Welcome to what feels like part 308 in this negotiation series. Let’s get straight into it.

Have you noticed the problem with releasing hostage negotiation strategies in book form?

What happens when a kidnapper buys the book as part of their plan?

I guess things have moved on since Chris Voss wrote “Never divulge your secrets”, but for the rest of us, it’s a well-regarded book on negotiating.

Have you ever tried to employ its tactics against someone who has also read it?

I mentioned in the 3rd part, many moons back , that I’ve had this experience. It didn’t feel great.

I’ve heard from time to time that us recruiters don’t have the best reputation for candidate experience.

It doesn’t help that we employ a whole bunch of cliches in everything we do that candidates have experienced time and time again.

Sometimes we call these gambits our Playbook.

How do you think they respond when they experience well used lines, and are aware of their nature too?

“Hi, I hope this finds you well. I came across your LinkedIn profile on LinkedIn.”

Can you hit the ground running with multi-level communication?

My favourite client is a market-leading progressive innovator.

It’s such a brilliant opportunity and you’re perfect for it!

The pay is £highly competitive with a pension.

Sometimes they talk about it - you may have read these themes on LinkedIn.

Sometimes they don’t talk about it, and simply have thoughts you can’t read.

They may play their own gambit, with actions that suits their needs.

They may make contrary decisions that aren’t advantageous to us.

Or they make a decision we may never even know about.

That all sounds reasonable when written like this.

They are people after all.

Let’s flip it around for a moment.

Any recruiter who’s filled a challenging vacancy will know that bad CVs can hide good candidates.

In a time-poor environment, with abundant candidates that have good CVs, how often will you dig deep to find the truth of badly written CVs?

And when you’ve made that decision, how often do you communicate this feedback to those candidates?

Perhaps you look past a CV. Perhaps you at least provide a decision.

But the vast amount of jobseekers will tell us they never even hear back from an application.

Such is human nature, when the system and intent hold you back.

Such is human nature.

In a time poor environment, with abundant generically written adverts, voicemails and DMs - how many gainfully employed candidates will dig deep to find the truth of badly executed messaging?

You can get a sense of how big a problem this is, and an opportunity too, from how jobseekers respond to red flags.

You can read the post on candidate resentment for more examples of how bad experience informs action.

Badverts have a tangible impact, but you have to look past what’s in front of you - the evidence of applications - to get to the truth of why messaging is ineffective.

Establish how candidates might respond to words that matter, in an unusual way that speaks to them personally, and you’ll convert more effectively.

The irony is of course that AI currently parses what’s out there as viable content.

And when recruitment content is flogging a dead horse, in our attempts at negotiating interest out of candidates - we’re only feeding the machine.

Think about that if you think automation that spits out words quicker, with levelled up adjectives, actually solves the problems you have that are vacancies.

Are they words for negotiation, or words that work against you?

Where’s the specific situational insight that comes from a proper brief?

The insight that relevant candidates can benefit from, a consequence of process.

The insight you use as readily in a phone call as in a cold email?

If you get to the root of why candidates systemically behave they way they do, you can improve your Playbook to one they want to read, not one they plan against.

Anyway, this series has gone on longer than intended, hence the name of this post.

See you next time for part 9?

Regards,

Greg

p.s. I’ve a bit on over the next few weeks. If you’d like to buy my recruitment things we can diarise a call later.