Nick Corcodilos: Top Management Authority, Author, Writer, Speaker, and Headhunter

This week, Stephen Ibaraki, FCIPS, I.S.P. has an exclusive interview with Nick Corcodilos.

Nick Corcodilos is the host of Ask The Headhunter and author of Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing The Interview to Win The Job, the #1-selling interview guide on Amazon for 26 consecutive months. Nick's weekly e-mail newsletter, published since 2002, is relied on by managers, human resources professionals, and successful job hunters around the world.

Featured in The Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest, USA Today, The New York Times, Fast Company, Working Woman, on CNN, CNBC and MSNBC, Nick's iconoclastic techniques for job search, hiring and career development are used by job hunters and employers alike. Publishers including IDG, CNet and CMP Media have licensed Nick's work for use by their millions of members in the fields of information technology and electronics engineering. In the spring of 2008, Universal Press Syndicate will begin distributing Ask The Headhunter features in newspapers around the world.

The Ask The Headhunter approach to job hunting and hiring has been recognized by management gurus including Peter Drucker and Tom Peters.

President of North Bridge Group, Inc., Nick Corcodilos has been retained by companies including AT&T, Merrill Lynch, Becton Dickinson, and Procter & Gamble to teach managers to recruit and hire more effectively, and to help groom employees for promotions and career transition. Companies using his book as a hiring tool include Disney, Marriott, Microsoft, Merrill Lynch and the U.S. Government.

Nick Corcodilos holds a Bachelors Degree (Phi Beta Kappa) from Rutgers College where he was a Henry Rutgers Scholar, and a Masters in Cognitive Psychology from Stanford University. He plays music (keyboard and guitar), and enjoys Chi Gung and T'ai Chi, backpacking and kayaking. He loves his work, but would rather be in Alberta climbing big rocks.

PODCAST INTERVIEW:

To listen to the interview, click on this MP3 file link

The latest blog on the interview can be found in the IT Managers Connection (IMC) forum where you can provide your comments in an interactive dialogue.
http://blogs.technet.com/cdnitmanagers/

Interview Time Index (MM:SS) and Topic
00:035:		You started headhunting in 1979 in California's Silicon Valley. Can you describe your work at that time? "What headhunting is about is helping people to form connections..."
04:02:		How has your work evolved and can you profile the services you currently offer? "What I try to teach people is forget the resumé - instead try to put together a business plan for the job that you want. Make a business case for how you are going to take your skills and organize them in a way that you can apply it to a business challenge or a problem that the company (and the manager you are talking to) is facing...I call it 'getting the job by doing the job'...."
07:29:		Can you share the key lessons for success that you have learned over your long career? "...Being true to yourself...Integrity (trying to find the value within yourself and trying to help people create value in their work)...Trying to identify and follow what you're most passionate about..."
08:52:		Based upon your research, and experience, what are the most effective ways for conducting a job search? "...I think the most effective way to find a good job is to find a good company. I suggest to people to try to work backwards...."
12:11:		What are your top tips for internal career development? "...Find out what the other functional areas (in your company) do, explore them, get to know the managers, get to know the staff and the teams and figure out the kinds of problems and challenges they face and then offer your services.....Spend a little time investing yourself..."
13:30:		Can you extend your tips into effective hiring strategies? "...They (the companies) don't pay me to find the perfect candidate, they pay me to eliminate the 99 other candidates they don't want to waste their time with. By using the approach I just described, managers can eliminate lots of candidates themselves...."
15:32:		Why is your approach considered radical? "...In the end, what gets the right person hired for the right job is an honest working dialogue between a manager in a functional department and someone who is an expert in doing that kind of work. HR people (wonderful as they might be at conducting interviews) simply do not have the expertise to have that level of discussion. I think that any good manager should be spending 10 to 20% of his/her time recruiting; developing sources of candidates; doing their own hiring..."
16:41:		Nick shares a story (from the many experiences in his career) which illustrates his basic principles.
21:16:		Provide your predictions of future trends and their implications/opportunities? "...Serious efforts to try to find ways to help people connect one on one (and I don't think databases are going to be it)...."
26:05:		Which are your top recommended resources and why? Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age by Duncan Watts How to get your point across in 30 seconds or less by Milo Frank Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
28:16:		Nick talks about some of his other passions and interests.
31:03:		Nick provides his commentary on two frequently requested information on his website.