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Greetings!
In our last lesson, we worked on Effort, and how it is variable. If you aren't hitting your goals, the first theory to test is that your effort is not strong enough. Supply is the second place to turn, in your never-ending mission to perfect your performance.
Stated positively, if you are hitting your goals, then surely you are bringing the right supply to the market.
If we go back hundreds of years in time, the market was where you brought your farm's surplus to sell in order to glean money for survival. For that to work, others had to be interested in exchanging money for your product. As we analyze recruiting performance we do well to remember the simplicity of that. Farmer brings product to market, consumer brings money, a freely willed exchange occurs, at a freely negotiated price.
Now let's catapult forward up to the past 200 years or so, and we have a new phenomenon. There has always been innovation but there was never a market for that innovation the way we've enjoyed it ever since the creation of the railroad system. Railroads removed our dependency upon ancient modes of travel. Of course, the railroads themselves were the most amazing innovation and quite likely the greatest turning point in human history. Once we took control over transportation, though, we were able to envision innovation reaching forward to vast markets, and that vision inspired a different kind of business. It was from that foundation that our modern entrepreneurial world sprang.
The new phenomenon that came into existence was this. A person - soon to be a company - would create a product that no one had ever thought of before and therefore, obviously, no one ever felt they needed. But the dream of the product and the ability to produce it meant that people had to learn how to sell the product. And learn they did. What is the fundamental basis of this transaction? Why, it is nothing less than imagination itself. Sellers with new products had to build up the inner visualization of a current non-user and skeptic, to the point where the buyer builds desire for this new thing.
Here are the pieces, in simplified form:
1. A new thing.
2. A person who has never thought of this new thing or its use.
3. A seller who can paint an inescapable vision of the use and benefit of this new thing.
4. The resulting clear visualization and along with that clear visualization...
5. Rising desire in the heart of the buyer for the benefits now clearly pictured within his or her imagination.
As an industry, recruiting went through the exact same cycle. Before there were professional recruiters, there were just employment agencies. Who paid the fees? Employees did, in hopes of getting a job. They were called "applicants" back then, and the entire industry lived upon those meager payments.
This era, called APF, or the Applicant Paid Fee era, stretches all the way up until 1965. At that point, Alan Schonberg opened the doors of Management Recruiters International as the only franchise employing EPF, Employer Paid Fees. From the point of opening, MRI climbed - and the power of EPF was a huge part of the climb - to the pinnacle of largest franchisor in the industry in a matter of a few short years. They remain the largest in the industry to this day.
How did MRI do this? It was completely due to the fact that supply creates, attracts and ultimately controls demand. MRI discovered how to find the very best applicants out of the entire applicant field. MRI "applicants" were worth so much to companies that companies were willing to pay the fee to MRI for these incredibly high performing employees. By building the methods of finding the best applicants, MRI was able to persuade not only all of its clients, but really the entire industry to flip from APF to EPF.
MRI entered the search world in 1977, after creating the model of Contingency Search. That's outside the scope of our story, but it gives us our boundary moments. From 1965 - 1976, MRI became the largest player in the recruiting world without so much as a single search. There was NO search. All they had was the quality of their supply - their superior applicants - and the chutzpah of their vision that these candidates would be so valuable to companies that companies would be willing to pay.
The outcome, in Alan Schonberg's words, is that "The client is standing there, with his check in his hand, hoping and wanting you to give him the candidate he wants to hire. And look what you've done for the candidate, his career, his family and future!"
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Alan Schonberg
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All other industries have Effort, and all other industries have Supply. But, we're the only industry for whom Supply is a living, talented, hard working performer. Our Supply is working talent.
Let's put all the pieces together now. Would consumers come to a place, hang out, and hope that suppliers will show up? No, that's not how the original markets formed. Rather, farmers would gather together their product, and buyers would come.
The ability to supply is the real foundation of economic world today. And, as an industry, it has always been and will always be our supply that defines and determines what we do.
Consider, when does a deal close? It closes, only after a company has been willing to extend a job offer, and then hinges, up or down, on whether the candidate accepts that job offer. The final yes, the one that makes a deal a deal, is made by the candidate.
To reiterate: Supply attracts, creates and ultimately controls demand.
In closing, let's consider the negative statement of our principle. What if you're not hitting your goals? Could it be that you simply have not made the right kind of investment into supply? I propose that the strategic definition of your desk is best understood by the phrase, The Right Supply, for the Right Demand.
I believe that phrase is stated in proper order. If your placements aren't happening as rapidly or as consistently as you wish, consider; maybe you haven't made the right investment into building the right supply.
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