Treat Your Candidates with Respect!

I am a full life cycle recruiter so I like to stay on top of all the new sourcing techniques out there. Today I attended Geoff Peterson’s wonderfully informative, free webinar 30 Recruiting Strategies in a Downturn Economy. (Not sure “attended” is the correct word. What DO you call it when you sit at your desk and listen in?) For more information about Geoff, check out his blog at www.staffbytes.com.

Geoff covered all kinds of techniques for using new media – Twitter, Facebook, podcasting, etc. to attract and source passive candidates. Afterwards I got to thinking that no matter how well you source, you have to take excellent care of your candidates to be a really successful recruiter.

Here are a few suggestions for showing your respect for your candidates:

• Make a firm commitment to your candidate about when you will give them feedback (whether that is from an internal hiring manager or a client), and honor that commitment.
• Don’t over commit. Sure, you would like to have an offer for the candidate tomorrow, but is that reasonable? Does the hiring manager typically get back to you that quickly? Build a cushion into the timeframe so you can exceed your candidate’s expectations. For example, if the hiring manager tells you will they have a decision by the end of the week, tell the candidate you will have news for them by the middle of next week.
• If you don’t have feedback by the agreed upon date, contact your candidate anyway! Tell them you haven’t forgotten about them, but you just don’t have any news yet. Ask your candidate how they are doing and if anything has changed on their end. It is much better to admit that you don’t have feedback than to leave your candidate with the impression that you have forgotten about them, or they are not important enough to warrant a call from you.

Treat your candidates with respect and they will respect you and want to do business with you, now and in the future!

TALKING – the BEST sourcing tool!

Today I want to post about “talking” as a sourcing tool. Recruiters often tell me that they have searched every paid resume board, all the freebies, LinkedIn, the ATS, etc. and they just can’t find anyone that fits the spec. That is when I typically recommend that they try a low tech tool – the telephone! If you have checked every site in your arsenal and can’t find anyone – maybe there is a true shortage or maybe there is something wrong with the way you are searching or the pitch you are using. But you won’t know for sure until you start talking to the people that would really know – the people that work alongside the people you are trying to recruit. Or, the people that work for the people you are trying to recruit – or maybe even people who used to do what you need your candidate to do. In other words, stop looking for the perfect resume and start talking to those “Compromise Candidates” that I mentioned in the last post.

Now – don’t expect gainfully employed, busy people that you have never spoken with to drop everything and call you back, that is not what I am recommending. Rather, call the people that you have spoken to in the past, people you used to work with, candidates you have placed or people that already work for your company.

Be upfront and honest, tell them that you are not calling to recruit them, and tell them that you need their help. Explain the challenges that you are facing – whether it is finding the right combination of skills or getting people to call you back. Ask them what they think of the position as you describe it and tell them what you are saying in your pitch. You will get immediate feedback on what is important to your target candidates, where they network, how they like to be contacted, why they are in high demand and you will probably even get some referrals!

So, next time you are frustrated with the results you are getting and find yourself searching for the latest and greatest Internet sourcing tool, try picking up the phone and see what you get. And, if you have success with this approach, please comment here so we can all learn from each other!

Compromise Candidates

What do you do to make the Hiring Manager realize that you have looked under every rock but have still not come up with their ideal, perfect candidate? You bring them ‘compromise candidates’ and talk directly to the Hiring Manager about what you have found and what potential candidates have told you. Tell them what the candidates themselves have told you about the opportunity. Of course, in order to do this, you have to call those “less than perfect” compromise candidates and pitch the position to them.

All too often, we as recruiters take our Hiring Managers very literally. We write down every single they say and then go out and try to find the perfect candidate on the job boards, on social networking sites, in our database. We don’t make any calls to the ‘compromise candidates’ because we are looking for the perfect candidate. We spend endless hours sourcing on line, looking for the exact combination of skills at exactly the right price. When we can’t find that combination, we spend more time complaining about how unreasonable the Hiring Manager is. We gripe that they expect us to just keep searching when we “know” that these people don’t exist at this price. Or, we figure that if we just learn more cool new searching techniques we will eventually find the perfect candidate.

Instead, we should talk to the Hiring Manager – continually! Don’t just go off, do your sourcing and pitch candidates over the wall. Early in the process, show the Hiring Manager some candidates with all the skills, even if they require a higher salary than the Hiring Manager had hoped. Then show them some candidates in their price range that don’t have every single skill. You will be amazed how flexible Hiring Managers will be when they are presented with real data and choices.