Recruitment has always been about the candidates. You can have as many great clients as you want, but if you’ve got no talent to give them then you’re useless to each other. You might as well shake hands, call it a day and go your separate ways. After all, the war for talent is well and truly over and the talent won. That doesn’t mean you don’t face endless battles to find the finest talent in the market, because apparently, the best candidates are as hard as trying to find your mate at a gig at Wembley on Saturday night. (Which by the way, we can tell you from experience is really really difficult).
But as usual, there are always things you can do to root out the superstars.
Don’t be basic
That is to say, the generic copy and paste paragraph you use on LinkedIn to say ‘I’m looking for a top (insert job title) in the (insert location) area to start immediately. Contact me for details’ is the most boring thing we’ll all ever read. Just stop it because you’re better than that. We’re all better than that. Your job adverts are the one place you’ve got room to get creative, to be funny, serious, witty, different and a host of other things, yet still recruiters opt for the standard LinkedIn status that everyone scrolls over. That’s not to say that you have to be a creative director to come up with good job adverts, you just have to put a little effort in. In a world that predominately hires for cultural fit, adverts are the best way to eliminate unsuitable candidates and find the top talent.
Use your greatest asset
I.e. the internet. Recruiters today have unlimited access to people across various platforms and yet so many agencies disregard social recruiting. Again, your LinkedIn job adverts do not, in any world, count as social recruiting. Use social media platforms to find candidates, and then build relationships with them. Create online friendships that will turn into offline billings. Use your own social platforms to also build your own image so that when you approach candidates, they engage with a human with personality, likes and emotions, as opposed to another stone cold recruiter blowing up their phone lines.
Let technology do the work
So much of finding the best talents is staying in touch with great candidates you placed. Your recruitment software should help you out with this. Access Recruitment CRM, for example, allows you to create bespoke automated messages to your network so you’re always staying in touch with their career and latest developments. You can also set reminders and notifications when it’s time to reach out to certain people.
Don’t be a recruiter
Be a mate. A friend. A confidant. A real human that doesn’t spit out reams of business jargon every time you pick up the phone. And this sounds remarkably simple, but it’s remarkable the number of recruiters who don’t seem to manage it. When we chat to candidates their biggest gripe is that recruiters are impersonal, dull, solely business focused and incredibly transactional. The biggest secret in recruitment is that no one wants a recruiter, they want a friend. They want one person they trust, that they can always go to every time a career shift or change is happening. Someone who understands their goals, ambitions and wider story. They also want someone they can send their mates to, which in turn gives you an automatic referral network.
None of these things are easy or a quick fix, but if you’re looking for rockstars, superstars and A-players, you’re going to have to play the long game. Start employing tactics that build you a solid foundation of strong candidates, as opposed to a fickle few that may or may not be right for the job.
Hear from our CRM specialist on why Access Recruitment CRM software can place more candidates quicker.
