This is a true story about my first recruiting lesson. You might find it useful if you want to hire more young professionals." J6 R$ H$ M6 r
My first management job (in the early 1970s) was as manager of capital planning for Rockwell International's Automotive Products Group located in the Detroit area. This was a billion-dollar business with plants located around the United States, Europe, Australia, and South America. I was green and had never hired or interviewed anyone before.
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/ ?  ^9 n/ A% G" GOn the third day on the job, my boss, Chuck Jacob, the controller, called up around 9 a.m. from the University of Michigan where he was interviewing MBA students. Over 20 people had signed up to be interviewed, and Chuck needed me there to help. We had to hire six new financial analysts to work in the financial planning and budgeting department, so these were critical hires for us.* ?% \4 v7 W1 D/ ^
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I sat in for one 30-minute interview with Chuck at 11 a.m. to learn the basics of interviewing, and then interviewed eight more students later that day on my own. What transpired that day and in the next few weeks provided some useful lessons on how to hire top young professionals.

Here are the big lessons I have learned in recruiting young professionals that are still applicable today.
  G$ l7 L0 l' lCompete on time, not compensation. The graphical approach to showing career growth as a series of jobs was a critical part of this successful recruiting process. It clearly demonstrated the impact that staying on the steep part of the learning curve could have on personal development. Rockwell did not have a very strong employer brand at the time. P&G, Ford, and IBM were the companies everyone wanted to work for. We made the case that we offered comparable jobs, with comparable pay, but with far more rapid growth opportunities. Of course, we had to prove this. Chuck and I were both young, so this by itself helped, but additional proof (see below) was required. The point we made was that the decision to accept one job over another had to be based on a long-term career horizon, not just on the short-term aspects of the job. Using the graph, Chuck was able to visually demonstrate the cost of a bad decision, arguing that the person should not waste those early career years.
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$ }+ {- d* N- SYou have to provide proof that the opportunities are real and better than the competition's. Rockwell International was a Fortune 50 company at the time, but it was relatively unknown, with a weak employer brand. It was formed in the late 1960s through the merger of North American Aviation with Rockwell Standard. It was a hodgepodge of aerospace (the space shuttle), automotive OEM manufacturing, and industrial products. At the time I was there, the finance department was implementing a new financial planning and control system throughout the company. This was a great time for young people who wanted to work long hours to get ahead quickly. This is how I got my start, as well as dozens of other people we introduced to the MBAs when they came onsite to be interviewed. While Chuck made a very convincing and unique story with his graph, it was backed up with tangible proof. Without this, we wouldn't have hired a single person.0 o6 J, p  x! A8 y& `- L
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Make it about careers, not just jobs. When the candidates were onsite, we talked about career path opportunities, not just current jobs. While we demonstrated the challenges in the current job, the exposure the person would have, and the types of projects the person would be involved in, these were always related to a bigger theme. One theme was showing the linkage the job had to a major company initiative, e.g., Rockwell's companywide financial-planning implementation initiative. The other theme related to the person's career was demonstrating that the current job offered a critical technical or managerial building block.
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Hiring managers need to get involved. It was stressed upon us from the CEO, CFO, and every business unit president and GM how important hiring top people was to our personal success. Managers were expected to be involved at every step — and we were. The HR department played an important but subordinate role in the process. We had to forecast our hiring needs as part of the planning process, and to justify these with facts and how they related to our performance objectives.( d. b& ]9 h  j. w8 h
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You have to recruit. Most top MBAs didn't want to work at Rockwell at the time. The company had little name recognition and less buzz. To offset this, we had to recruit heavily. I don't think there was another company that had a dinner party on the evening of the on-campus interviews for those selected for the next step. This was part of our plan, but it didn't end there. We spent a great deal of time with the candidates during the interviews. It was no 30-minute quick in-and-out process, either. The candidates also got a chance to meet with more senior executives to demonstrate the exposure they would get once they were on the job. After offers were extended, we always followed up to make sure they would be accepted. Once offers were accepted, we started dialoguing about real job needs. This way, the new hires would have a better understanding of some of the projects they'd handle on the job. Collectively, a great deal of extra effort went into the process, with the hiring team handling most of the effort.
0 d, S$ F  R$ e# N" `3 [The core lesson here is that in order to hire top people, hiring managers and recruiters alike need to invest much more of their time. If they're unwilling or not capable of doing this, hiring top people will remain a topic of conversation, an unrealized hope, and a constant source of irritation. As far as I'm concerned, time is your most critical asset. Don't waste it.