Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
CEOs track every battle with competitors, except recruiting!
Yes, in my experience, CEOs are competitive. (Let me correct that: they are fiercely competitive.) And they would likely go off in a rant if they heard that they lost a head-to-head recruiting battle against one of their industry’s competitors.
But they can’t complain in this case. Because no one in corporate recruiting formally tracks and reports recruiting’s win-loss ratio in head-to-head industry competitions. And it’s, obviously, not possible to build and maintain a competitive recruiting advantage if no one is keeping track of which companies beat us when we are competing for an exceptional candidate in a mission-critical job.
“Champions always want to know the score.”
What Is a “Head-To-Head” Recruiting Competition?
A head-to-head recruiting strategy is focused on winning “much more than your fair share” of recruiting competitions in an industry. It is defined as a recruiting competition between your company and one (or more) other industry competitors, occurring at the same time and targeting the same exceptional candidate for a mission-critical job that both companies have open.
The Benefits Of A Head-To-Head Recruiting Strategy
Yes, winning head-to-head battles for exceptional talent has recently become vitally more important to executives. The five foundational reasons why it has become more critical include:
- Improved hiring in key mission-critical jobs will impact company success – it’s hard to argue against the fact that hiring exceptional talent in critical technology groups like AI, cybersecurity, Quantum Computing, and robotics has recently become a strategic imperative for overall company success. To the point where some CEOs have even publicly speculated. About whether their company can remain viable if they don’t successfully recruit and manage a dominant AI team.
- You can expect an increase in innovation – in today’s world where business changes almost overnight. In my opinion, innovation has become the top driver of success. Because your recruiting targets will be working in mission-critical jobs, the hiring of an innovator will be a boost to their team. As an exceptional candidate, they are also likely to be exceptional performers, leaders, as well as innovators. So if hired, they will bring a great deal of innovation to their team. An added bonus, their hiring will likely inspire others around them to be more innovative.
- We get stronger while they get weaker – it’s clear to all CEOs that hiring exceptional candidates in these mission-critical areas will be essential for meeting their strategic goals. But unlike most in the recruiting function, CEOs also realize that denying your industry competitors their share of high-value strategic talent has an extra benefit. This is when your company wins, your competitor also loses. And that’s important to CEOs who love anything that hurts their competitors! (hire to hurt). A hiring benefit that you don’t get when you hire talent away from the unemployment line or companies that you don’t compete with.
- The competitive intelligence that you gather can guide your company’s strategic planning – most don’t realize that the competitive intelligence that you gather from this head-to-head strategy can help your leaders tweak your overall business strategy. For example, your competitor’s job postings (what jobs are opening in new fields or what jobs are increasing in volume) can be a clear indicator of your competitor’s current and future business and product strategy. In fact, Apple built its powerhouse recruiting reputation in part by posting mostly generic job descriptions that hid its strategy. So, if you see a major change in a competitor’s hiring direction, you should alert your own strategic team. You can also add to competitive intelligence by reporting which companies are losing exceptional talent (because their exceptional employees are actively looking). Finally, it can help your recruiting leaders by letting them know where your key competitors are posting jobs and how long each competitor takes to give an offer.
- Winning head-to-head competitions will eventually improve your overall hiring processes – because winning head-to-head talent competitions is so difficult. After you build a successful head-to-head strategy, your learnings from it will likely transfer over to and improve your regular hiring process. For example, your head-to-head recruiters will mentor, coach, and train other recruiters. And the hiring process improvements that you have made will surely bleed over into all of your other normal hiring processes. This makes your normal strategy more competitive, aggressive, data-driven, AI-supported, and enriched with competitive intelligence research.
Elements Of A Head-To-Head Recruiting Strategy
Key elements of this strategy include being data-driven, talent-mapping your competitor’s open jobs, and thoroughly researching all aspects of each competitors’ recruiting approach. It also involves gathering opposition research that you can use to turn your candidates away from your competitors. Next, it fully researches the needs of your targeted candidates so that you can more effectively sell them (including an effective counteroffer). Finally, you will need to modify your company’s recruiting process for head-to-head competitions. Done well, it is among the most effective approaches in the industry and provides a competitive advantage.
How To Learn If You Are In A Head-To-Head Competition
The most common operational question about this strategy is: how do you know when you are in a head-to-head competition for a critical job?
First, you identify and prioritize your mission-critical jobs so that they go through your head-to-head channel. Next, identify which of your competitors is hiring for your job by searching the job boards for job openings from each of your major competitors.
Then, during an early interview for this job, try the “will you help me” approach where you subtly ask the candidate to name the other companies that they have applied to. Using a phrase like “Please be honest with me, we need to know who else is recruiting you.” Or, “If our company was going to have to match a competing offer, where would that offer likely come from?” And of course, you can always take the direct approach by telling them that it is a required element of your hiring process to “know where else you have applied”.
As a final step, after you hire the head-to-head candidate, develop an onboarding process that gathers critical recruiting intelligence from each new hire. Because they are now an employee, they will be much more honest about some critical things. The information that you should ask the new hire includes “Which of our competitors did you interview with?” “Did you receive any other offers, and if so, what company was your second choice, and what made our offer better?” To learn about the candidate sales pitches that top competitors are using. Ask, “What was unique about the sales pitch from each of our primary competitors that you apply at?” You can then use this historical data to predict which companies you are most likely to compete against in your future openings.
By the way, if you want to learn whether you have lost the head-to-head battle (and the candidate doesn’t notify you). You can quickly find out where or if they got hired when they change their LinkedIn profile. And it’s important, after you’ve learned that you lost a candidate for one of these jobs, to quickly call them and politely ask them to share, “What did our company do that we should have done better?” And then you place that candidate’s name in your talent pipeline for consideration in its future jobs.
Note: the #2 talent metric that most CEOs want to be continually updated on is your company’s giveaway/takeaway ratio. This ratio compares the number of employees that you have successfully recruited away from each individual industry competitor with the number of your employees that you have directly lost to that industry competitor. Obviously, the more positive the ratio, the better.
One Final Thought
Having been a CEO twice in my long career, I have learned that CEOs are fiercely competitive. So whenever a CEO gets a chance to compete, they jump at the opportunity.
And if you wonder why CEOs are notorious for not paying much attention to recruiting. You might conclude that their attention level for recruiting would increase dramatically. If you could make them aware of the fact that your recruiting team is currently competing with a major product competitor for a “must-have candidate.” Because, in my experience, most CEOs would instantly shift to their “fierce competitor mode.”
And at the very least, they would ask for progress reports, and they may even ask how they might help (have the CEO call the top candidate directly). So, my charge to smart recruiting leaders today is for them to begin tracking your head-to-head win-loss record. And if you’re losing, have a serious conversation with your management. And if you’re willing, let everyone know it!
Thanks for reading and reposting this article.
Notes for the reader
This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
Please help spread his ideas by sharing this with your team/network and posting it on your favorite social media.
Dr John Sullivan is its author – It first appeared in the 8/25/26 issue of Aggressive Talent Management.
