What do you think?

It’s an easy question and one that’s critical to any successful client relationship. Yet it is the one thing that keeps a lot of technical transfer departments from finding their ideal candidate. Here’s why:

An intellectual property recruiting firm you’re working with sends you over a list of candidates along with their CVs and asks:

 

What do you think?

 

Honest feedback. This is what makes or breaks the client/recruiter relationship.

If your feedback sounds something like,

 

“I like them but the person I’m looking for isn’t here.”

 

Your recruiter only knows one thing – these people aren’t your ideal. But he has no idea why. Are they looking for too much money? Do you see a cultural fit problem? Were you hoping for someone local? There’s no way for him to know what you’re thinking about these candidates, other than you’re saying “keep looking.”

But for what?

Better feedback sounds more like this:

 

“I really wanted someone who worked in an Ivy League school.”

 

Don’t be afraid to say these types of things to your recruiter. You don’t have to justify your reasoning. We’re not here to judge. You have an ideal and we want to meet that.

One of the many benefits to working with an intellectual property recruiting firm is that you can tell us things about your ideal candidate that you couldn’t put in a job description. Maybe you really want someone in-state. Fine. Maybe you want them to always wear polka-dot bow ties. No worries. By providing timely, and honest feedback we can save a lot of time on your end and on ours.

Be as direct as you can about what you’re looking for. If you want to provide us with the reasoning behind why you’re looking for a specific non-essential skill, that’s fine, but you don’t have to. This is your department. It’s your call.

The quicker we can paint a picture together of your ideal person, the faster we can find him/her for you. Sure, we can continue to base our candidate list on generic qualifications but it’s a whole lot easier for everyone if you drill down and provide us with timely, honest feedback on what you’re looking for and what you’ve seen.

If you’ve interviewed someone and you want a candidate with a softer side, tell us. A resume or list of qualifications only gets us to good. We need your open feedback to get us to great.