Can you help us help others?

Last week during our Leadership MasterClass, we were discussing best practices in recruiting and hiring. It's tough out there. It's tough for clients for sure, but it's also tough for us as broadcasters to attract and retain top quality, excited and passionate talent, not only in sales, but in all aspects of our business.

I've been quietly gathering examples of some great prospecting/recruiting ads that people have created. Some video, some audio.

Here is the ask...

If you're doing some innovative and creative recruiting: Would you please share your audio or video with us? Just email it to Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com. Depending on the volume of material we get, we will either share it in future sales tips, or create a webpage on RAB.com to specifically hold some great examples. We already have a few to share, but we would like some additional resources to share. Video, audio or whatever you're doing to recruit, please share so we can help others.

During our training, one of the topics that always resonates is this piece of advice:

"Have a set of questions that you ask in the same order to each candidate you are hiring. Same questions, same order, every candidate."

The reason we share that is because that's the only way you can compare candidates to each other is if you have a "control group" of questions. Too often we let candidates dictate the direction of our conversation. We get excited and we go off on tangents. When it comes time to pick one over the other, we cannot compare them because we didn't ask the same questions. So — same questions, same order, to every candidate. Of course, you can have spontaneous conversations, but at least have five to seven key questions that you ask in the same order to each candidate.

One of our Leadership MasterClass attendees had the opportunity to try out the same questions/same order advice and said it's a game changer. She said, "Before doing it this way, it was difficult to compare candidates. With the same questions in the same order, we can do a side-by-side comparison on at least some of the criteria we are looking at."

So that's one tip on how you can improve your recruiting and hiring process. Please share your recruiting commercials. We have a few to share already. Hopefully, we will get a bunch that we can share with others as we all strive to bring fresh new perspectives and talent to an amazing career in broadcasting and media sales!

EMAIL me at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com — and THANK YOU in advance.

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development. You can reach him at Jeff.Schmidt@RAB.com. You can also connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.