Best practice recruiting involves two things: a sound strategy, and good execution of that strategy.

Earlier this year I outlined an approach to ensure best practices are applied when recruiting the interpersonal roles of professional services marketing and BD people. I now share some key factors to help implement that approach.
​
Recap on strategy
             
By way of a quick cap, an effective best practice recruiting approach to attract the right marketing and BD professionals includes:  

• Conduct meetings, not interviews
• Plan out the meetings
• Set your candidate’s expectations
• Include the key people from the start
• Have one meeting out of the office
• Ask questions that give you the right information

 
Effective execution

Here are some ways you can ensure effective execution of this approach. Keep in mind that all of these require only minimal planning, and will ensure a seamless, sophisticated and thorough interview meeting process for all involved:

• Assign different questions and discussion points. There will likely be marketing and BD team leaders, HR professionals, and partners all involved in these meetings. Whoever is coordinating the touchpoints with a candidate should assign different questions and discussion points between these people. This ensures candidates aren’t being asked the same question multiple times throughout. And importantly, you can learn more about your candidate as each question will have a different focus, allowing you to gain a complete picture of the candidate.
• Consider the logistics. Consider any interruptions to the meeting process. For example, who is going on vacation and can’t participate, who is traveling to other offices and will be hard to reach and follow up with, and who is simply too busy. Plan this going in, and then talk to your candidate about the logistics and timing.
• Who is assigned with the follow up. Someone needs to take the lead on communicating with the candidate. Particularly when there’s marketing, BD, HR and partners all involved, often everyone assumes someone else has the lead. The candidate deserves to have a central point of contact and also to understand where they are at in the process. I see too frequently candidates getting disengaged from the process as the firm forgets to do these simple updates. And that’s when candidates will look to other firms who do have these best practices in place.
• Interview training. Most people don’t conduct interviews as a part of their daily lives. Particularly partners in law and accounting firms. When people are not used to conducting interview meetings, they can be unnatural or overly formal. Others mask their own unfamiliarity with either aggressive tactics or by talking too much. The role of the firm here is to prepare people who will be speaking with the candidate on how to conduct an interview meeting. It should involve these things: information gathering, information sharing, testing on technical abilities, and cultural alignment discussion points. Attempting to ‘catch the candidate out’, or proving you know more than them aren’t conducive to an effective interview meeting.
• Formal v informal. Hopefully time permits for you to have one interview meeting out of the office. Mirror the circumstances of these meetings with your style. For example, an in-office formal interview meeting will naturally be more structured. An out of the office coffee meeting should be deliberately more casual, trying to build rapport and get a sense of who the candidate is as a person. Find out what they do outside of work, what community efforts they’re involved in, what sports they like to play. All of this tells you more about the candidate and who they will be each day in the office.
• Share as much as you ask. Candidates often have just as many questions as you do. They have thought at length about the potential of the opportunity (and how it fits with their personal career goals), your team structure, the firm leadership, and the future goals and trajectory of the firm. Don’t make the mistake of thinking these meetings are just for you to gather information. Purposefully make a point of allowing a good amount of time to ask them what you can share with them.

 
Summing up     
 
Interview meetings, and the whole process of conducting these meetings, is not easily done. There’s planning, logistics and effective execution to all happen at the right time. But importantly, you, at your firms, have to judge a candidate and make a call about whether they are right for you while they are doing the same in return. If you follow this approach and execute effectively, this hard decision does become a little easier. Make it as easy as you can: arm yourself with the right information and plan accordingly, involve the right people, and ask the right questions. You will then feel fully informed to make the right decision. 

​Best practice recruiting involves two things: a sound strategy and good execution of that strategy.
​
Applying recruiting best practices to the interpersonal roles of marketing and BD has never been more important. Rarely are personal attributes - from one’s style, approach and energy - as on display as they are in these roles. Marketing and BD roles are influential and highly visible, as they deal with many people each and every day. Getting someone who can have a positive interaction with each person at every turn is essential.

Many firms struggle to find the right people. A best practice helps to professionally and purposefully recruit the right marketing and BD people for your team and your firm.

This blog focuses on the first part of that best practice, namely, the strategy or plan. In a follow up blog, I will discuss how to effectively execute on that plan.
 
Part 1: An effective strategy                 

• Conduct meetings, not interviews. Calling it an interview makes people nervous. When people are nervous their most natural self is not on display. This means technical abilities become masked by unnecessary nervousness, and softer skills get misinterpreted. For those who argue that it’s good to see how candidates act under pressure, I would say “yes, and…” there are very few situations in a firm which are the same as an interview. And I argue there are better ways to test their abilities under pressure (and I’ll elaborate on this further below).
• Plan out the meetings. This is so simple to do, but many miss the mark. Take a few minutes to map out what the meeting process will look like. This includes how long it will take (how many phases of meetings will you conduct?), who is involved at each phase (do you need some or all of your peers, partners, and HR involved?), and when will you be able to get feedback from others involved at each phase to move forward (who’s out on vacation or who’s simply too busy to contribute meaningfully and quickly?).
• Set your candidate’s expectations. Take a few minutes at each meeting with your candidates to communicate timing, actions and next steps. This shows that you are recruiting for the role in a meaningful and professional way and that you have a clear path forward. Ending a meeting with “thanks we’ll be in touch” is vague and indecisive and risks miscommunicating your intentions about their candidacy and your next steps. Candidates understand they’re usually not the only person being considered for the role, they just want transparency about the process and timing.
• Key people from the start. An effective process needs the key people from the start so the right people are talking and no time is wasted. This means the person who will manage this candidate should be the first person who meets with them. These days, we – as recruiters – have done all the qualifying for you so you can fast-track any introductory or process driven meetings and get straight to the higher value conversations and what you’re trying to achieve.
• Have one meeting out of the office. Outside interactions show you how your candidate interacts with and treats others and how they hold themselves outside of the firm. How often have you observed someone reacting or being abrupt to someone, only to then quickly revert back to their ‘other self’ with the people they are with. True characters are revealed in situations of uncertainty, stress or uneasiness. Take your candidate out for a coffee or lunch and watch and observe. An added bonus to this phase is you get to build a deeper rapport than normal; which is essential if you end up working together.
• Ask questions that give you the right information. This is a topic in and of itself. But, at a high level, rather than fall into the script of asking them to count the number of times they’ve done a certain project or task, change the emphasis to elicit a response that tells you how they react in certain situations. This goes to their past behavior (the best indicator of future behavior) and shows you how they deal with people and circumstances. This includes how they learn or adapt, how they delegate, and how they manage their boss, peers and juniors. The answers you receive will give you a read on their technical abilities, their all-important softer skills, their people management abilities, and their cultural fit; all equally important. All of this information also gives you insights into their ability to problem solve under pressure.

 
Moving forward                        
 
Use the above six-point strategy when you next need to hire. And then compare it with your old method to see where you noticed the value. Adding the right people to your team and to the future of your firm is the most important thing you can do. Commit to the strategy and have confidence that it yields the best results.