In early June, I attended the Fordyce Forum in Las Vegas at the beautiful, relatively smoke-free M Resort - tough duty!
Billed as “a conference for search and placement professionals from the publishers of the Fordyce Letter,” the Fordyce Forum brought together over 120 independent recruiters (a.k.a. “head hunters”) to network and to learn new things.
These independent recruiters are a very interesting universe that most of us glimpse very briefly - if at all - in our careers. They make their living by finding appropriate job candidates for their clients (employers) who have high level opportunities. Not an easy way to make a living, but it can pay very well, apparently, if you are successful.
As described previously on Job-Hunt, head hunters, like all recruiters, work for employers, not for job seekers, because the employer pays them. They are paid a fee either when a job is filled by someone they referred for the job, or, on a continuing basis (a.k.a., “retained”), they are paid by their client employers to keep a look out for good potential employees.
Head hunters are relentless networkers.
Fordyce offered several unstructured networking opportunities in the 2-day Forum, and they were all very well attended. These people definitely understand how to leverage networking opportunities, and watching them in action was quite educational.
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When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. For these recruiters, their networks provide direct revenue and revenue opportunities, so they understand the value of their networks because they see that value reflected in their bank accounts.
The right connections – client employers with jobs to fill, colleagues with clients who have jobs to fill (and finder fees to share), or candidates meeting the employers’ requirements - turn into revenue, very clearly.
Networking has 2 recognizable “flavors.”
Because recruiters know that their network directly impacts their income, they are advanced practitioners of the art of networking. Observing them at the Forum, I recognized 2 different kinds of very purposeful networking happening in the many networking opportunities which were provided for attendees.
1. Network Growth (“Offensive Networking”):
What I saw as “Offensive Networking” is what most of us think of as ”Networking”. And this is what most of us do – expanding our network, reaching out, and meeting new people.
For recruiters, network growth/offensive networking benefits included:
- New connections – expanded business opportunities that result when recruiters help each other fill positions, sharing the fees paid by the employers for the filled jobs. For these recruiters, the larger their networks, the greater their revenue opportunities, and the higher their income probably is.
- New business - finding new clients, indirectly since only recruiters were at Fordyce.
For job seekers, good network growth/offensive networking benefits include:
- New connections – more people know about you, and might recommend you for a job (if they know what you want)
- Better opportunities – having contacts “on the inside” already working for your target employers who can help when you find an opportunity there.
Offensive networking is where most of us stop. We focus on growing our network without really paying attention to the members already in it. Because networking is such an integral and important part of their success, these recruiters go beyond collecting business cards.
2. Network Nurturing and Protection (“Defensive Networking”):
For these recruiters, networking also plays a defensive, protective role, as it could for all of us. Benefits of all this defensive networking
- More visibility – conference attendance makes it obvious they are still actively in business and still “players” in their field of operation. This keeps reputations strong and existing clients content.
- More viability – conference attendance renews the relationships with other recruiters/business partners, important and relevant to those partners
- More credibility – reconnecting also keeps them well informed about:
- News in their field of operation – their location, business segment, industry, level of placements, etc.
- New people – potential business partners, competitors gaining visibility, etc.
Defensive networking activities included:
- Making introductions (helping network members expand their networks),
- Catching up on what was going on with existing network members,
- Discussing opportunities with existing members,
- Sharing experiences and advice with existing network members.
It felt a lot like a few of the team-building exercises we did in the corporate world in the 1990′s, but it happened spontaneously.
For job seekers, defensive networking could include:
- Sharing a job lead that doesn’t work for you,
- Making introductions (of employed and/or unemployed people, as long as the introduction is potentially useful to both),
- Staying in touch with former colleagues,
- Going to an industry or professional association meeting or conference, even just visiting the “exhibit hall” (which is usually free or inexpensive) to catch up on the current players and technologies,
- Writing or sharing an article or a blog post relevant to the network member.
Think team-building, again - you are building the team that will help you as you help them beyond your current job search.
So What?
Most people I know, both job seekers and entrepreneurs, tend to practice hit-and-run offensive networking, but very little defensive networking. We briefly connect with other members of our network, mainly through online media like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and email. This is often very “shallow” connecting, and the relationships often just die of age and lack of attention.
Recruiters are not actually a “special case” in network valuation, requiring both network growth (offense) and network protection (defense). But, they are the best example I’ve seen recently. I think that every sales professional, from your car dealer or local real estate salesperson to Donald Trump, probably does a variation on the same thing – as a requirement for success!
Bottom Line
In the future, I believe that this connection will become more obvious to many more of us. We will use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and whatever else appears, to expand our networks, and as those applications/societies mature and as our understanding of how to interact in them matures, we will also use them more effectively for network nurturing and protection as well.
© Copyright, 2011, Susan P. Joyce. All rights reserved.
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About the author…
Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 1998, her company, NETability, Inc. purchased Job-Hunt.org, and Susan has been editor and publisher of Job-Hunt since then. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg.
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[...] I attended a very interesting conference in Las Vegas last month, The Fordyce Forum for the independent, very high-end executive recruiters usually called “headhunters.” It was a very interesting conference and an extremely interesting group (what I learned about networking from them). [...]
Defensive networking is clearly where most of us lack, yet it is the most imperative one as you illuminate in this article. Cultivating these relationships is work. Perhaps what most of us need to be convinced of who are directly in the headhunting realm, is how these relationships can come in the form of rewards over time. I believe we are driven by benefit versus cost, and if we cannot see the pros to performing a particular activity we immediately write it off.