Bet the millionaire line got your attention. It should, because I really believe someone out there can make big money with my latest out-of-the-box idea. Those of you who have been following me for a while know I don’t quite see this recruiting thing the same as most do — probably because of my West Virginia heritage. My roots and broad background have made me an ideas guy who enjoys trying new things as a way to improve. Some of my craziest ideas actually work and have been very successful, as evidenced by CACI’s rapid rise as a national leader in recruiting. I would be remiss without adding a caveat that not all my ideas pan out — but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
My latest idea I’m tossing out to you to ponder could definitely make you rich if you just go for it. Sure hope you remember me when you roll in the big bucks. My idea is a really simple one. Historically my simple ideas turn out more successful than the complex ones, so that’s why I think this is a real gold mine with the potential to propel your income into seven digits.
This simple idea also keeps with my philosophy that if you want to advance your game, you need to try something different. Here’s my idea, and it focuses on how to improve recruiter results, which is important to all of us. You improve recruiter results by improving recruiter training.
Now I’m sure you have a big smirk on your face and are sarcastically saying that “Wow, that’s really profound.”
Yes it’s a no brainer. But ask yourself this: how truly effective is your recruiter training, and do you tie it directly back to your hiring results?
The four years I’ve been running recruiting, our recruiters have tried just about every recruiter training program in the universe on our journey to becoming “The Very Best,” which is our stated goal. I must confess some of the recruiter training we attended was decent, but most was very identical: more of the same, with little valued added. More importantly, none of the training had any direct correlation to our increased recruiting results.
I was looking for a breakthrough on how to take an already successful recruiter and make them even better.
Putting on my thinking cap, I started to noodle training in general and what first came to mind was that most training is conducted either online or classroom style. I then harkened back to my Air Force days where training is really big and taken seriously. The Air Force has online and classroom training, but its core training is on-the-job training, which is one-on-one training conducted by a subject matter expert using a standard training plan.
Digging deeper, I recall our aircrews (pilot, navigator, etc.) attended year-long training with a personal flight instructor before being turned loose. Once on their own, the very best aircrew members were selected for the Standardization and Evaluation, aka Stan Eval team. During an actual aircraft flight, a Stan Eval team member sat right beside or in fighter jets right behind the aircrew member to teach/coach an already proficient employee to become the very best.
So the million-dollar question that came to my mind was: Why don’t our recruiters receive one-on-one training by an expert? One-on-one training is not a new concept. Heck, all you have to do is look around these days and you’ll see real-life examples going on, such as all the folks who have a personal trainer or boot-camp instructor. Another current “in thing” no matter what your profession is having your very own private coach, and even our children have their own individual tutors to do better in school and prepare for college.
So bottom line to all this is that I think one-on-one recruiter training is the new way to go to improve recruiter results, but only time and metrics will tell. I also think if you can take my idea and develop and scale a best-class one-on-one recruiter training/coach program where a master recruiter-trainer (if you will) deploys onsite to increase recruiter results, you will become a millionaire. As far as I know, no one is performing this service, so that’s why we had to built it ourselves in-house at CACI. We believe our one-on-one recruiter training will help us improve our already successful recruiting results and achieve our goal of “Becoming the Very Best.”