A 'Finesse Recruiter'

finesse-
1.
extreme delicacy or subtlety in action, performance, skill, discrimination, taste, etc.
2.
skill in handling a difficult or highly sensitive situation; adroit and artful management: exceptional diplomatic finesse.
3.
a trick, artifice, or stratagem.
4.
Bridge, Whist . an attempt to win a trick with a card while holding a higher card not in sequence with it, in the hope that the card or cards between will not be played.

Thanks to dictionary.com for the above definition! Why, you must be thinking, does this blog entry begin with a definition? Has the blogger decided to become an English teacher? Is he considering writing a book? Has old age finally caught up with him? The answers are simple: there is a method to my madness; no; no; and not quite yet!

A candidate and I were chatting yesterday about a client of mine that he has tried to penetrate for a job for quite some time with no success. We spoke for a while and both agreed that there is a specific opportunity there that he is a strong fit for but no one has noticed this before. When I offered up my thoughts on how to submit him to the right people, he noted that it would take a recruiter with finesse to get this accomplished and he felt I should represent him.

Whether you are a recruiter, candidate, hiring manager, career coach, etc., it is important to think out of the box and come up with artful and subtle ways to do things differently than others. Early in my recruiting career, I saw many resumes of recent graduates from trade schools. They all looked exactly the same at the top: name, contact info, identical listings of skills learned and job desired. The only difference was in work history which for most of them was very limited. When I became a Career Services Director at a school, my first objective was to eliminate the cookie cutter approach to resume writing and help each student find their own identity. This takes skills, working delicately not to offend each student, some artful creativity, a little strategizing, and a discriminating eye.

Recruiters tend to lean heavily on search engines, using keywords to identify qualified candidates. Like everyone else, I do this too. At times, this is simply not enough. You need to strategize, artfully create new ways to find people, listen to your gut to find different tastes in candidate pools, and create customized search strategies. A few months ago, I was charged with the task of locating a new sales manager for a wholesale food company. The first few candidates I presented were not quite right. the hiring party told me what fields might match up well but searching that way was fruitless. I sat down late one night and thought about brand names of products in the fields he mentioned. Within two hours, I identified and contact three terrific people, one of whom got the job!

Finesse is all about doing things a bit less traditionally than most people do. Next time you are presented with a challenging task, do all the basic methods you know of then dig a little deeper and see if you could stir up the pot!