to use the money to do this, this and that.” So now he’s moved away from what in his own heart is the right way to do it to be more efficient, to make money, so we can pay back the investors the 200 million they put into his capital, into his growth.
Lou Adler (24m 40s):
So, I think, so I have a very cynical view on it. When you do it, it actually works. We have proof over 1000 people, 1000 placements, only 77% didn’t make a full, full year. But it’s hard to do because it’s not a simple solution. It takes everybody involved. And you got to focus on talent is really number one. And it’s everybody says talent is number one. But when you look at it, a recruiter can’t work 20 reps at one time. I’m a good recruiter. I can’t work more than six or seven at any one time with all the tools and technology. And I know what I’m doing. Once I get to 10, it’s a numbers game. I just try to keep everybody at bay. So why I believe there are two possible solutions.
Lou Adler (25m 22s):
My own senses is quite cynical. And I’ve been kicked out of VRE is a result of that. So, Matt, hopefully, you know people don’t hang up at this time off your podcast.
Matt Alder (25m 35s):
So as a closing question, how can people find you and connect with you?
Lou Adler (25m 38s):
Well, they can certainly connect with me, follow me on LinkedIn because I don’t know that I have any more connections left on LinkedIn. But I’ve written a book called Hire with Your Head. We do have you go to hirewithyourhead.com, you can join the book club. We go through chapters in a book. We have a meeting that matter if we — regularly we have meetings online where we go through different issues on how to hire people. But Hire with Your Hand is really kind of summarizes a lot of the ideas that I advocate and been advocating for many years. So that’s how I would suggest you do it.
Matt Alder (26m 15s):
Lou, thank you very much for talking to me.
Matt Alder (Outro) (26m 18s):
My thanks to Lou Adler. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple podcasts, on Spotify, or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com. On that site, you can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
