Welcome to our final installment regarding recruiter scripts for business development. Below are the first three blog posts in this series:
“3 Marketing and Business Development Scripts for Recruiters”
“3 More Scripts for Marketing and Business Development”
“2 More Recruiting Scripts for Business Development”
Keep in mind: different selling situations will call for different scripts. As a recruiter, it is important to have as many options (clubs) in your recruiting bag as possible. Master them all, so you will be prepared for any selling situation and have the ability to pull them out when that shot is needed. Don’t forget, the goal is to achieve a large quantity of job orders so you have the ability to continually “top grade” the work you have on your desk. Until you get a large number of “A” search assignments (job orders), keep marketing every day. That’s right: every day.
Below are the final two recruiter scripts for generating more business:
#1—Flip Recruiting Call and Strike a Deal
Recruiting calls are typically our biggest source of leads for job orders and search assignments. When talking to candidates daily about possible opportunities for them, it’s time to turn every one of those calls into marketing opportunities or at least a lead source for potential job openings. At the end of the call, the flip can be as easy as this:
“I look forward to working with you on your job search and will do everything I can on your behalf to make sure you can be as successful as possible in finding the next step in your career. There is a favor you can do for me since we are working together. I have wanted to work with your organization for quite some time. Who would I need to talk to at your firm to initiate discussions on the possibility of helping them find the talent they need?”
Or to strike a deal:
“Let’s do each other a favor. I will look forward to helping you find another opportunity and do whatever I can do to help you be successful in your next career move. In return, can I ask that you help me with contacts at your existing organization to help them find the talent they are looking for?”
If it’s a hiring manager you are talking to, use the previous questions in flipping a reference check to gather further insight into the organization’s recruiting strategies and success.
#2—Getting Exclusivity Approach
Being exclusive is imperative if you want to guarantee that if the candidates you bring the table match, you will make a placement. Getting exclusivity can be a challenge however, as there are many myths that hiring managers have about recruiting. Some hiring managers think that recruiters just have access to those limited people in their databases and that’s it. They think the more recruiters they have working on a search, the more candidates they will receive.
The theory is correct, they will receive more resumes initially, however they will find themselves with very few after the first week or so. The reason being that when contingency recruiters find out they are not exclusive, the search turns into a race and every participant tries to throw stuff against the wall just to see if it will stick. The client will get a lot of volume (quantity) but very little quality.
The perception of getting many candidates initially can be attractive, but most contingent recruiters will not place a priority on a non-exclusive search and will spend minimal time on it. Typically this results in only the low hanging fruit, which are individuals out of a job or desperately looking for a job. To combat this belief that many hiring managers have and to get exclusive searches, try this approach:
“Mr. Prospect, how many recruiters currently do you have working on your search(es)? … Three recruiting firms…Interesting… Can I share with you what happens in the mind of recruiters when they find out that they’re not working exclusive on a particular search? Recruiters are typically commission-based and tend to spend their time on the searches that will yield results the fastest. Once a recruiter finds out that they are not the only firm working on a search, it becomes a race. All firms involved rush through a search to find as many candidates that are close fits as possible and send them over as quickly as possible.
“These candidates are from internal databases as well as job board candidates. You will get an initial run of resumes, but then you will receive none. That’s because all the recruiters are not doing an “active” search on your positions to actually go after the “A” players who are gainfully employed and working for a competitor. They don’t have the time. It’s a race, remember. Unfortunately no quality control and close matching and selling happens due to time constraints. You, the client, end up being the quality control person and not the recruiting firms. That’s a lot of work. The end result is that you get to choose best player out of the poor to average talent you were given, choosing the best of the worst, so to speak.”
Or sell the alternate solution:
“My strong suggestion is to let our firm take this search exclusively. This will allow us to directly call in to the marketplace and go after the gainfully employed “A” players, who are over- achieving with your competitors. This will also put the quality control back into the search so you are not doing all the work and we can deliver 3-5 of the best players in the market place within about three weeks. The big advantage to you is that you get a chance to select the best individual out of the best players in your industry, instead of choosing the best of the potentially the worst. Make sense?”
Thank you for joining me for this series on recruiter scripts for business development. I hope this series and blog posts within it were of value to you and your recruiting firm.
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Jon Bartos, a guest writer for the Top Echelon Recruiter Training Blog, is a premier writer, speaker, and consultant on all aspects of personal performance, human capital, and the analytics behind them. In 2010, Bartos founded Revenue Performance Management, LLC. The RPM Dashboard System is a business intelligence tool used worldwide for metrics management for individual and team performance improvement. In 2012, Bartos achieved national certification in Hypnotherapy, furthering his interest in learning the dynamics behind what motivates others to achieve higher levels of success. Click here to visit Bartos’s website.