Often times we address individual leadership traits or behavior. Today, I’m here to discuss the group dynamics of leadership in an Outside-In® company.  What factors are different compared to those of other organizations?  I thought it made sense to put together some different perspectives that are challenging and important for leaders who chose to lead in an environment where all are equal, and communication flows in all directions.

Seven Steps to Outside-In® Leadership

1. Leaders must always be accessible.  Our goal is to “Never have you see us sweat”. Not in a dishonest way, but instead, to show that we view our role as one of being available, calm and truly centered on the situation at hand. It’s important to be readily available for our team when they need us, whether its taking the time out to address their immediate need or acknowledging they need guidance and figuring out a time to work out a plan.

2. Leaders can never play the busy card. Bottom line, we are all busy. Your people will surely play the busy card for you. “I know you’re busy, but can you…?” Truth is no one cares that your busy.  Our job is to manage the business. It’s to work it to the point where, well, we have it all under control and are working on the right things in our role, making the place run better. On to my next point!

3. Plan your time as a leader in proactive ways. Leaders today do so much, and in today’s flat, matrix worlds this is somewhat necessary. Know that is not the goal of a leaders role in an Outside-In® company, your goal is to be proactive, to be available, to solve problems. Better yet, to go looking for areas of opportunity in the business. And by the way…

4. Leaders should delegate properly. You can’t get to Outside-In® leadership behavior, if you refuse or struggle with the basics of delegation.  Your staff is not your personal dumping grounds for menial tasks. That is not the point. But leaders seem to grasp the opportunities given them.  Staff are here to do big tasks, and to learn and develop their skills. They want and need that constant challenge. That can only happen if you plan accordingly and give them the work that fits!

5. Get out from behind your desk and teach smart employees every day. Outside-In® leadership has a job to do.  And that is to keep employees coming back with something new to learn. Sharing knowledge is a vital component of an Outside-In® company. It’s what supports the pillars of communication and flat management practices within the Outside-In® framework.

6. Accept that as leaders, we will never again have all of the information. Frankly we never had it. Today in the era of big data, we can have all of it and still not know what to do with it.  Making decisions is about experience and about the basics of doing it well. For me it is simple. SEE. THINK.  ACT. You will see things in your business, in your peer’s business, in other offices. You will be challenged to try and fix everything. You will have rumors, innuendos, half facts, stories, and in some cases, the real facts.

7. Trust that others are doing their job. It’s one of the hardest parts of leadership. Keep in mind, they may do it differently than you. Just like employees do a task differently than you, they still may want the same or better outcome! But trust we must. Yes, role clarity and organizational charts help.  Yes, it is important to get along with the people you work with. But in the end, do you help or hurt your teammates?  Do you really know how to team?

If you ask me, the hardest part of leadership is not knowing what to do. It is knowing what not to do! Use these steps as a guide towards developing your own Outside-In® Leadership. If your company is flat and knowledge-based (or you want to manage it that way), apply these practices and see how they work!

Outside-In® is our culture and our operating philosophy. Outside-In® is made up of our employees and a work environment that encourages individualism, innovation, and focus on creating a unique customer experience.  We want customers to be happy with great service.  We want employees to be happy with great culture.  And shareholders can be happy with the good profits that ultimately follow. These great employees are hired, recognized, and rewarded against our core values. Our core values guide us where others use policy manuals and mandates. The world is too complex and dynamic and the business world too fluid to not put the information, knowledge, authority and gumption in the hands of all employees equally.

With all this said, I’d like to take some credit for its creation, but I am not its “Founding Father”.  That credit goes to another Burkhard — Alan Burkhard. Over our lifetimes, we have worked together to refine the concept of Outside-In®. The focus of putting the customer first in business thinking. The notion of a culturally led business.  Alan did it first, and this Outside-In® brand, this Outside-In® philosophy can and is used in all kinds of businesses and industries.

Many years ago, I gave Alan the registered trademark as a gift that we share. We went first in using it in business, and the ™ symbol is our proof.  However, our goal was to encourage the world to use Outside-In® as a way of describing customer-oriented behavior and thinking.  This is my personal 10 year goal.  Make Outside-In® a household name.  Look it up.  It is more mainstream in business than you realize…

But this post is about how we think our Outside-In® philosophy gives us an edge in business. It helps us run better waste companies like Independent Disposal. We run better staffing, recruiting, and outplacement firms.  We run great restaurants.  And now we make Outside-In® movies.No one can say that we are not diverse right?  Find a market.  Look for a service gap.  Treat the customer better than they expected.  Create a customer-centered culture.  Focus on and make your company Outside-In®.

Do that enough, and opportunities present themselves.  Do that enough and you want to help people. Have enough success in life and there are opportunities to share what you know in new fields and you get quite a rush and ride along the way. That is where my Dad is in life.  He backed and helped make a independent movie, Yes, Your Tide Is Cold and Dark, Sir, written and directed by local filmmaker and friend, Chris Malinowski. My Dad makes a cameo as a bartender. He taught a group of talented actors, producers, directors, sound, key grips, and a whole lot more about Outside-In® and he got to help a friend fulfill a lifelong goal of getting a script to the big screen. When I spoke with Chris about his experience working with Alan on the project he said,

“Alan, empowered me to run the [film] company and believed in the exuberance of the project. He knew it was a challenging narrative. Producers tend to lean at times on the creative parties and stick their necks into the creative process. Alan didn’t do that. He empowered me completely.”

Empowerment and creative freedom on a movie set? That is the ultimate Outside-In® experience. I am proud.

Ultimately, what matters is that they took the risk. Through that risk, the Outside-In® brand and legend grows.  So, if you are in Delaware and are into independent films, watch the trailer, come to the premier, and most importantly help me celebrate the success of our Outside-In® brand and what can do for any business.  For Yes, Your Tide Is Cold and Dark, Sir trailer, click here. For showtimes and ticket information for this weekend’s premiere, you can visit the film’s Facebook page.

If you’ve ever read Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, the best-selling business practices book by Verne Harnish, then you’re familiar with the concept of establishing a theme to motivate your company to accomplish its quarterly and yearly goals. CBI Group is a proud observer of these habits and consciously works to frame our daily business practices after them.

Last Friday, team members gathered together for our quarterly celebration, the Quarter Kickoff, to announce the company’s 2013 theme as well as our goals for Q1! This year’s theme is The Outside-In® Happiness Project, and was inspired by the best-selling book, The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. A popular self-help book, The Happiness Project chronicles Rubin’s personal journey to finding her own happiness and fulfillment in life.

To bring the theme to life, team members transformed our Grand Teton conference room into a relaxing oasis where attendees could unwind and be – what else? – happy! Daddy O’s catered the event and provided a refreshing menu of healthy, “good mood foods” which included seared polenta with roasted vegetable terrine and charred cherry tomato, coconut chicken with dark chocolate mole, grilled asparagus, and roasted mussels in a white wine sauce. These foods were selected based on their mood-lifting abilities – yes, you will actually feel happier after eating them!

Happy Bingo after lunch kept spirits light as team members competed to fill their squares, and along the way, learned what made their team mates happy as the bingo charts were full of the team’s submissions of their personal happiness. Some of the entries? Hiking, shopping, going to the beach, and working at CBI Group!

When the time came to announce the company’s goals, the leaders were excited to share that the rocks were mapped to reflect the 5 Happy Habits – five simple tips to maintain daily well-being – researched and defined by the London-based think-tank, the New Economics Foundation. So, what are these five simple tips for daily happiness?  They are:

• Connect With People Around You
  
• Be Active
  
• Take Notice
  
• Keep Learning
  
• Give

We are very excited to embark on our own journey this year towards being more Outside-In® and finding our own personal happiness. Our president, Chris Burkhard believes that if our team is inspired to pursue our own passions and find happiness, then we will be more Outside-In®, bringing our customers greater peace of mind.

My dad is a little infamous for being grumpy around the holidays. The merrier those around him got, the harder and longer he would work. At the time, I didn’t quite understand why he worked Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas, and…quite frankly almost all the days I saw the other dads take off. They might have been teachers or engineers or had what I considered ‘a normal job’.

You see, my dad was building something: a small company. During that time, some years were hard, maybe even lean or awful. Other years were good or maybe even superb years. But each year his company grew a little bit. He was always there looking over things, insisting that the newest employees or the rookie manager got the time off to spend with their family and friends. This is a Burkhardism to this day. I am not perfect with it, but I come back to it always and live by it. So if you need anything this holiday season, I will be around! I am thankful that my dad taught me this.  But this is about another holiday story…

Many years ago when I was a young boy, I went with my father to the local mall to volunteer and ring the bell for the Salvation Army. My father believes in service and encouraged us to give our time to the cause through his Rotary Club. All kinds of people donate money, but those with the least to give seem to give the most!  At some point throughout the day, a small girl walked by with her mother. The girl was visibly upset and crying loudly. You couldn’t help but overhear the entire conversation between the little girl and her mother. The girl had lost all of her Christmas shopping money, a prized twenty dollar bill, and her cries could be heard across the parking lot. This was quite distressing to the mother, who appeared to perhaps not to be in a place to replace it, and so she struggled to calm her daughter as she searched for the lost money amongst the bystanders.

What was so amazing to me, as I looked around was that everyone seemed to be watching all of this unfold, as if it was happening in super slow motion. No one was doing anything but watching. It was really quite moving. Yet, also quite painful. Then, we all watched as my dad walked up behind them, took a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket, crumpled it, and bent down behind the little girl. “Excuse me,” he said tapping her on the shoulder, “Here is your Christmas money!” It appeared as if he had just found and picked up the girl’s twenty dollar bill. The girl’s face lit up and she smiled, her crying subsiding completely. Her mother let out a big sigh of relief, look towards my dad and mouthed a quick “Thank you” before she and her daughter walked quickly into the mall.

If you know my dad today, then you know that that twenty dollar bill is not as important to him now as it was the day he helped that little girl. But what he taught me was that somebody always needs it more than you. What’s more, he taught me the value of giving. Before that moment, I had always thought that charitable actions were something people did because they had to, or because everyone else was doing it. After watching my dad, and his interactions with the girl and her mother, I realized that those who give to others do it simply because its the right thing to do.

From CBI Group, Placers, and Barton Career Advisors, we hope you will have peace, great thoughts, safety, and your health this Holiday Season!

When does a team start to believe in itself? When can leaders know they have something special building? When do the values, strategies, and every day actions start to become visible to employees so that they get it and just know the right things are being done and that progress is being made? I have been doing a lot of thinking about what it takes to create a winning culture. I am certain of only one thing: Winning and culture are earned.  There are no shortcuts, no cultural “easy buttons” to press.  Winning and culture are not overnight, instant successes.

So does it happen after the first big win?  Is it when individuals get recognition and reward for a job well done?  Or is it when there is visible momentum that the outside world starts to take notice? Winning is such a personal thing. Winning is about interpretation.  What is winning to one is failure to another.  Winning is all in the eyes of the beholder and is about expectations. Winning can be a feeling, an instinct, an observation of a continual pile of decisions made, and results accomplished.

Personally, I have had teams and employees believe in me. I’ve have also had teams lose faith.  So much goes into a business, a sports team, or a volunteer organization that is out of the control of the leader right?  If you led anything through the last recession, trust me, you saw and experienced the impact.  A good economy covers up so many mistakes.  A bad one exposes every flaw, scratch, imperfection, and amplifies their impact!

But there is a formula to winning through culture, at least mine:

• Humble, Honest, Authentic leadership is irreplaceable.  I make mistakes, I forget things.  But I maintain trust by communicating and sharing everything all of the time.  I find employees, players, volunteers all appreciate being treated as equals. I hope I don’t come off as arrogant here; so many don’t view leading as their primary job and it should be.  Lead with your values in mind.  Use those values to guide reward, recognition, and as a means of addressing needed changes!

• Speaking of Values, hire against them.  If your company is informal, relaxed and not hierarchical than make sure you have folks that fit.  We are entrepreneurial, our companies focus on the customer, that is our brand promise.  But we don’t care about the corporate uniform.  I look for positive, half-full (players, employees, volunteers) who believe in and naturally follow our values.  I find they come to us seeking a place to be their natural best. That other places have felt incongruent and out of sync.  That the values act as guide lines for conduct and decision making – they don’t really need their boss!

• You have to be Outside-In®.  For me, that is studying how to get better every day, all of the time. This is learning from competition and others.  I like to think this is about reducing hassles in the business.  The customer point of view is critical here.  However, the key is setting a cultural expectation around getting better.  This might seem strange; however, I have seen so many cultures that prefer no change.  “We like things the way we are” is the mantra and leadership allows it, prefers it even, because there is always something to risk if you change. Empower. Encourage the heart. Unleash your teams on the problems and learning opportunities. The key is to get better all of the time.  This takes time, let it work to your advantage.  Each day, little wins and small gains accumulate and become a real advantage.

• Have an accountable culture. Care about getting things done.  This is so much harder than the words. We must teach and model the right skills and behaviors.  As leaders, we have to show people how to do things.  And stick with the basics!  Be careful about adding new ideas, strategies, and initiatives to the agenda until you master what you were working on.  Do the basics really well, and than you can add complexity to the mix.  Choose your priorities carefully.  Work on them, get them finished.  Watch the impact on things if you chose the right ones! They will help your winning culture.

If you ask me, a winning culture comes from The Accumulation Effect.  In business development, results can come from working on selling and meeting people over time. In other words, you let the benefit of time work for you. Build your portfolio of marketplace relationships and if carefully cultivated, your sales and rainmaking will come.  Of course this is assuming that you are in a winning culture!

So, for a company or sports team to have a winning culture you have to have consistent leadership and you need to do it for a while. You have to have the right people.  So hire them to your values! You better have values that are compelling to all stakeholders. You need to have a good overall plan that makes sense, allows for, and encourages continual tweaking and adjustments.

It is important to keep in mind that you will need to work on the right things and get them right!  Be sure you don’t move on until you get them right. Do the basics right before you get complex. This is much harder (and a less interesting path.) Finally, if you do this long enough and you do it the right way you will get ahead a little at time. Your team or company will be working on problems and challenges that are well-ahead of your competition.  You will be ahead of the game in the most basics of ways and this is a competitive advantage that can’t be bought – only earned!

Guest blog by Karesa Blagrove, CBI Group team member

Every company has a culture and no two companies’ cultures are alike. Entreprenuer.com defines corporate culture as, “a blend of the values, beliefs, taboos, symbols, rituals and myths all companies develop over time.” Culture is often aligned with the organizational values and mission, and plays a key role in how the company markets their products, services, recruits and retains employees. A company’s culture can be the factor that makes or breaks an organization’s success. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to define their culture, and make it a mission to ensure that their culture is understood, and practiced by all employees!

Why is corporate culture so important you ask? The answer is simple. If a company is unable to define their culture and communicate it to their employees, it will be difficult for employees to align themselves with the company’s values and mission. Fitting into a company’s culture is like buying a pair of jeans. Ultimately, you are looking for a pair of jeans that fits your personal style, provides comfort, and falls within your budget. Should you purchase a pair of jeans that doesn’t meet these criteria, you will most likely feel unhappy and return the jeans. The same can be said about employees fitting into your company’s culture. It has to be a next-to-perfect fit for employees to feel aligned with the company’s values and mission, or else, the working relationship will only last a short time.

Here at CBI Group, our culture is embedded in everything we do; we eat, sleep, and breathe our company’s culture. Our Outside-In® philosophy drives our company’s culture, and is reflected in how we conduct business. One area that is evident of our culture is our office décor. You may ask, what does office décor have to do with an organization’s culture?  Believe it or not, culture sets the tone for the office décor. Recently we were challenged by our fearless leader, Chris Burkhard, to redecorate our work space to further reflect our awesome personalities, and the end result was… well you be the judge!

(Click on the slide image for a full view!)

As you can see, every desk uniquely identifies the individual that occupies it, and allows everyone to work in a space that reflects who they are.

Similar to how our office décor reflects who we are individually and as a company, that is how our Blank Sheet of Paper concept works. Our Blank Sheet of Paper concept, one of the 20 tenets in our Outside-In® philosophy, is how we build recruitment solutions for our customers. It allows us to view each customer’s recruiting challenges individually; therefore we are able to build recruiting plans that are customized for each customer’s business. Our recruitment solutions are not a “one size fits all” model, so our customers are guaranteed that the plan they receive will work for their business.

The culture here at CBI Group is anything but cookie cutter – you could even say we prefer to color outside the lines. That is the same philosophy we use to solve our customer’s recruitment problems. We work in teams to solve problems, but we are encouraged to retain our identity. Our culture is cultivated by us, and is the foundation of our decision-making process.

In closing, every organization has a culture, and it’s important for the leaders to define the culture and manage it. With that being said, it’s equally important for the employees to keep the culture alive and carry it out each day. Are you aware of your company’s culture? If so, how does your company work to keep it present each day?

Last week, I heard my father speak to several hundred high school students about the realities of today’s workforce and workplace. Several days later when Steve Jobs passed, I made an interesting connection. Jobs was the world’s ultimate contrarian. In a famous speech at Stanford, he challenged the college graduating class to be careful about spending too many days doing things they don’t like. Spend every day like it is your last, he encouraged them. “Do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. And don’t settle,” said Jobs. There was such a parallel between Job’s speech and my father’s address that I had to share.
 
My dad’s first key point was that when you are young, you do not know yourself. You’re made up of other peoples’ ideas, thoughts, values and opinions. It is your family values and your friends that make up what you believe in and what you stand for. You begin to figure yourself out in your high school and college years – you don’t learn your personal culture or “culture of one” from the educational system.
 
Even once we’ve figured out our culture of one, my father believes that few of us know how to truly maximize ourselves. There is always a gap between who we are and what we are capable of. Having awareness of that gap is the first step of maximizing your potential. My father believes it is a leaders job to challenge folks to work on and close their gap.
 
At CBI Group, closing the gap is a big part of my goal as an employer. I have created an environment where people can both figure out and live their culture of one. I challenge them to define their gap — the gap between what they are capable of and what they are currently producing. This is what culture can be — how leaders can unleash the best in people.
 
This “Burkhard Theory” is something I have heard my father talk about hundreds of times, for most days of my life, in fact. I have worked on my “culture on one” and I live each day to maximize what I am capable of. I am not smarter, more gifted, blessed or special than anyone else. I just work harder at improving myself and that gives me confidence. This is our contribution. This is what we stand for. And those are my dad’s words. I simply chose to live them.
 
We can all take a page from Steve Jobs and his life. Hope you enjoyed the talk.
 

Please indulge me this week as I celebrate the entrepreneurial achievements of my family. This week my father, Alan Burkhard, has been inducted into the Delaware Business Leaders Hall of Fame by fellow Delaware Business Leaders. This is a prestigious award, often given to the titans of business and doesn’t traditionally recognize true small business entrepreneurs for their contributions. I share this news as his son and as an evangelist of his philosophies. I am proud that I grew up in his house and his business.
 
I frequently blog about leadership topics and much of my original thought and inspiration comes from my experiences in my father’s companies. How many people do you know that have started more than one company? That launched their first company on a small business loan and sold to an international industry giant for tens of millions? That have been successful across five+ different industries? I feel like the kid whose dad has the fastest car in the neighborhood. Yep, that’s my dad!
 
He won the award because of the macro stuff. He had many, many successful businesses with employees numbering in the thousands. His first business was Placers, a staffing company, which I am proud to shepherd forward today and build on the forty years of focus on the customer. Later he had success in the waste disposal business, building one of the largest Independent firms in the Delaware market with his partner. His restaurants, including Klondike Kate’s in Newark, are model businesses that reflect his core business philosophies of knowing your customer and empowering and teaching employees to create a terrific customer experience. There are others, but I think you get the point.
 
Alan is a serial entrepreneur and he loves to help others bring their business ideas to life and to show them how to do it. But to know Alan is to know that success was not because of size or numbers. Alan is successful because of the core philosophies that he possesses and instills into each of his business endeavors. Leadership is what distinguishes Alan from so many. Or is it his leadership one liners? You decide.
 
Here are some of my favorite leadership mottos that I try to live each and everyday. All of these start with the basic leadership premise that in an Outside-In company your “job” is to lead, train, and serve. And in doing so that you don’t think of your self as having mastered the topic of leadership — it is helpful to think about being an entry level leader because there is always more to learn on the topic.

My pop has lived his business and personal life by being direct. By being truthful. By getting to the point and by being honest. By letting employees and others know that he cares. He creates the perception that he is there for you if you work for him. And this instills confidence. And this confidence gives his employees the belief system and some say in the business. And customers notice. Where else do you know where bartenders learn to read a profit and loss statement? Where employees bring their values home and teach their kids?
 
Finally I can’t resist one more Burkhard-ism. The greatest leader in the world is simply one that lives it every moment every day. Here’s to the best leader I know. Congrats Dad!
 

This is a play on the incredible book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish. As Verne is to running a company, I hope to be to understanding sales in a customer centered selling organization.
 
Growing a company is an incredibly complicated undertaking. Growth takes a good idea where a market exists. It takes money, a leader, planning and a business strategy. Eventually it takes employees and culture. However all of these things are not enough. I have worked with many, many organizations that have all these things — yet they do not know how to sell anything. They try, they hire sales people, attempt to market and they sell some things. But they are frustrated and challenged and they struggle to figure out how to improve their selling habits.
 
I have some observations and ideas but a word of warning: words are easy, but implementation? Not so much. In the early days of any business, the business sells to everyone. Then you make more sales based on good service. If you have some customers and you treat them well, they will buy more. You can grow for a month, a quarter, or even a year by taking an existing cadre of customers and asking how else you can help. This supports the known premise that it is easier, cheaper, better, to keep a customer (and in this case grow with them) than it is to procure another.
 
But companies (your clients) decline, are bought out or outgrow you all the time. Your sales strategy, through excellent service keeps producing but not at the level you planned. You’re off forecast. Now what? This is where companies begin to add professional sales to their business model and strategy. And professional sales has a lot of complexities and selling habits to get it right:

1. Leadership sells. They are the best in the company and compete for everything.
2. Leadership is not ready to manage a sales force. Time, routine, planning are not in place and it takes time.
3. Expectations are high. A sales force will come and go. But high activity targets for calls and meetings often create real frustration.
4. Sales forecasts are unrealistic. The company expects the sales person to hit a revenue target very quickly. And they have too. There is no other way to justify the return on the payroll.
5. Marketing role — do you have the tools and resources necessary to support sales?
6. Poor targeting and lead generation — imagine starting off with the wrong potential targets for your service and all of your sales efforts over weeks, months, even years are directed to the wrong people? Happens everywhere…
7. Lack of respect for defining a sales operating philosophy. How will you differentiate? Just go make more sales calls is the mantra!
8. The natural tension between sales and service. We are different types. Yes, we are one team, it just takes time and effort for a team to find its way.
9. Speaking of team and balance, it is difficult to shift from a service company, to one with a sales voice.
10. Hire and ignore. Entrepreneurs do this everyday in areas of their business they don’t understand with no no source for training and little regard for knowledge building.
11. Sales pipeline is often confused with sales wins.
12. CRM: selling without a CRM means there is no process for managing prospect interactions. Selling with one means there are a lot of rules and administration to establish and keep up with.

We understand each complexity on its own, but the true complexity is that they all must run as one. To grow, formalizing sales and marketing is a reality. And it is habit of Outside-In® companies.
 

Over the years, I have coached many talent acquisition professionals. One of the soundbites that I’m typically heard saying is, “don’t bulldoze!” What do I mean? Recruiters are tasked with presenting our company, knowing what our hiring manager is looking for and understanding technical terms to have knowledgeable discussions with prospects. Once we are prepped for an interview, we get so excited to share what we know that we tend to pitch the job. This usually sounds something like, “Hi John, I am Chris Burkhard from CBI Group and I am recruiting today for underwater basket weavers.”
 
The challenge with the job pitch approach is that it doesn’t leave a good next step. If the person does not have the right skills or is not interested, we need to quickly transition to asking for referrals or help with networking. The problem is that with this approach, the majority never talks to that person again. We keep plowing ahead for the talent we need for the requisition in front of us. We just keep running callers over to find what we want.
 
After I say, “Don’t bulldoze” and I have the recruiter’s attention, I suggest a more Outside-In® way to recruit. I certainly did not invent this approach but I have refined it over the years to be more customer centered.
 
Flip the conversation around and focus your conversation on the caller; find out what matters to the job seeker. What are they trying to accomplish in their career? Focusing on them typically sounds a little different. “John, I help talented underwater basket weavers achieve their next career objective. Could we spend a little time finding out about you and what you might be interested in?” This approach requires a lot of time, energy and curiosity. But isn’t finding out what the person wants helpful to determine if your current opening is a fit right? If not this req, then perhaps you can be honest and talk in bigger terms — about where your company is going and how the future might involve them.
 
The focus shifts to building a relationship with the talent. To building potential pipeline. This makes tomorrows’ recruitment easier and this is where good recruiting takes shape. It means you truly know your talent in the marketplace and particular people come to mind when open reqs fit their career goals and objectives.
 
It may seem so much easier to take the Bulldozer path. I hear it over and over again, “I do not have the time and I have jobs to fill.” But I think the typical recruiter has it all wrong. None of us should have the time to do it wrong the first time. Recruiting talent and getting to know prospective candidates is what recruiters should and must do to differentiate. No more bulldozing please!