Recruiting for Moms and Dads and the Importance of Making Time for New Ideas

As a Christian, Easter is my favorite holiday as it is the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection and His purpose.  Our family takes the time to reflect on that, and during such times I think about family. Easter promotes thoughts of my father, who died January 6, 2000.  His death was motivation for what I do today.  He died due to a mistake made during a routine after-surgery procedure in a hospital.  I left a successful consulting career to start a medical recruiting firm to make sure that my tragedy wasn’t repeated with someone else’s parent.  Today my recently-patented invention, Online Job Tour®, which was developed and motivated by my passion to do what I do, is a new recruiting product to reach today’s online jobseekers and support healthcare recruiting.  You can learn about it at www.onlinejobtour.com  

On this Easter I have a sincere wish for all internal recruiters – those of you who work for a hospital or their corporation and recruit new physicians and employees: Consider you Recruit for Moms and Dads and always be open to getting better for their sake. 

Since I started my new career in 2000 with sorrow driving me regarding my father death, I have realized what I am doing makes a difference in the lives of other peoples’ parents.  Isn’t that an awesome thing? As an internal recruiter, you deal with prospective employees who will meet, touch, care for, save, console, and impact the lives of the people you serve, and their parents.

My hope is that you stay mindful of the importance of your job that you also remain motivated to be the best recruiter you can be, which includes constantly searching for the best practices and tools – like any top professional or pro athlete, being great requires constantly pushing the limit, never being content, and always looking for the best training regimen and equipment.

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Ok, so you understand the need to constantly improve and continually seek to get better, but when is the right time to consider new ideas?

I recently had a staff member here express some disappointment that he had been in contact with a hospital regarding Online Job Tour and the internal recruiter he talked to was rude.  We had mailed a package and made a courtesy follow up call to ensure its delivery and to seek a way to discuss Online Job Tour with a policymaker.  Naturally, this wasn’t a personal call and the internal recruiter likely deals with many solicitations.  I understand the call may have been an interruption - but it was in response to an email by someone who gave no title on an email to our company, so our staff called to learn who it was. Hopefully we reached this person on a bad day.

·         When you are aware that your work impacts lives and recruiting is extremely competitive, time should always be made to consider new and better ideas and products, right?

You can’t hold it against salespeople that they are enthusiastically promoting their products.  They are the delivery mechanism for new ideas as well as every product you use today, which was either sold to you or to your boss for you to use.

Maybe not today, but all internal recruiters need to be allowed by their employers the autonomy to investigate new practices and recruiting tools.  Dedicate a week to it. So when solicitors call, instead of a blow off of a potentially great product because of your initial irritation, accept their information and inform them of the time you have dedicated to seeking ways to improve by reviewing new products and services.  They can call back then.

If you are not the person who makes the decisions, then save everyone time by pointing out the right person – because any good sales pro is going to root that out with multiple calls; so save your employer the time of getting more calls than it needs to receive.

By reserving a specific time period to evaluate new ideas, you don’t have to be rude, and at the same time you can look forward to taking an important break to see what has been offered to you from the wonderful world of inventions, ideas and generally well-meaning people with legitimate references, who are outside of your box.

The best recruiters in healthcare are motivated by their almost-daily conscious awareness of the importance of what they do and that their work impacts lives – this motivates them to be great and to actively welcome new ideas as well as seek them out.

Consider being one of them for the benefit of the moms and dads whom you serve.  Speaking from my personal experience, their children will appreciate you for it!

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2 Lessons for Recruiters from “March Madness”

I think about recruiting a lot.  I invented Online Job Tour after the death of my father due to a mistake made during a medical procedure so it’s a real passion – I suppose there are worse things to be obsessed about!

As I watched in amazement one upset after the next in this year’s NCAA College Basketball tournament, commonly referred to by sports fans as "March Madness," including the upset of my beloved Florida Gators by the Butler Bulldogs, I kept thinking about the analogies used in sports and how they apply to life, and certainly in business – and recruiting, too.

Here are a two things from this year’s tournament that I hope inspire you on your quest to be a great recruiter for your employer.

1)  It’s about match ups – you may not be the better than every team in the tournament, but that doesn’t matter; you only have to be better than the team you’re playing.  For more than six years now, a huge issue I have noticed with my employer clients is how self deprecating they are about their hospital and service area – the focus is generally making excuses for what they lack vs. exalting what they have.  This is likely a combination of being told negative things but I think it’s a bit of human nature to want what you don’t have and to think “the grass is greener….” 

First of all, recruiting is not about what you don’t have as much as how you compare against the other employers that your candidates are considering. For instance, if you are a smaller hospital in a relatively smaller and non-urban area, then at the point when they start getting serious, your prospective candidates have generally already decided this kind of environment and lifestyle is what they prefer.  So you aren’t competing against New York City, but you need to find out what hospitals and communities the prospect is also serious about besides you – and from there you have to start considering where you stand. This makes things manageable.  It’s about match ups, and how you fare against the 6 other employers of your prospect, and not against the world.

From this point, you need to break down the career opportunity regarding the job itself and how it relates to what the prospect wants, and then your facilities, but also your community and what it offers: recreation, entertainment, Arts, access to travel, Schools, the local economy, Real Estate prices, shopping, etc.

Design a protocol that is easy for you to replicate.  Consider using Online Job Tour – our tool that gives your prospects a better onsite visit than the real trip.  Seek to understand the needs and preferences in order, what are most important to your prospects.  And then seek out and compare all these factors with your competitors.  You may not come out ahead in all areas, but you don’t need to win the game 100-0 – you only need to win by a point. 

I believe coming across to your prospects as an expert, and then helping them refine their considerations, will not only help you in discerning and comparing which candidates are most favorable, but also when you focus on trying to close your top choice you can be an advocate to helping them understand the positives of your employer and service area to their other options. 

You need to know what their biggest issues are.  You need to know your competitors to influence the outcome – you only need to be better than your direct competitors in these area.

2)  On Believing in being great – you can accomplish almost anything with the right attitude and it starts with believing in what you represent:  your employer and where you live.

Some of the teams who have pulled off upsets in this year’s championships had no business winning on paper.  I am particularly fond of VCU, who many pundits screamed should never have been selected to be in the tournament, which keeps winning and recently beat top-seeded Kansas to reach the Final Four.

During the test market of Online Job Tour it was my intent to introduce it to rural hospitals in communities which are generally off of the Internet radar or overshadowed by larger cities nearby, or are misunderstood.  By focusing on telling the story and history of the community and the employer, and focusing our work on the positive aspects of the community – which are far more than initially meet the eye, we started having great success marking these “Norman Rockwell” lives to the right kinds of candidates who were ultimately looking for that work and life situation.  One client increased its closing percentage from 5% to 70% in one year, among many other positives.  Another client in rural Kentucky, over three years, has a 100% retention rate having recruited more than 50 doctors in three years – the town has a beautiful lake, but no major department stores, hotels, or franchise businesses except for a few restaurants. 

These clients out-recruited many other bigger, flashier hospitals, by using good recruiting tools and making solid offers, but it started with their sincere belief that they offered a great place to work and live.

Enthusiasm and genuine sincere excitement is infectious, and it reaches people emotionally.  It doesn’t make the sale but it without question can help close it.  In fact, there’s really nothing more important than believing in who you are and what you do.  Just ask VCU!

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The Easiest Thing an Employer Recruiter can do to bring real value to the recruiting process without spending a dime – “Be an Advocate, not an Assistant.”

All successful sales professionals set up an “evaluation system” to determine their effectiveness, their personal income prospects, and value to their employers. But in our test market of hospitals and physician-owned practices over the last six years, rarely did I find an employer recruiter – called an “Internal Recruiter,” who does the same thing to monitor their efficiency, costs, closing percentages, and retention, among other important statistics, in the same manner. 

Although our business currently is with hospitals, my experience is that for many employers in all industries, their recruiting protocols lack basic professional selling tenets. In fact, many internal “recruiters” are NOT really salespeople but “assistants” who almost aimlessly follow their candidates.

Hospital recruiting is at a high cost (not just financial) and many have not taken a serious look at their recruiting process despite the Internet changing career search completely.  But some are starting to see their shortcomings – and understand the need to better market and sell themselves, and fill jobs faster, more competitively, and less expensively – plus focus on harnessing technology.

But a great deal of recruiting losses and shortcomings can be eradicated by internal recruiters incorporating basic sales tenets that cost nothing to implement.

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Off the bat, the easiest and perhaps most important thing an internal recruiter can do to improve upon their results is to “stop following” candidates around and instead have the focus to be an Advocate for the candidate, and not the candidate’s “secretary.” 

·         Even if the internal recruiter is not the one who will put together the pro forma or any sophisticated compensation package, nor may not be involved in the “final close,” their responsibility is to “clear the way” or “set the table” for both sides to get to that point.

To ultimately craft a competitive, repeatable, discernable recruiting protocol, becoming their candidates’ advocate is the easy and simply takes a change in approach:

1)     An advocate is expert on what candidates need to know – this knowledge promotes a proactive nature which anticipates needs which gains the candidates’ respect.

2)     An advocate understands the competitive component – they aren’t recruiting in a vacuum, but aware they need to not just sell, but outsell all other options of their candidates.  They provide information for comparison that favors their employer, plus help candidates recognize the more favorable characteristics of their open jobs vs. competitors.

3)     An advocate must have a real commitment to technology. Today’s jobseekers are online and any good internal recruiter insists on having the best tools to exhibit their jobs, as well as to communicate to and with jobseekers/candidates.

1) Be an Expert on what candidates need to know:

If you become a bona fide expert on the issues and subjects your candidates need to know, you will gain a measure of respect with the candidate and ultimately become a confidant.  In fact, your only benefit to them will be what you know and who you know.  You can either be a professional whom they trust and rely on or if they see that the extent of your “help” is helping them pick Holiday Inn or the Sheraton, their “wall” will never come down – you will never have a “peer” relationship where they take you seriously. 

It’s pretty easy to discern the needs of your candidates – especially if they are relocating and your service area.  A relocating candidate should want to know about your area’s economy and lifestyle issues (higher-end earners will want to know about the Arts, Country Clubs, private schools, shopping, high-end real estate, etc.).  Many will want to know about civic groups or have interests in investing in the community. 

For example, if your candidates express that they have middle school children who are high achievers, don’t just drive past a school and drop an awful cliché like your competitors such as “our schools are great and highly-rated,” but be an expert on the details, such as how the International Baccalaureate (IB) program was founded, then set up a meeting with its director, then tour its facilities.  Talk about the new middle school being built and arrange for a tool to display its technology. Introduce your candidate to the PR person of the school system.  Then make a point to inquire about private schools/academies and then do the same.

If you are in a smaller town, drive past construction sites and point out what is going on.  Discuss in detail projects in the community and arrange for meetings with economic development principals to review floor plans with your candidates.  Introduce candidates to the Director of Economic Development.

Especially in a smaller community, you should remind candidates that they should want to know about the economy so they can project outward their career.

Here are key examples of your showing you have done homework and prepared a visit.  You were proactive.  You have knowledge your competitors don’t.  Your competition didn’t do this, and you are setting yourself apart from competitors’ recruiters as someone who “has the answers.” You are an expert who has anticipated needs, and added real value to your candidates’ job searches. These are memorable things to jobseekers.  Ultimately, knowing you have information and know the right people will promote a unique change in the attitude of your candidates which may open the real doors to learning the major issues needed to close them. 

Regarding a candidate’s expertise – if he is a cardiologist – you don’t need to be able to talk on his or her level, but you should be well-schooled on all the equipment and facilities of your employer – depending on your specific role, you may or may not need to understand the financial opportunity as well as any guarantees or packages your employer with offer.  This is easier than you think, especially if you aren’t the deal maker but just the facilitator to the CFO or the board who will present the offer.

I could give all kinds of examples of being a prepared expert who has done your homework, who is a student of your employer and your service area, who knows the right people – but I think you get my point!  Be an active student of your employer and your service area and be proactive in sharing that information in the form of personal visits or that you know key people.

2) Understand the competitive component:

Too many recruiters forget the candidates they are dealing with – especially if they are doctors, can have as many as 8 different options when they make the commitment to interview.  They speak in clichés that really say nothing and don’t serve to distinguish themselves or their service area from the other options which makes the candidates feel isolated and alone.

Cliché phrases include “our hospital is like one big family” and “our community is small and it’s great for families.” As much as this may be true, these aren’t selling points when your five competitors are repeating these clichés.  Real sales professionals are taught to provide information that leads prospects to the conclusions you want them to reach.  Therefore, your goal should be to present them with information in the form of visits and meetings, so they can determine for themselves these facts. 

And during dialogues, asking open-ended questions such as “how do we compare vs. your other choices” will bring out discussions to give you clues as to what candidates are interested in, as well as any misconceptions or wrong facts they have.

For example, let’s say you learn a candidate enjoys golf and the wife enjoys high end shopping, and although there are two country clubs in your service area but no major malls with top department stores, you might arrange for the couple to visit and have a snack with the Director of a local golf club – and prior to the trip you might speak with the wives of a few members who agree to meet all of you, who can tell the candidate and his wife where they shop.  In this case, the key is acknowledging that there is no Lord & Taylors locally, but the wife had the chance to learn where her future neighbors shop. 

Let’s say your competitor also has golf, but avoids the subject of shopping and chooses to hide from it since they don’t have high end shopping either.  Perhaps your arranging to have your candidates meet local people who discussed it and reassured them, may make the difference.

Or if another competitor doesn’t have a private club (who says you can’t do your homework and compare these other places?) – you not only have the advantage but you made a point to visit one of yours.

Thus, if you have a good working relationship with the candidate, as you get to closing them you have this “ammunition” to use in your favor while you help them compare their career options vs. being a secretary they would never confide in.

Another example might be in your economy, which may be more diversified than other options of your candidate, which may be looking at a one industry town.  I think it’s a good thing to ask your candidate to consider how it would affect their career if the furniture manufacturer in that other town they are considering closes.

The bottom line here is open-ended questions.  Talking to candidates in terms of being an expert on what they need to understand to reach real decisions for their career, and taking time to help them compare your opportunity vs. others, pays off.

3. Commit to Technology:

It’s clear that jobseekers have moved to the Internet.  We have also seen a huge rise in the use of smart phones and the iconic iPad among the high-end medical jobseekers whom we assist our clients in recruiting.  The facts are that high-speed Internet is 10 years old now and by 2012 that will mean 3 generations of college graduates will have graduated – the point being that the college grad will have “grown up online.”

Internal recruiters need smart phones – I personally highly recommend the iPhone (Our group made the first web-based recruiting product in 2002 but we made a “micro” product for smart phones in 2006 – well before the iPhone).  Many professionals prefer to text, especially if they are busy.  It may sound a little silly to text your candidates, but not so much if you remember points #1 and #2 – you want to show you have knowledge, you are at least tech-competent, and your competitors may not be doing it.

·         Use an iPhone.  Use it to communicate with your candidates.  The iPhone is an iconic tool that you will grow to love through its applications and ease of use.  It’s a “hip” technology product and I think it’s the trendsetter in mobile communications.  It will send a good message to candidates.  And if you can afford it – get an iPad.  I believe in this product so much that our work is oriented toward our video content being fully viewable on it.

And as the Internet is so broad and open now, the days of merely referring your candidates to a handful of websites as the sum total of your using the Internet to “recruit” them shows badly and can lead to disaster. 

For instance, imagine merely providing a candidate a link to your local paper – and on today’s headline is news of a drug bust at the local high school, or worse, a double-homicide.  And reconsider merely providing jobseekers with the school district’s website – most all of the content has nothing to do with what the jobseeker needs or wants to know – and they can find that by themselves so you really did nothing for them.

Our company is the maker of Online Job Tour®, which is a patented invention and a great recruiting tool that “brings the onsite interview experience to the jobseeker” – here are some samples:  www.onlinejobtour.com/samples.php.

·         While our product is the premier tool to both communicate as well as sell careers – living in your area and working in your company, consider anything besides throwing jobseekers a handful of websites for them to ferret through to “sell yourself.”  That’s obviously not proactive selling.

If not Online Job Tour, at least provide candidates with web articles that present fair information and news on subjects which are important – at least you did some homework for them vs. your competitors which really don’t do anything to help.  While I believe it is far better to “reach” them with our invention/product, a streaming video with testimonials, even if relatively cheaply made, is better.  DVDs are older but a delivery system for streaming videos or some kind of visual presentation.  Although paper of any kind is pretty much dead to today’s jobseekers, a clean marketing slick or high-quality brochure – maybe with the DVD in it, is better than being passive and hoping.

• Our product and these other options cost money.  If you can’t get your senior executive to call me to negotiate some kind of deal for us to craft an Online Job Tour for your employer, then at least start collecting timely Internet pieces – and be sure to put them in categories that are relevant to your prospects.  It takes your time, but they would be more appreciated by your candidates.

I hope this blog entry has convinced you that changing your approach, and a few modifications to becoming a bona fide advocate for the needs of your candidates, will impact your results in a big way.

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New Year's Resolution Fizzling Already? Resolve to be a Pawn Star

Resolve to be a Pawn Star – Employer Recruiters can begin to build a hugely successful recruiting protocol by studying the shrewd negotiating skills of these owners of a highly successful Las Vegas pawn shop.  Although I haven’t checked into the figures, I wonder every year how many New Year’s Resolutions fizzle out by February.  My guess is that it’s a pretty high percentage, and among many reasons could be that people tend to set their goals too unrealistically.  Well, if you are an employer recruiter and your resolution is on the ropes or already kaput, I have a simple and powerful “resolution solution” that can last all year and pay dividends: Resolve to be a Pawn Star. There is a show on the History Channel called Pawn Stars which chronicles the everyday life of a family who has run a successful pawn shop in Las Vegas for years.  I imagine people from all over bring in goods such as old cars to a book once owned by Isaac Newton, from a circa 1700 musket to a vintage boom box.  I want you to quickly get past the fact that this is a pawn shop, but an extremely successful BUSINESS.  And there is a very simple reason for it that experienced salespeople and sales trainers (and great recruiters) quickly recognize – the principals at the pawn shop not only win virtually every negotiation with customers who bring in their goods, but they also almost never lose. How would you like to have a simple process that cuts to the quick virtually every time with jobseeker prospects, that drastically improves your results – from closing percentage, getting the appropriate terms your employer is pressing for with the newly hired employee, and improve your retention numbers while getting a sincere “win-win” where both you and the new employee are totally satisfied?  I’m going to recommend that you, in a general sense, model your recruiting approach around how these pawn shop owners negotiate so focus on how they do it. The Advantages of the Pawn Stars: Experience:  The first thing to recognize is the pawn shop owners have an incredible advantage – they negotiate dozens of deals every day vs. the person off the street who has perhaps never tried to pawn or sell anything they have owned before – this is no different than the advantage an employer-recruiter has over prospective candidates from physicians to specialty nurses. Exclusivity:   The next factor is the pawn shop owners have money – in other words, they have what these people want for the goods they are pawning.  Sure, we don’t know the motivations of the people – for instance, they may be desperate for cash or just curious to see what the item they have may be worth. The point is it doesn’t really matter because the pawn shop owner is going to set the terms.  These customers came through the door.  Similarly, your jobseeker prospects are at least casually interested in you;  after all, you have an open job and they are at least sniffing around about it.  They are coming to you. Knowledge and Expertise:  These pawn shop owners must be masters of the goods and products over which they are negotiating – because they must turn around and sell anything they buy at what they want to be a considerable profit.  Much of the things people bring in, from jewelry to guns, they already know what their store’s selling price is going to be based on market conditions.  The more unusual the product the better – the pawn guys will simply leverage an expert to come into the store for them in front of the customer and provide an assessment of the value of the product.   The experts seem to have good credentials, and talk intelligently, they have a reputation to uphold – but they clearly favor the pawn shop owners; nonetheless, they usually provide a “retail value” of the product.  Even with a starting price from which to negotiate, the pawn shop owner has the process to win the deal while promoting a deal that will either satisfy the customer or there will be no deal. This is similar to recruiting, is it not?  A jobseeker will come in with an expected salary and compensation range while to employer recruiter needs to promote a win-win that first benefits the employer, or be smart enough to drop pursuit of a jobseeker with unrealistic expectations or who isn’t sincerely interested. Emotion: People buy on emotion.  All good salesmen and recruiters know this.  An emotional attachment to a product or a job can be used against the customer or jobseeker, respectively, just as the emotional attachment to a product by a Pawn Star or to any particular candidate by an employer, can cut into the bottom line of the businesses.  To keep this blog entry more brief and focus on my orientation of developing a “process,” let’s agree for this post that because the Pawn Star and the employer-recruiter have always done this, they should have a clear advantage on this subject and have an awareness (gut . feeling) when emotion is playing too big of a role in their considerations.  Clearly, an employer-recruiter needs to be consciously aware of attempting to generate a number of emotional responses from jobseeker-prospects – it helps to out-recruit other employers as well as in the negotiations; will a candidate accept lower terms for a job and a community they have fallen in love with? You bet! The Negotiating process:  What all great sales professionals have in common, as do great recruiters, is they have a “sales process” or “presentation” which is refined and improved as they gain experience into which they incorporate their experience and exclusivity, which can turn style and recite in their sleep. While this is a multi-step thing to evaluate, you’ll be amazed how simple it is and how the pawn store owners operate so smoothly that what comes off as a normal conversation is a big victory almost every time for them, and equally importantly, the customer leaves the negotiation satisfied – a “win-win;” this is what employer-recruiters also hope to achieve, and it’s clear that an established, expert process gets to the bottom line expeditiously – which is also important as unfilled jobs cost money. The Two Negotiations – as I review these negotiations with you keep in mind that the customer is totally oblivious to almost all these factors and their brain isn’t wired to pay attention and understand they are involved in an almost totally orchestrated sales process that is a great disadvantage to them.  But also understand the end result is either going to be a perceived “win-win” – the customer is not going to accept an offer they don’t want, or they will part company for the best. A)    Without a third-party expert providing a price from which to start: From the get-go, understand the pawn store owner isn’t going to start any negotiation unless they already know the value of the product being offered by the customer, and what they perceive they will get for it.  With the orientation toward being able to sell the product at the highest re-sale possible as well as knowing the most they can pay, they also start the negotiations. The pawn store owner will naturally give a low offer with the customer generally not even understanding it is a low ball offer: Pawn Star:  “I’ll give you $200 for it.”   (This is the lowest the Pawn Star thinks the customer may accept and he also already knows he will only pay $275 at the most, and he thinks he can resell the item for $600) Customer:  “Well, geez, I was hoping to get at least $500.”  (Generally speaking, the customer has a ballpark figure of what they hope to get for their merchandise, but it is often not really based on any facts or knowledge about the product; often they have had the product laying around the house for years and they have no reference point such as their own purchase price – all conditions which the Pawn Star knows is likely the issue) Pawn Star:  “You need to understand that I need to be able to sell this for a profit, but I want to give you a fair price.  The best I can do is $250.”  (Here the Pawn Star introduces a fact that the customer likely did not consider, which promotes a sympathy of sorts and this is a power statement designed to loosed the customer’s hold on any firm price they may insist upon). Customer:  “How about $300?”  (This is far less than the $500 the customer just said he was hoping for, but this is the counter offer that the customer is saying he will accept) Pawn Star:  Long power pause…head shake no (that’s called a “take away”).  Brow wiped.  Stare at the merchandise.  Look at the customer (all choreographed acts).  Head shake again. “$275 is the best I can do.”  (This is exactly what the Pawn Star hoped would be the number with anything below being “extra gravy” to his bottom line, but is also the firm amount he has concluded will be a fit number where it would be worth it to take the time to turn around and display the merchandise for sale) Special Note:  The Pawn Star will never speak again after making the offer.  It’s a selling tenant that “the one who speaks after the offer loses.” ·         Let’s say the customer does not accept this number, keeping in mind that the customer himself offered $300 – which is $25 less: Customer:  “I just can’t do it.” Usually this would not be the response because many customers who get this far do not have an absolute firm price or a need to have one. Pawn Star:  “Well, if you want to spend the money to open your own pawn shop, advertise, pay the light bill, insurance for the business, and deal with all the hassles, maybe you can sell it for $275.  I’m sorry, I can’t do better than that.”  (This is called a “rebuttal” and the Pawn Star follows that with the close again at $275. ·         Let’s say the customer tries again to jiggle the price: Customer:  “Are you sure you can’t do any better?” Pawn Star:  (Firmly now) “$275 is the best I can do. (This is an absolute statement made to promote the close.  We really don’t know if the store owner will go higher but that’s not the point.  This is the art of negotiating.)  I want you to come away satisfied and come back again to me in the future. That’s the best I can do.”  (Another rebuttal promoting good feelings and prospective future business, which has no value to this deal, which the Pawn Star knows, but his intention is to get leverage, and then back to his close) Customer:  “Ok, I can do $275.” Pawn Star:  (Will immediately offer a handshake to consummate the agreement – this is a sales tactic, and repeat the agreed upon price) “$275 it is. Let’s write you up for the sale.” ·         It is important to also understand that the Pawn Star was operating with a large profit margin on the negotiation, so he had flexibility to make adjustments based on the variety of factors – from the customer’s knowledge of the product to any insistence on a specific price.  Also remember that even if the customer turns down the final offer, if there is truly a remaining profit to be had, the Pawn Star has that 40 feet from “No” until the from door to change that “final offer.” B)    With a third-party expert’s retain price estimate: The only difference between this negotiation, when one of the pawn store owner’s “experts” is brought in to provide a retail price from which any negotiation (which is up to the Pawn Star to start, if at all), is that there is a literal starting price point that will be established by the expert. Expert:  “Considering other products like this that are in the market, the demand for it, and it’s condition, I would say the retail prince of this widget is $1,200.” Now, regardless of what price is offered, including the Pawn Star’s experience to quickly be able to discern how easily he may be able to re-sell it and previous demand for a product like this, if any – which are obvious considerations he quickly needs to incorporate, there is going to be a percentage the Pawn Star always works from for this negotiation.  Let’s say it’s 40%.  That would be the best he would go – that’s $480. But the Pawn Star is not going to throw the number out there because the customer may be willing to settle for less.  So here’s the question: Pawn Star:  “How much do you want for it?” From here, the negotiation, based entirely on the $480 mark, is going to be run by the Pawn Star in the same manner as before (the expert knows he is supposed to leave after giving the quote so as not to interrupt the Pawn Star’s deal – he was sent away with a hearty thanks and handshake by the Pawn Star). Review:  Promising that I would keep your resolution easy to follow throughout the year, these are the basic tenants I want you to come away with: Watch the show – it’s actually the same song and dance, over and over, with the pawn store racking in money with satisfied customers leaving.  The biggest thing you can learn from this is the efficiency and discipline Pawn Stars have. ·         They have a specific routine.  They make customers feel like it is a natural and normal process when the entire thing is choreographed without the customer knowing it.  Your dealings and onsite interview visits should feel this way to your jobseeker prospects. ·         Pawn Stars run the process and the negotiation; in fact, they already know the outcome of the deal – which will be terms THEY can accept, or no deal.  The customer (or in our case, the jobseeker) never runs anything but are steered to choices they think they have or directions they feel they are choosing.  A big criticism of employer recruiters is they allow the candidates to run things.  When you start to see this happening, it’s almost a certainty that you will lose the deal or be forced into poor terms for the long run. ·         Exclusivity and Firm Offers:  Desperation also kills.  You’ll never see emotion or desperation shown by a Pawn Star.  For the employer recruiter to remember they have the desired job and stand firm in their dealings may be the most important factors – which garner first the respect from the candidate, but also a basis for credibility and real negotiating.  In the end, it is far better to know your best offer and be willing to walk away from the deal. So for the rest of 2011, if your New Year’s Resolution isn’t doing anything for you, follow these basics and you will begin to craft an improved recruiting platform. Remember, “Be a Pawn Star!” The show Pawn Stars is on The History Channel and you can learn more about it and when it airs on the website http://www.history.com/shows/pawn-stars

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