I’M NOT LOOKING FOR ANYTHING RIGHT NOW!

…if you take the blue pill, the story ends….when you wake up in your bed, you can believe whatever you want to believe. If you take the red pill, you stay in wonderland and I will show you how deep the rabbit hole really goes…

That scene from “The Matrix”, a futuristic suspense filled movie back in 1999 is still the perfect example how to close the top talent on your job opportunity.

Think about it, would you swallow a pill offered to you by a stranger?

Not unless a trustful relationship had been established with that stranger and you thought that it was in your best interest to do so.

How does The Matrix relate to recruiting top talent you might ask?

Let me explain it this way: how many times have you pitched the ideal job to the ideal talent and without a second to think he responds: I’m not looking for anything right now, thanks for calling-click!

That response occurs because the talent doesn’t believe that he has a need or that he lacks trust in your value proposition as a solution.  It’s no different that a Doctor prescribing medication without evaluating your symptoms.

In the movie, not only did Morpheus (hiring manager) and Trinity (recruiter) had to risk their lives to locate Neo (talent), they had to convince him that he was the one solution that they were searching for. The only problem was that Neo was not looking for them, so he needed to be convinced that he was the one. Using expert headhunting skills, Morpheus “rattled his cage” disrupted his thinking; he informed (sold) Neo that everything he had learned in life was not real. And leaving the world that he knows to join a more important cause would lead him to the truth about his own existence.

In the real world, for a passive talent to become an active job applicant, a trustful bond must first be established between the recruiter and that talent. This bond cannot be established  just by reading a job description or being familiar with that employer brand or where the job was advertised; it has to be established by a highly skilled relationship builder. This bond is very critical because the end game is for the talent to join a new employer, but he must first resign from his current employer in order to do so. So short cuts during this process are to be avoided at all cost.

From the talent’s perspective, it is a very difficult decision between giving up something good that he knows for the perception of something that is better.  In order to pull that trigger starts with the initial presentation of the job opportunity. The job opportunity must be perceived by the talent as the solution to his problems, an improvement in his present lifestyle, and also an impact to his own career advancement.  If those factors do not exist in the job opportunity proposition or was not presented effectively, the talent will assume whatever he wants and will do nothing as a result (blue pill).

With social networking sites like LinkedIn, top talent can be found quite easily. However, the challenge remains, how do you develop a trustful relationship with that talent.

In order to develop that trustful relationship there has to be one-on-one dialog between the recruiter and the talent. This cannot be accomplished by e-mail, texting or other electronic means alone, nor can it be accomplished in a single telephone call. There has to be a series of scheduled one-on-one live conversations from the first introduction to the job offer stage.

This series of scheduled dialogs is very important and should not be omitted because it solidifies that trust and builds a feeling of collaboration between the recruiter and the talent. It will allow the recruiter to fully understand the talent’s needs and discover hot buttons in linking his needs to the job opportunity. Concurrently it is also an opportunity for the talent to fully understand the recruiter’s confidence and competency in the knowledge of the client, industry and his own career coaching philosophies.

To be effective, the recruiter’s objectives should be perceived as the sole purpose as to guide the talent through a process leading to the door of opportunity otherwise known as the job offer.

Certainly technology, the economy and corporate bureaucracy together has pulled a world over the eyes of employees to blind them from seeing the way to their ultimate purpose in life, the new career track or a clear path out of the trap that that they now call work.

That is the main reason why headhunters exist today-to execute this critical, spontaneous, authentic, transparent and personal level of communication to build the trust and confidence necessary for that talent to take the right action (red pill).