How to be a Headhunter - Part 5 - CV Reading

This course will help you pick up distinctive characteristics about your candidate, by examining unconscious expressions in the way their CV is written, all in under 60 seconds, by focusing on 4 key areas:

1. Education

2. Job Tenure

3. Brands

4. Form and personality

Whenever you touch a candidate's CV, check their qualification section, first: is the degree accredited, or is it real or fake? Did they start a degree and not finish it?

• It is not acceptable for a person to pretend that they have a university degree when they don’t, because what that candidate would be saying is “It’s fine to lie and cheat to get ahead in life.” The second you see an unaccredited degree, or a fake degree, drop that candidate.

• Another red flag to look at is being at university in a city and working in another city at the same time. It may be an accredited distance learning program, and that would be fine, but it’s worth looking into because fraudulent behaviour surrounding education has happened even in large companies.

If a candidate has had 3 jobs in the past 3 years, drop them immediately. You shouldn’t care about their reasons, in business what matters is results. If you call that person and ask about their reasons, they may have insincere excuses that are going to sound very convincing.

So why should you stay away from candidates who are jumpy?

1. Their pain tolerance is very low, so when you head into a crisis, they will tap out. That’s not the type of candidate you want beside you when you’re dealing with a crisis. You want your team to have someone who faced adversity and still made it through, instead of giving up.

2. Candidates who spent 5-8 years with an employer would have been employed for a full strategic cycle. If a private equity executive has only 2 years with a company, it means that they've never experienced a full strategic cycle, and that limits their experience

For a CEO we would like them to experience 3 strategic cycles, so they understand what it takes to create a concept, turn it into reality and then turn that reality into a profitable result.

Has your candidate worked for some of the biggest companies in the world? It’s not just about the big company name but because in early development and early career, they would be exposed to international best practices, and best approaches, and get to work with the biggest budgets.

An employee working in a smaller company and with a smaller budget may be smarter, but over 5-10 years of development, the candidates who are in a richer environment develop faster. We want to have a preference for candidates who have developed in larger companies.

The ideal profile would be someone who worked at one of the largest companies and then had some entrepreneurial experience in an SME, it’s a great mix.

Given that the candidate has written their CV, there’s a lot to ascertain about their personality.

• Is that individual detail-oriented or conceptual?

• Are they result-oriented or organic in approaching their goals?

• Are they linear thinkers or abstract thinkers? Are they a revenue generator or a cost centre?

• Do they have a focused career path or is it exploratory? Are they descriptive or succinct?

• Do they have a sense of urgency or are they relaxed? Are they effective communicators or ineffective ones?

• Are they secure and comfortable or are they insecure?

For a competency-based CV, where the first page has soft skills listed, this person tells us right away that they are more conceptual, they’re more organic in their approach to achieving their goals, instead of focusing on results in numbers. One is not necessarily better than the other, it all depends on the culture and what the candidate profile is.

This person may be chattier, and less edgy, they would be an effective communicator, warmer, friendlier, secure and have less of an ego issue.

This kind of CV is very common for people working in investment banking, venture capital or private equity, it’s a 1-page CV, where they list the company that they work for and their biggest accomplishments (2-4 achievements). They won’t mention responsibilities, they’ll focus on achievements and results instead (articulated in numbers).

You can notice their attention to detail, their empirical approach to the work, and that they are systematic and linear thinkers.

These candidates have a high work ethic, they’re self-disciplined, driven and ambitious (with focused career paths). If you call them, they may hang up on you the second they realize that the opportunity you’re presenting is not in line with where they’re going in life.

This individual is succinct, and focused, and discussions are probably much shorter.

They won’t be interested in discussing anything that’s outside their agenda. They’ll have a sense of urgency, be effective communicators and be secure in who they are.

This candidate is a bit more balanced, they have chosen to give you their top 3 accomplishments of their jobs, and top 3 responsibilities.

They’re also highlighting their results in numbers, so they have a high result-orientation, at the same time they’re not overly detailed, and can be conceptual. We get the idea that this person can be detailed when they need to be, conceptual when they need to be and have a balanced profile.

This kind of CV is typically about 2-pages long, and we can see that the candidate values building relationships as much as they value having results. They’re a strong communicator, not winded, they’re succinct, result-oriented and detailed while having a balanced career path.

Their CV highlights a reference from a previous employer, VIP client, or board member, so they’re using VIP endorsements to improve the competitiveness of their candidacy.

They put a profile statement at the top, which is very telling: if the profile statement is too long, it tells us that they’re not focused, but if it’s succinct, it tells us how they identify themselves.

Their CV reveals that they’re focused on their career path; they would have their results listed, and we can also pick up on the fact that this person likes to be prestigious, they consider that they are VIPs because they’re identifying with other VIPs.

This candidate will be great if you want to open in a new market if you want to launch a new product if you want to make some noise; this candidate loves to be centre-stage, they want to make an impact and be felt.

If you stick to these rules, you will eliminate many of the problems that other recruiters run into:

1. Education: unaccredited or fake degrees are grounds to immediately drop a candidate

1. Job tenure: are they staying in jobs for 5 years? If they’re jumpy, drop them immediately.

1. Brands: Does the candidate have experience with our direct competitors? Have they got experience and exposure in bigger companies or environments that helped them develop a competitive skill set?

1. Form of the CV: Just by looking at the way people structure their CVs, there’s a lot we can pick up about their personalities, so take time to look at the form and ask yourself “What does this mean?” Figure out who your candidate is: Are they detail or result-oriented? Do they have a desire for impact or prestige? Are they more operationally or revenue-focused? Are they organic or empiric in their approach to their goals?

You’ve received the foundation skill set that someone needs to be successful in talent acquisition, namely the following 5 key areas:

1. Creating a 4-tiered target list (direct competitors, indirect competitors, media, and industry events) – these are steps that every recruiter and even executive in a business should be doing all the time.

2. 
   

1. Direct sourcing: this is one of the most crucial skills if you want your company to prosper and outperform the market; you have to acquire top performers, and the best talent available on the market, those who are always too busy being successful to stop and apply to job ads, so you have to source them, even if you have to apply physicality sourcing.

1. Phone screening: the ability to pick up the phone and understand if you’re dealing with an average performer or a top performer, within 5 minutes.

1. How to read a CV and what thing you want to look for (have a zero-tolerance for candidates who have fake or unaccredited degrees and for candidates who are jumpy, understand what the form of a CV can tell you about candidates’ personalities in under 60 seconds).

Take what you’ve gleaned and verify it in the interview, by applying advanced interviewing techniques and psychological principles that you can learn in the next course.

There are many psychological markers, but here are 4 of the easiest ones to spot:

Value for time: Top performers are driven and dedicated and have a lot to accomplish in a short time. If you’re not a part of their agenda or their purpose, they’re not going to invest their time with you. The underperformer is exactly the opposite; they may not have a clear-cut sense of direction will have a lack of vision, and be open to investing their time in different activities. For instance, the top 1% of CEOs will typically spend their entire career in a single industry.

When you’re speaking with a top performer, they’ll share achievements as time-based results.